TODAY IN chUMp HISTORY: MAY 4, 1995

Do you remember the mid-1990s? It was a grand time in Michigan football history. Glenn Shembechler had moved on from coaching at UM to firing Ernie Harwell, and the heir to the Wolverine Throne was Gary Moeller. The baton was passed and all was good in Ann Arbor.

Moeller had served his head-coach-in-training duties at Illinois, where he basically stunk up the joint. But that didn't matter, as he was coronated the King of Michigan Football after three dismal years with the Illini. The Wolverines must have liked him because he played football at Ohio State.

And off he went, following his destiny into the history books, until...until...until THIS DATE IN HISTORY (1995) when Moeller lit up the sports media with a drunken rage unmatched in college football history.

It was 21 years ago today that Gary Moeller burned his career into the ground by drinking heavily in public, berating and possibly hitting his wife in a restaurant, and fighting back against the UM-loving police who were very willing to get the incident brushed under the carpet before anybody heard what happened.

It was long after Moeller was "resigned" that stories began to circulate regarding what made him go crazy on that fateful night. According to the rumor-mill, Moeller's wife chose that time and place to inform him of her adulterous affair with one of her husband's assistants, the younger and presumably more virile Lester ("the Molester") Miles. We can doubt those reports, but Les Miles never made it back to Ann Arbor through three coaching changes at UM, so maybe the story holds water.

What a great social portrait of Michigan Football culture, eh? Quite a "family atmosphere", right? The assistant coach sneaking around to have an affair with the wife of the head coach, sparking an historic public meltdown by the highly overrated cuckold of Ann Arbor*.

So tonight, feel free to raise a toast to Gary Moeller,

the once and future King of Michigan Football,

a man who turned himself into a clown for all to see.

New York Times report

Associated Press report

Seattle Times report

*Have you ever seen those t-shirts that say "Ann Arbor is a whore"? Maybe they refer to Mrs. Ann Moeller.

---------

Tweet ****** The primary purpose of this web site is to expose the mainstream media bias that consistently portrays Michigan in a favorable light under any and all circumstances. We present current facts and review historical records to show that UM is not all they are cracked up to be. This process involves information that is sometimes negative by nature, offered as a counter-balance to the biased picture we all see on a regular basis in the mainstream media. These negative facts may involve Wolverine teams, players, coaches, administrators, and/or fans. We are here to prove that Michigan is NOT AS DIFFERENT as they want us all to believe.

21st CENTURY FOOTBALL RIVALRY: MSU vs UM

One reason this web site exists is to counter and dispel the popular mythology that the University of Michigan is "so much better than" Michigan State (in many things, not just major sports). As long as the Michigan Mainstream Media Machine insists on perpetuating pro-UM story-lines over pro-MSU story-lines and/or the TRUTH, we will present alternative viewpoints of reality. We will always be "fact-based" in our process.

The football series between MSU and UM is 

TIED DURING THIS CENTURY.

By beating Michigan in 2015, Michigan State Football has now pulled EVEN with UM since the turn of the new millennium. As you can see below, the series is tied, 8-8 beginning with the year 2000:

The football series between Michigan State and
Michigan is tied, 8-8, since the year 2000
(courtesy Wikipedia)

(We extended the definition of "century" to include the year 2000, even though some would claim that year belongs to the previous century. We refuse to "fudge the facts" just to make our side look a little better.)

We are also pleased to report that the MSU Football Team has out-scored the UM Football team in games played since the year 2000:

The overall football score this century is

MSU 378, UM 376

That's pretty close, right? So we don't need to have Spartan fans everywhere woofing it up on the Bluebloods, especially after they almost beat our team on the field last year. Let's keep it real, okay?

But we also don't need to take a lot of crap from fake-fans and bandwagon-jumpers, and especially, the sports media. We don't need to sit quietly while our team is pushed into the ditch, just because vested interests favor the rich kids in Ann Arbor. Yes, they have a lot of money, and yes, they spend it wildly to promote their interests, but NO, THEY ARE NOT SUPERIOR because of their wallets.

