Michigan Football: Stay Mad If That’s What You Want

It’s OK to stay mad after Michigan football’s brutal loss to the Buckeyes. Let’s also not lose our sense and appreciation of real-time emotion.

As soon as Jim Harbaugh sat down for his post game press conference following Michigan football‘s loss to Ohio State, we all knew they were coming.

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The takes, that is.

So many takes.

Coach Harbaugh let his frustrations loose about a game in which Ohio State—a team that averages 56 yards a game in penalties—was penalized twice for six yards. A game in which Harbaugh himself was penalized 15 yards for throwing his play sheet and headset behind him into the sideline scrum (a penalty that was called because it’s a technical foul in basketball, no less). A game in which the Michigan defense spent more time on the field than it should have and the offense less because of incorrect calls.

A game that, of course, ended twice because of a poor spot and a review that took all of 10 seconds to confirm it.

There are few things that provide so clear an avenue for self satisfied sportswriterly smarm than deviations from press conference norms. It genuinely seems some people have so thoroughly lost touch with the reality surrounding sports that their minds can’t abide anything outside of what they expect from coaches and players.

First and foremost, they expect a bland, conciliatory press conference, win or lose, no matter the magnitude of the preceding contest. The best recent example is probably the backlash from when Cam Newton abruptly ended his press conference after Super Bowl 50.

Now Michigan has its own instance, courtesy of Jim Harbaugh.

That this was the biggest game anyone on the team may ever play, that this could have marked a turning point in the rivalry with Ohio State, that the referees jobbed Michigan, that this is probably the most or second most crushing loss of Harbaugh’s career doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that no one questions the validity of the outcome or points out poor performances by the only people on the field getting paid for their efforts or to be in any way emotional about the game.

This is, of course, a result of the small-minded insularity of the sports media world. Case in point: this article over at MLive.com. David Mayo is here to remind us all to get our elbows off the table and to thank the host even if she’s serving rat poison souffle. He starts in on Harbaugh’s griping about the spot on J.T. Barrett’s fourth-down run:

"That doesn’t mean you dump all over the game, and spend virtually the entirety of your post-game press conference besmirching the integrity of the officiating performance, and generally coming off as consumer of the sourest grapes."

First off, Harbaugh didn’t dump all over the game. He dumped all over the refs. And so what if he besmirches the integrity of the “officiating performance” (a nice weird little way to avoid implicating that the refs might have anything other than the utmost integrity as individuals)?

The Big Ten won’t change the outcome if it decides the refs sucked; they just say the refs sucked, in verbal or written or fine form. Why can’t we acknowledge it then? What do we lose by just saying out loud what was painfully obvious: that the officiating performance was lacking in integrity?

Will football just become a Mad Max-style race from end zone to end zone?

"Harbaugh has been around Michigan long enough to know that victory is expected but a certain grace in defeat is demanded. He is arguably the most interesting figure in college football and seems to get just about everything he wants at Michigan. Along with that comes some obligation of decorum"

This is a doozy of a paragraph. “Certain grace in defeat is demanded.” Yeah, it is, but that’s because you demand it!

There isn’t any cosmic force that can smite you if you don’t show grace in defeat; Fielding Yost isn’t going to toss some lightning bolts at Harbaugh from on high. We’re one step away from “think of the children!” territory here. Nothing is demanded of the winning or losing teams, especially if one doesn’t mind enduring the scorn of pearl-clutching columnists.

“He’s the most interesting figure in the game! Why isn’t he less interesting? There’s decorum damn it, and it demands that all coaches and players read from the scripts that we, the writers, have given them. This is serious! There are feelings and propriety at stake here; whose feelings I don’t know, but there are feelings that can be hurt by lacking decorum.”

Harbaugh has no obligation to act within a series of arbitrary guidelines that writers made up for coaches. Part of the reason his players and his coaches and the fans love him is because he knows that!

You know what was worse than this? Listening to Brady Hoke sputter on about execution and good weeks of practice after getting whipped on the field.

"So yes, in the aftermath of a brutal defeat, at the end of a 12-game season, which included 10 wins and two games ending in untold thousands of opposing fans rushing onto the field, some emotion was understandable."

Just don’t show any of that emotion or have it inform your performance in a room full of reporters that already know what you’re thinking and would just like to pretend otherwise.

"And the other thing anyone watching saw was one of the great college football games of this decade, every bit as compelling as the No. 1 vs. No. 2 game these same two teams played 10 years ago, with every bit the stakes, and even more drama."

This is true, if incomplete: You know what would have made this game better? Even officiating.

"Unless you’re just angry beyond reason and viewing a far-reaching game through the wrong end of the microscope, all of those plays had as much impact as the Barrett review — and those were just on special teams."

Oh man, the disdain this guy feels for people that are upset about officiating. “Angry beyond reason” essentially amounts to saying, “I’m smarter than you because you’re all flustered about officiating, but I appreciated the game itself, warts and all, because that’s what us enlightened viewers do, not like you trough dwellers who care too much about the outcome to be reasonable.”

How about this for reason: THE BARRETT PLAY WOULD HAVE ENDED THE GAME. Ahem. THE BARRETT PLAY WOULD HAVE ENDED THE GAME.

Whatever you think about the spot, Mayo’s statement here is just wrong. Yes, one play equals one play if you fail to consider any context whatsoever.

Barrett’s run was more important than a Mike Weber two-yard gain in the first quarter. It was more important than a 60-yard punt. Stopping Weber a half yard short of the line of gain or downing a punt after a 10-yard roll doesn’t transfer the saved yardage to the fourth quarter.

Barrett’s run was the most important play of the game because it could have ended the whole affair by itself. 

"Michigan didn’t lose because of the call on the review of Barrett’s run. Did he get the ball over the line when at his peak, before getting knocked back? Hard to tell. But if that’s your big gripe, you don’t have much of a complaint."

What? There are plenty of reasons why Michigan lost this game, sure, but only two of them are plays that could have actually ended the damn game. If your big gripe is that Barrett didn’t cross the line to gain, that’s literally the biggest gripe you could have because calling it that way would have ended the game.

"Harbaugh said simply that his team “has done everything it possibly can do and done it very well.”The same applied to his worthy opponent."

Huh?

This whole article is an example of one of the most most insipid, condescending lines of thought after games like the one on Saturday. It says not to get riled up about silly things like officiating. It says that everyone’s team gets bad calls. It says football is just a game. It wants to control your reaction to said game because it doesn’t have the time or patience or—most importantly—the fortitude for lack of decorum because it concerns itself only with the fragile validity of the product.

This thinking seems like it can only originate in the indifferent or the preternaturally miserable. So I say screw ’em.

I’ll be mad, you can be mad, Harbaugh can be mad. It doesn’t mean it’ll change anything, but everyone should get acquainted with impotent rage at some point anyway, especially as sports fans.

Staying mad and shushing those that tell you to shush also doesn’t mean there can only be one takeaway from that game. It was a damn good game, and there wasn’t one player on either side that didn’t look like it was the most important game they’ve ever played.

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan history

To hell with losing graciously.