The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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more — for too many servings of tofu turkey. Harbaugh could say no to NFL suitors, buy a crisp, blue, button- down shirt monogrammed "MM" (for Michigan's Moses), and return to Ann Arbor a well-compensated hero. Or he could continue his pursuit of a Super Bowl championship, via offers sure to come when he ends a rocky relationship with the San Francisco 49ers' front office. It's not like U-M gets coal if Harbaugh says no. Hackett is re- portedly playing hardball, and that could mean a college football luminary such as Oklahoma's Bob Stoops heading for Ann Arbor. The Youngstown, Ohio, native with a national championship tucked under his belt could do far worse than end- ing his career by reviving That Team Up North. Former Michigan assistant coach Les Miles, out of LSU? Don't com- pletely count it out. Miles has a few on the odometer (he'll be 62 next Nov. 10), but he'd come to Michigan with a burning passion to raise the game of his alma mater. There are options, while the Christ- mas Eve watch continues. If Santa's sweating, he's not letting it show. *** John Beilein experienced a quiet, candid moment, following Michi- gan's 45-42 loss to Eastern Michigan Dec. 10. The defeat provided a sec- ond stunner in a dizzying four-day spinout for the Wolverines. They'd just come off a 72-70 loss to NJIT, sure to be in the running as Up- set of the Year in college basketball. And now this. Eastern Michigan will win a lot of games, with the type of smothering zone defense it unveiled against the Wolverines, but the point remains. Before the season, NJIT and EMU were wins. No doubt about it. No pause for consideration. Now it's time for a pause, to con- sider this: it's not 2012, or 2013. The five starters from the 2013 national championship game — Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr., Nik Stauskas, Glenn Robinson III and Mitch Mc- Gary — are all gone, having bolted early to cash checks in the NBA. Replacing them, Beilein admitted, isn't automatic. "I don't want to use this excuse a lot," Beilein began. "It is really hard. Usually when you lose a lot of guys, they're seniors. You lose them, but you've got guys behind them. "We lose three sophomore like we just did, and it's hard to say, 'Okay, let's just keep it rolling.' It's part of this process. You're rebuilding a little bit, Part II." That's fair. It's an expectations readjustment, after seeing freshmen come in and perform like Burke did three years ago, or Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton Jr. did last year. But it's certainly not automatic. After a four-day span of double- takes, blind hope just took a charge from reality. ❑ Editor John Borton has been with The Wolverine since 1991. Contact him at jborton@thewolverine.com and follow him on Twitter @JB _ Wolverine.