It shouldn't matter how much they spend to buy their coaching staff, nor how many planes they send up in the sky to write snarky messages, nor the size of their crampy stadium, nor the extent to which they will throw wheelbarrows full of cash into their "non-revenue sports". None of that makes them "better than" everybody else.

This is the essence of the primary message that Mark Dantonio has brought to the table in this public debate between public institutions. Enough with the "little brother" crap. Enough with looking down on the color green compared to the color blue. Let's keep it real, okay?

People can look at numbers in different ways. Most people who want to identify a trend-line in any aspect of life will take a snapshot of the present moment, then look backwards in time until they see a pattern emerging. The result is considered the "current trend".

Others, like Michigan Football fans, will establish their trend-line by starting at an arbitrary date two centuries earlier, then add-in whatever just happened in order to make only a microscopic revision to their "pattern". The UM "All-Time Wins Record" is a trick, designed to keep everything looking just the same as it did in 1935 or thereabouts, no matter what happens in the present-day reality.

The series is actually tied since 1998 (9-9). This is a much more relevant measurement than starting in the 1800s before rugby had developed into modern football, with forward passing and scoring systems that resemble what we see today.

So the new "water-mark" in the rivalry series, including the most recent game, shows that the game record between MSU and UM is TIED going back nearly two decades. Wolverine dominance was largely a feature of the 1970s-1980s, not including the pre-war era when all games were played in Ann Arbor. Let's keep it real, okay?

---------

Tweet ****** The purpose of this web site is to expose the mainstream media bias that consistently portrays Michigan in a favorable light under any and all circumstances. We present current facts and review historical records to show that UM is not all they are cracked up to be. This process involves information that is negative by nature, offered as a counter-balance to the biased picture we all see on a regular basis in the mainstream media. These negative facts may involve Wolverine teams, players, coaches, administrators, and/or fans. We are here to prove that Michigan is NOT AS DIFFERENT as they want us all to believe.

MICHIGAN STATE vs MICHIGAN FOOTBALL RIVALRY: SUMMARIZING THE TEN YEAR BATTLE

Everybody knows by now that Michigan State has out-performed and generally surpassed Michigan in football under Mark Dantonio, especially in the last five years. But what about the last decade? UM fans are always heralding history, telling us that MSU has "only been good recently", as if it's just a passing fad or a blip on the sports screen. So let's take a look at the two programs compared to each other over the last 10 years of college football.

For what it's worth, 10 years is the approximate maximum personal exposure a high school junior has to college sports. So the previous decade basically forms the opinions of most young athletes regarding possible schools of choice.

Wolverine fans are constantly bragging about their "all-time wins record", but to do so, they are actually counting rugby scrimmages from the late 1800s as "football". There's no way to stop those people, but we don't have to believe in their mythology. Anyway, a decade is definitely a significant measuring stick, so here we go.

UM Final AP Football Rank

• 2015 - #12
• 2014 - unranked
• 2013 - unranked
• 2012 - #24
• 2011 - #12
• 2010 - unranked
• 2009 - unranked
• 2008 - unranked
• 2007 - #18
• 2006 - #8

MSU Final AP Football Rank

• 2015 - #6
• 2014 - #5
• 2013 - #3
• 2012 - unranked
• 2011 - #11
• 2010 - #14
• 2009 - unranked
• 2008 - #24
• 2007 - unranked
• 2006 - unranked

The Spartans have been ranked by the AP six times

in the past decade, while the Wolverines have made

the Top 25 only five seasons out of the past ten.

Last 10 Football Games Between MSU and UM

2015:  MSU won by 4 (27-23)

2014:  MSU won by 24 (35-11)

2013:  MSU won by 23 (29-6)

2012:  UM won by 2 (12-10)

2011:  MSU won by 14 (28-14)

2010:  MSU won by 17 (34-17)

2009:  MSU won by 6 (26-20, OT)

2008:  MSU won by 14 (35-21)

2007:  UM won by 4 (28-24)

2006:  UM won by 18 (31-13)

• Ten Game Record = MSU 7, UM 3
• Most Lopsided Victory = MSU by 24 (2014)
• Total Points = MSU 261, UM 183 (MSU +78 points)

Let's continue by summarizing the season results for each team over the past decade.

