Wolverines developing a seige mentality

I know it's a pretty tiny sample size, but I get a lot of sense of what is happening among U of M fans -- the true blue bloods, not so much the Walverines -- talking to my U of M fan/season tix holder co-worker. He knows a lot of people in/around Schembechler Hall. He's become quite the fan of mgoblog and likes to relay to me stuff said/written there.

I've noticed lately that he wants to talk about the Rather Hall fight. He's repeatedly said Winston shouldn't have been able to "walk from jail onto the practice field," and, by comparison praises Rich Rod for dumping Milano (the kid that beat the crap out of Steve Kampfer) and Justin Feagin.

His new thing is to constantly bitch about Rosenberg and the Free Press. He goes on and on about how the Freep never bothered talking to "victims" of the Rather Hall fight and only talked to parents. He complains about Rosenberg's "hatchet job" on Rich Rod and the whole extra practice crap. UM's not getting a fair shake in the media, especially Rich Rod, as far as he is concerned. He says this is the general consensus.

The hardcores are circling the wagons. They're getting defensive about the way MSU is covered vs the way UM is covered. The local media is now "out to get them" (my words.)

But when I gently suggest to him this has been the way MSU has been treated for 30+ years, he likes to pin that back on Perles, Ferguson and all the division that has been in the program. He doesn't seem to want to consider that the media made more out of the negatives and less out of the positives.

This is an interesting time to watch UM football (the program, not the games.) You can almost smell the fear and paranoia.