Let Us Now Seek Competent Men.

Now that (according to the TV announcers) Michigan just lost its sixth straight game to Ohio State and its eighth of nine to Jim Tressel, has lost 13 of its last 15 Big Ten games, with 13 also being the total number of Big Ten games it lost in the seven years before Rich Rodriguez, has had two straight losing seasons, for the first time ever has lost seven or more games for two straight seasons, and has finished last in the Big Ten (in a tie with Indiana) for the first time since 1962, the news media have trumpeted that the only other times Michigan had two straight losing seasons were 1958-59, 1962-1963 and, if I remember correctly, 1881 and 1883. (Michigan didn't play in 1882, it was said.) So two of the three times Michigan previously had two straight losing seasons occurred during my seven years in Ann Arbor. Bo Schembechler's greatest accomplishment, I wrote a few years ago, was to rescue Michigan football from the nadir to which it had fallen, a rescue begun in his very first season of 1969 when Michigan defeated one of Woody Hayes' greatest teams in a game that was one of the greatest upsets in college football history and perhaps was the greatest upset until Appalachian State defeated Michigan itself 38 years later in Ann Arbor in the first game of 2007.

When Michigan was undergoing the years of its nadir from 1957-1968, it was coached by two men whom my friends and I considered not competent and even dumb. (Forget their names. I've mentioned their names before, why blast them by name yet again for being incompetent and stupid, and, anyway, the cognoscenti know who they were.) The horrid irony in this was that Michigan, then as now, paraded itself as, propagandized itself as, and elitistly drummed into its students' heads the idea that, it was and is a phenomenal academic institution. Here was an institution which lived for proclaiming its high degree of collective intelligence, accomplishment and competence, but was willing to countenance serious incompetence in its football coaching even though it had a stupendous prior football history. It was not as if Michigan, like the University of Chicago under Robert Maynard Hutchins around 1940 or so, said to hell with big time college football because it's assertedly inconsistent with being a great university, or like the Ivy League deemphasized football because of its adverse effect on education. No, indeed. Here was an institution which proclaimed itself academically elite, continued to think college football very important, but countenanced mediocrity in coaching that one at least hopes it would not have countenanced academically.

It seems to me that that is exactly what is happening now. Michigan, while proclaiming itself academically elite more than ever (if such is possible), is simultaneously countenancing incompetence and stupidity in its football coaching while continuing to proclaim football to be very important. In this regard, I cannot do better at explanation than I did about a year ago in a post dated November 3, 2008, and so I have simply appended that post. The mistakes, stupidity and lack of attention to fundamentals that it complained of almost all continue to exist.

I suppose I could add a few things to last year's post, like hiring as the defensive coach a guy who did truly miserably at his last job, as head coach of Syracuse -- so nobody can really be shocked that the defense mainly sucked most of the time this year, as last. And I could make an addition to a sentence in last year's post that mentioned "the fumbles, the simple dropping of the ball as if it were the proverbial hot potato," a sentence that continued by saying that things like this bespeak that the coach "does not pay much attention to basics, to fundamentals." The addition I would make to that sentence would revolve around the fact that last Saturday, against OhioState, the Michigan quarterback simply dropped the ball out of his own hand when he was trying to run out of his end zone, resulting in an Ohio recovery for a touchdown. Can you believe it? -- just dropped the ball out of his own hand when running out of the end zone!

