<p>StanfordCS, there is no room for expressing oneself the way you do in civilized society. You can easily express your belief that Michigan’s football team is unworthy of a top 15 ranking without resorting to saying that Michigan is “terrible” and bringing up a humilating loss from our past. You don’t see anybody here going to the Stanford forum and poke fun at their team, saying that they suck and went 1-11 back in 2006, or had 8 losing seasons last decade. </p>
<p>This said, I hope you get into Stanford. It is a great school. Should that fall through, do not worry, I know of at least a dozen or so notable Wolverines that did their graduate studies at Stanford…one of them started a small company a decade ago and is now worth over $10 billion!</p>
<p>^ Thanks for the well wishes. And I apologize if I offended you in any way. I’m going to guess you’re referring to Larry Page, however, Segey Brin helped him with Google.</p>
<p>I just used the word “terrible”; you made it sound like I used racial derogatory terms to describe U Mich. I guess society should blacklist the word “terrible” because it has such a bad connotation to it, huh?</p>
<p>I was indeed referring to LP. SB is obviously the other half of the great team, and he too followed a similar path (flagship public university for undergrad).</p>
<p>to be honest, LP and SB were able to build the google empire due to stanford, not their undergrad institutions. Thats where they built their connection and gained the pedigree for the VC funding… much easier to pitch stanford graduates to potential investors than just about any other school not named harvard… the same reason HBS grads get gobbled up by prestige oriented industries despite them not learning jack through their “case study methods”</p>
<p>So you watched the game on Saturday and you think that outside of Denard Robinson, the rest of the Michigan team was “terrible”? Did they play terribly on Saturday?</p>
<p>Let’s get back to the original post. Alexandre predicted that Michigan would be “ranked well in the top 15 come tomorrow”, and you said “LMAO, Michigan isn’t good enough to be in the top 15”. The polls proved that Alexamdre was right and you were wrong. The collective college football wisdom voted for Michigan as the #11/#12 team this week.</p>
<p>bearcats, you should not underestimate the importance of an undergraduate education. Like it or not, Larry Page (and Sergey Brin) had to develop sound technical understanding in order to (1) get into Stanford and (2) develop the theories and programs required to run Google. Obviously, it is at Stanford where they created the company, but some credit must go to their formative education.</p>
<p>I don’t think Michigan lost 8 straight in one season for quite some time. </p>
<p>In 2008, we started 2-3 and ended our season with a 1-7 (and wih a 5-game losing streak in the middle of those 8 games) record on our last 8.</p>
<p>In 2009, we started 4-1 but finished the season with a 0-5 streak.</p>
<p>In 2010, we indeed started 5-0 but then went 2-6 in our last 8 games, the two wins being sandwitched between three losses.</p>
<p>This said, I agree that it is too soon to rejoice. If we can enter the Illinois game with an 8-1 record, then I will be convinced that our team is for real.</p>
<p>The biggest change is there is now a defense that plays at least somewhat like a UM defense and has some athletes who now are properly coached. Next year could be a good one as UW will be down, PSU is bad,OSU is a mess and MSU/Illinois usually choke. Could come down to UM vs Iowa.</p>
<p>I agree Barrons, I am cautiously optimisitc as it is too early to predict what kind of season we are going to have, but some things are obvious already. One of them is defense. Last year, our defense allowed an average of 25 points per game through our first five games. This year, we have allowed only 10 points per game through our first five games. If you remove the outlier, our defense allowed 22.5 points per game through our first five games of the season last year, compared to just 5 points per game through our first five games this season. Clearly, the defense is far more aggressive and effective than last year. The other major difference is time of possession. Last year, we had possession for an average 25 minutes per game. This year, we are winning the possession battle.</p>
<p>It is too early to predict how strong we are going to finish, but clearly, our defense is playing much better so far this year.</p>