"DEAR BRADY HOKE" - - - FROM C Mann 1979 (part two)

Turns out the impact of Brady Hoke on our friend "C Mann 1979" was too much for just one letter. Here is a second letter to Commander Clapper:

Dear Coach Hoke,

Since you have been telling your recruited players that it doesn't matter that much who coaches the blue boys, I have a suggestion for you on your impending replacement. Perhaps you can put in a good word on behalf of my recommended candidate for your (old) job.

I am wondering if the new athletic director in Ann Arbor will look for another Michigan Man (in name only like you) or try to find a head coach who can take a storied football program and return it to glory.

I suggest a well known candidate that has been mentioned as a candidate to replace you. But he has a strong SEC background and I know the alumni do not take kindly to the better-than-you attitude from that conference. Also, he followed a former Michigan State head coach both in college and into the pros so he has to have some knowledge of what winning is like especially since that head coach has won two national championships and is in the running every year.

His four year head coaching career in the SEC started slowly with a 7-6 record but that year he won his bowl game against the team you call Ohio. Something that only happens once a decade these days in Ann Arbor. This guy is 1-0 against the Buckeyes.

His second year he finished 11-2 and in the top ten rankings. Sounds familiar for a new head coach.

Then things went south for this once dominant program. They finished 2013 with seven straight losses and a sorry 4-8 record. But the school decided to give the coach and his full bevy of recruits one more chance. Boy, that sounds familiar too.

And this year didn't meet the usual standards even though they are bowl eligible and should finish the regular season 6-5 that including an upset of a top ten team that allowed them to qualify for a bowl game. Something you had trouble doing in all four years at Ann Arbor. Unless of course you win your final regular season game today. Which is about as likely as Appalachian State winning two in a row in front of 100,000+.

Will Muschamp has all ready been released from the University of Florida so he could help with recruiting right away. It's a perfect fit if your future former employers could only accept logic over arrogance.

Most Sincerely Yours,

C Mann 1979

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"DEAR BRADY HOKE" - - - FROM C Mann 1979 (part one)

Our next love letter to Brady Hoke comes from "C Mann 1979", a dedicated Spartan and lifelong Wolverine Hunter if we ever saw one. He offers these farewell wishes to the Merry Michigan Man:

Dear Coach Hoke,

Thank you for your devotion the Michigan football program. You have helped my alma mater more than you will ever realize. I truly look forward to your success in your next head coaching job. I want you to succeed as much as your predecessor has at Arizona. Let the UM Athletic Department continue to think it is their coaching hires that have been the problem.

There are many things I will follow when you get that new head coaching job. Will you recruit four and five star high school athletes and try to be their father by letting them run the show, or will you begin to recruit lesser athletes and mold them into a team like the current B1G coach up the road?

When a student athlete on your team gets in trouble with the law, and they will, do you take decisive action to send a message to your team or continue wait and let the legal system run its course before making a decision?

When you are invited to attend a local high school football camp will you send an assistant and have him turn it into a recruiting trip or would you like him to treat it as a training camp as it was meant to be?

And finally, I will be interested to see if you take your new team to an 11-2 record and a bowl win in your first year without any of your personal recruits.

All the best to you and your future endeavors.

Yours Truly,

C-MANN1979

P.S.  One more thing I'll look for once you land your new head coaching job with another team. I wonder if you will look unkindly toward offered recruits who desire to visit other college programs before making a final decision on their college career. Or will that be an attitude reserved only for the Ann Arbor program?

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"DEAR BRADY HOKE" - - - FROM return2glory

Card and letters are flowing in to commemorate the farewell tour of Michigan Football Coach Brady Hoke. (That's probably the last time we type those five words in that order.) We put out the call for well-wishers as The Brady Bunch says "Goodbye, Ann Arbor".

First up is "return2glory", originator of this dual-purpose web site. Here is his sendoff to the donut-lover:

Dear Coach Hoke,

I really appreciated the excitement you created with your highly rated recruiting classes, and the way you could never build on their natural ability. This created a build-up of expectations and excitement, followed by a sharp letdown due to execution errors. Excellent combination!

I also thank you for bringing David Brandon to experience the excitement the crowd and the Izzone creates at the Breslin Center. It was great to have you and him both together to watch Spartan Basketball in person. You picked a great game to attend, as the Spartans handed the "We On" UM men's basketball team a lesson in competitive execution. No other UM football coach has ever come to a home MSU basketball game, so we will always remember you did that.