SEASON RESULTS OVER THE LAST DECADE

Michigan State Spartans

2006:  4-8, Tenth Place, no bowl

2007:  7-6, Seventh Place, bowl loss

2008:  9-4, Third Place, bowl loss

2009:  6-7, Sixth Place, bowl loss

2010:  11-2, First Place (B1G), bowl loss

2011:  11-3, First Place (division), Bowl Win

2012:  7-6, Fourth Place (division), Bowl Win

2013:  13-1, First Place (B1G), Rose Bowl Champion

2014:  11-2, Second Place (division), Cotton Bowl Champion
2015:  12-2, First Place (B1G), College Football Semi-Finalist

• MSU TEN YEAR TOTAL = 91-41 (.689)
• Current Bowl Games in a row = 9
• Total Bowl Victories = 4
• Biggest Bowl Win Streak = 4
• League Championships = 3
• Division Titles = 4

Michigan Wolverines

2006:  11-2, Second Place, bowl loss

2007:  9-4, Second Place, Bowl Win

2008:  3-9, Tenth Place, no bowl

2009:  5-7, Tenth Place, no bowl

2010:  7-6, Seventh Place, bowl loss

2011:  11-2, Second Place (division), Bowl Win

2012:  8-5, Second Place (division), bowl loss

2013:  7-6, Fifh Place (division), bowl loss

2014:  5-7, Fourth Place (division), no bowl
2015:  10-3, Third Place (division), Bowl Win

• UM TEN YEAR TOTAL = 76-51 (.598)
• Current Bowl Games in a row = 1
• Total Bowl Victories = 3
• Biggest Bowl Win Streak = 1
• League Championships = 0
• Division Titles = 0

We have looked at 10-year comparisons before between MSU and UM in Football, as well as Men's Basketball and Women's Basketball. In this section, we direct our focus to conference games only.* Here are the 10-year conference records for the two schools:

MSU 10-year B1G Conference record: 55-28 (.663)

2006: 1-7

2007: 3-5

2008: 6-2

2009: 4-4

2010: 7-1

2011: 7-2 (includes B1G Ten CCG)

2012: 3-5

2013: 9-0 (includes B1G Ten CCG)
2014: 7-1
2015: 8-1  (includes B1G Ten CCG)

• Longest conference winning streak: 14 games
• Five seasons with 7 or more conference wins

UM 10-year B1G Conference record: 43-37 (.534)

2006: 7-1

2007: 6-2

2008: 2-6

2009: 1-7

2010: 3-5

2011: 6-2

2012: 6-2

2013: 3-5
2014: 3-5
2015: 6-2

• Longest conference winning streak: 7 games
• One season with 7 or more conference wins

You can see from the summary above that over the last ten years of the series, MSU has taken charge, winning both big and small, both home and away. (Important to note that this "Ten-Year Picture" will not change much to favor UM the next couple of seasons, even if the Wolverines win the next two games, as the game count for the decade would remain 7-3, MSU.)

BOTTOM LINE: 

Mark Dantonio promised that MSU would "measure up"

when he took over the job in 2007, and the Spartans

have done so, by winning league championships,

division titles, and bowl games. 

---------

Tweet ****** The purpose of this web site is to expose the mainstream media bias that consistently portrays Michigan in a favorable light under any and all circumstances. We present current facts and review historical records to show that UM is not all they are cracked up to be. This process involves information that is negative by nature, offered as a counter-balance to the biased picture we all see on a regular basis in the mainstream media. These negative facts may involve Wolverine teams, players, coaches, administrators, and/or fans. We are here to prove that Michigan is NOT AS DIFFERENT as they want us all to believe.