What, then, will the University of Michigan do about the situation? The smart money probably bets that the answer is, "Nothing" (and in fact today's New York Times reports that Bill Martin, the Athletic Director who hired the coach, Rich Rodriguez, said Rodriguez will return again as head coach next year, so I imagine we should expect another miserable and incompetent season in 2010). All the expectable excuses will be made. It will be said that Rodriguez has only had two years. He should receive at least a third year, or maybe even a third and fourth year, to put his "program" into place. (In America we no longer have college football "teams." The word "teams" lacks sufficient gravitas. It is not "heavy" enough to denote the world shaking importance of college football. So instead of having college football "teams," now we have college football "programs.") He needs more time to bring in his kind of players, and more of them. He has a six year contract, so it would cost too much money to buy him out. Etc., etc. (Whatever happened to the concept of firing someone without liability, of terminating someone's contract without liability, due to his incompetence and consequent failure to live up to (an at least implicit) term of his contract?) And the fools who hired the guy in the first place, and who did so in a process that was highly questionable to put it as nicely as possible (see last year's appended post), are not going to want to admit that they went and hired a guy who is incompetent. (Notre Dame admits its mistakes. Michigan does not.)

* * * * *

Now, remember that I said I have written this post because the writer who interviewed me insisted adamantly that I should go back to writing on things other than Madoff. Yet writing about Michigan football would hardly be what the interviewer had in mind. As an importantly related matter, the interviewer appeared to be struck by my explanation that the reason I generally put 50 or 60 hours of work into reading, taking notes on and outlining each book whose author I interview on MSL's TV program called Books of Our Time, is that I have a dread of appearing or being incompetent -- a dread which, ironically enough, seven years at Michigan did no little to foster. Putting in the hours of work helps eliminate the possibility of incompetence as an interviewer on the book show. But -- and here is where the interviewer's desires and an article about Michigan football come together -- a dread of being or seeming incompetent does not have widespread purchase in this society. Politicians blow off about anything and everything with almost no knowledge of what they are talking about: Good sound bites, and fluent sounding (Obamaesque) speech, are the desiderata, not competent opinions. Corporations (and their lobbyists) put out obvious bovine defecation to justify obscene profits, even more obscene paychecks, interest rates that are through the roof, etc. Much the same is true in spades of journalists, especially columnists, whose prior views are rarely scrutinized to determine the competence of prior views which they proclaimed or to expose the mistakes they incompetently made one after the other. (Are you listening, New York Times? (There is no chance.)) Universities and colleges have a zillion excuses for why higher education has become so unaffordable (and why university presidents need to be paid a million dollars or more). People do not know and do not care what history teaches and that in effect we are repeating unfortunate history that has occurred time and again since 1898 (and in some ways since Alexander the Great) in middle eastern wars. Many people do not know, and even fewer care, that the people in charge of the economy are those, or among those, who brought us economic disaster in the first place.

One does not hear it said that a fundamental problem with G.W. Bush -- as he had proven time and again as an adult even before he became President, and as he repeatedly proved again as President -- was that he is not competent: we elected as President someone who was not competent, and nobody cared about this. One rarely hears that the question about Obama today -- a question about a guy who speaks brilliantly and (far too) often, is whether he will prove competent in action too or will prove to be the opposite. There is no conception that the country -- just like Michigan, with its elitist braggadocio combined with incompetence at football -- proclaims itself to be the greatest country in the world now or ever -- and woe betide anyone who might publicly question this propaganda -- while in fact it lurches incompetently from military disaster to economic disaster to military disaster to economic disaster.

One does not usually hear in this country, in any field, a refrain of "Has she shown herself to be competent?" Nor does one hear its twin in importance, of which I have often written: "Has she shown herself to be honest?" These are the two questions which count more than anything else most of the time. Yet, they are the questions least heard.

With regard to Michigan football, there is thus far but little to indicate coaching competence. With regard to the economy and war, there is thus far but little to indicate competence. Rather, there are mainly indications that military and political leaders look to and intend to repeat the incompetent policies and mistakes of the past. In education, we are conditioned to expect more of the past -- with even higher costs but, it seems, even lower quality. Ditto for many things, even most things. And frankly, as with Michigan football, so too with the economy, war, education, and so many other fields: we are going to have big trouble, continuous trouble, unless and until there is a cultural sea change under which the question of competence of views and actions, and the question of honesty, become the questions that are asked in every field.

Don't hold your breath.*

November 3, 2008

Re: Bring Back Bump Elliott.

Bring back Bump.

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