With all the signing days done, we can take a second to look at what's going on with the football program. As it turns out, the most extensive interview done with Coach Loeffler was by Angelique Chengalis of the Detroit News. She normally writes about UM Football, and that's the angle she takes with this article. Specifically, the heavy Michigan influence on the BG program.
Check the article out, it's pretty interesting. Here are a few comments.
We've all heard the legends of Loeffler's workaholism. As his family moves to Bowling Green, he is sleeping in his office--either on the couch or an air mattress if he has the strength to pump it up. I suspect he might keep sleeping there, at least once in a while, even when the fam is here.
I'd say there were three things that rung out to me.
The first is the words "culture change." That's certainly going to get your attention. So, to date, BG has not had any transfers, even keeping all the Texas players who came with Jinks. However, a culture change suggests a culture problem and when you start to revise the culture, there can often be people who can't meet the new expectations. The good thing is, we're talking about a culture of higher performance. Loeffler specifies sitting in the first row in class and being on time for the trainer, etc. It is also the 455th example of how poorly run the program was previously, including recruiting.
The second is a discussion of "flipping the roster." So, we could all see on the field that the team was getting poor results, and we also heard that we had highly-ranked recruiting classes. Sometimes you have a poor tactical coach who has talent and the team gets better right away. You might think of Blackney's last team, in this respect. If you were hoping that was the case here, then discussions of flipping the roster would seem to point us in the other direction.
Third, there is a lot of talk about building the program the right way. That means not compromising with guys with character issues and not bringing in a bunch of JUCO guys. It means building the program in a way it can be sustained, but which is slow. This is a Clawson approach. In fact, Loeffler seems to allude to the differences between Babers and Clawson when he says he doesn't want to win and leave, but rather wants to set the program up to be successful after he leaves.
Look, I do get it. I have always said, everyone in our athletic department is looking to get out. We hope that works in our favor. You can make your career here. And I'm supportive of him doing things the right way and getting things moving in the right direction. And then getting a better job.
The one thing I would is that the last coach who started talking about leaving before he had even coached a game was Gregg Brandon, and that didn't seem to work out that well. I think it's probably better to keep that to yourself until the time comes. We know, but let's do something first. I like the direction, but you might also not leave of your own accord.
Final thought. We're going to have to be patient. The program is in bad shape. We might be a little better next year, but I think we're looking at something like the path Clawson and Leipold took to success. We'll need to be patient, which sucks because of the last three years. Not that we were exactly patient. You can see in the article that we have a very close-knit group of coaches and I think they are the men we need to turn this around. There are no guarantees, but I feel a lot better about what we're doing this time.
Final final thought. If your last name is Campbell, you nickname will be "Soup."
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