Lloyd Carr: Your opinion

Alexandre
Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:06:05 +0000

I love Carr. I have met him on several occasions. He is a perfect gentleman and a very funny guy. He is misunderstood by many because he is shy, protective of his players and genuine.

The press dislikes him because he does not respond to its superficial questions. He actually makes some very snappy remarks and at times, humiliates them for asking intrusive or even idiotic questions.

I remember earlier this year, Carr went for it on 4th and a short 1 in the opponant’s 40 yard line with less than 5 seconds remaining in the first half. Afterwards, as he was headed to the locker room for halftime, a reporter asked Carr why he had gone for it on 4th down so late in the half and Carr, with his typical incorrigible grin, said ever so casually, “because I wanted to get the first down”! LOL He really is a piece of work.

Some fans have unrealistic expectations. The see the kind of talent we recruit and they expect us to win national championshipos annually. What they do not realize is that other top programs like USC, FSU, Miami, Oklahoma, LSU and Texas hire more talent than we do. They also do not realize that when you are the flagship program in a conference like the Big 10, every team in the conferenc is saving their best for you. Finally, Carr gets criticized a lot by the fans for his conservative play calling. Again, they do not realize that for every game we lose because of his conservative play calling, we win several games.

But I see 7 measures of success that define a coach’s quality:

1) Overall record: In his forst 10 years as head coach, Carr is 96-28 (0.770). That’s good for 4th best among active Division I coaches with more than 5 years at the helm. And Michigan consistantly plays top 10 schedules in terms of toughness.

2) Consistancy: Not only does Carr win many games, but Michigan has not gone worse than 8-3 with Carr in the regular season. No other program has maintained such a high standard since Carr has taken over Michigan’s program in 1995. Every major program since 1995 has lost at least 4 regular season games at least twice.

3) Player attitude: Our players never get talk trash and never represent our university badly when in uniform. They generally love and respect Carr as a father away from home. And parents also like Carr because he is pretty straight forward. He is said to be very honest.

4) Conference success: 5 Big 10 titles in 10 years. That is amazing when you consider that no other program has won more than 2 Big 10 titles in that same period. The parity in the Big 10 is scary. Most years, several teams in the Big 10 share the conference title. Michigan is the only program to have won the Big 10 outright twice since 1997.

5) Big Game record: In this regard, Carr is without peer. His 8-2 (0.800) mark against top 5 teams is an NCAA record. As is his 15-5 (0.750) record against top 10 teams. Even the best coaches have losing records against such high levels of competition. Furthermore, Carr is 6-0 vs Wisconsin, 6-2 vs PSU, 7-3 vs MSU and 6-4 vs OSU. Finally, Carr is 5-4 in Bowl games, including impressive wins at the Rose Bowl in 1998 and the Orange Bowl in 2000. He is also 3-1 at the Citrus Bowl.

6) Class: Carr is well spoken and a strict disciplinarian. He is always fun to listen to at press conferences and he will not hesitate to discipline even his best players beyond the required measure in order to teach them a valuable lesson.

7) Classic wins: Virginia 1995, Washington 2001, Minnesota 2003, Michigan State 2004. All of those games were amazing classics. Michigan never came back to win when down by more than 14 points. In all four games above, Michigan was down by 17 or more points entering the 4th quarter and we still found ways to win.

I respect very few coaces as much as Carr. I really like Ferentz at Iowa and Paterno at PSU…but Carr is my favorite for obvious reasons! hehe