Also, it was fun watch the budding romance between you and Sparty. Thanks for coming, and also thanks for going! 

Yours Truly,

RETURN2GLORY

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WOMEN'S BASKETBALL PROGRAMS MIRROR MEN'S - - - SPARTANS ARE MUCH MORE LOCAL

You'd think those players in yellow jerseys with the word "Michigan" splashed across the front would actually be from the State of Michigan. At least many of them, right?

It's time to think again about those University of Michigan Wolverines. We just discovered that the UM Men's Basketball team has only one player from the Great Lakes State. That's "one" as in the number just above ZERO. Yet the Michigan State Men's Basketball team is made up of nearly 50% home-grown talent.

Then we checked the coaches, and lo and behold, it was just about the same picture. Michigan has one Detroit-born-and-bred assistant, but the head coach (Beilein) and the rest of his staff are outsiders, dropping into the Mitten just for this one job. First-time residents, you might say. But Tom Izzo and his entire staff went to high school in our home-state, and three of the four also attended college right here in Michigan.

So the discrepancy held up, as 55% of MSU players and coaches are local to our state, while only 16% of UM players and coaches came from around here. You have to wonder why they are called the "University OF Michigan", since so few of them are actually from Michigan.

But that's just the men's teams. In the spirit of Title IX, we expanded our view to the Women's Basketball programs at both schools. To quote the famous band Led Zeppelin, in that case, "The Song Remains the Same".

We found that eight out of 13 Spartan women went to high school in Michigan, a total of 62% of the team roster. But down in Ann Arbor, only five of 14 did so, a total of 36% of their team.

State of Michigan Players

5 out of 14 women's basketball players at UM = 36%

8 out of 13 women's basketball players at MSU = 62%

Some people may care more or less about these facts, but they are FACTS. The yellow-and-blue teams are assembled with players and coaches from all over the place, while the green-and-white teams truly represent the State of Michigan.

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LET US ALL GIVE THANKS TO BRADY HOKE

On this Thanksgiving Day, it's appropriate that we offer thanks to Michigan Football Coach BRADY HOKE, for his four excellent years of service. I still remember that cold January day when his hiring was announced, warming up our chilly Spartan hearts. We could see that Bad Moon Rising for the Wolverines.

Now that the moon is about to set on UM, we would like to thank Coach Hoke for everything he has done - - - and not done - - - as the leader of the Blues. And for that, we would like your input!

Please place your comments of Thanks for Hoke in the comment section below this article. We will add your thoughts to ours as we prepare a message of Thanksgiving, to be posted within an hour of the announcement that Brady Hoke has been fired.

Be sure to get your comments in right away, as the hours are dwindling on the Hoke Era!

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UM COACH JOHN BEILEIN, "WHINER-IN-CHIEF"

FOR THE UPDATED TEXT OF THIS ARTICLE

PLEASE CLICK HERE

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MSU AND UM BASKETBALL PROGRAMS ARE FROM TOTALLY DIFFERENT PLACES

We recently found out that the University of Michigan Men's Basketball team has only one player from the State of Michigan. The Michigan State Men's team, by comparison, has 44% of its roster from the Great Lakes State. (UM has five times as many Indiana natives as home-state players.)

So we expanded our view to the coaching staffs of both teams. Turns out to be a similar picture. All four MSU coaches went to high school in Michigan, and three of the four also attended college in-state. The Spartans also have the only coach who attended school where they are now coaching.

The Michigan Staff includes one assistant with a pure-bred Detroit background, and one with split credentials. The other two Wolverines coaches (including John Beilein) appear to be working their first job in the Mitten.

MSU Coaches

• Izzo - Iron Mountain High School and Northern Michigan University
• Fife - Clarkston High School and Indiana University
• Stephens - Ferndale High School and and Michigan State University
• Garland - Ypsilanti High school and Northern Michigan University

UM Coaches

• Beilein - High School in Lockport (N.Y.) and Wheeling College (W.Va)
• Meyer - High School and College in Indiana
• Alexander - High School and College in Detroit
• Jordan - Albion High School and Butler (IN)

So the comparison is two-out-of-four locally-grown coaches for UM and four-out-of-four for MSU. We combine the player and coach totals below.

Michigan State Men's Basketball Team  - 11 out of 20 = 55%

Michigan Men's Basketball Team - 3 out of 19 = 16%

The Spartan Men's Basketball team is more than three times as local to the State of Michigan as their counterparts at UM. And, as it turns out, the picture is the same with Women's Basketball. More on that tomorrow.

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