I can’t believe I’m going to say something nice about Michigan–but they had quite a few years of better than average teams until Rich Rod showed up.
They seem to have had a string of coaches (and not the toughest schedules ever prepared) that could consistently get them 8 or 9 wins or so per season, without many train wreck seasons ala ND in 07. They haven’t reached the heights of Parseghian or Devine or Holtz, but until RRod they had also mostly avoided the depths of Faust, Davie, Willingham and Weis. Oregon and Wisconsin both seem to be following that model–Alvarez and Bellotti got the ball rolling and then their assistant coaches took over. ND tried that approach–and Davie brought that experiment to a screeching halt. I think that right about now, no one alive is more hopeful that Kelly figures things out than Chuck Martin, because if he does, it will greatly increase the odds of Martin someday becoming the head coach at ND. I don’t think there is any job he would rather have, and he pretty much said so when he publicly lobbied for a job working for Kelly at ND.