Michigan Wolverines

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- All players who walk through the door to Schembechler Hall understand what Michigan once was. They merely have to keep their eyes and ears open.

Many college coaches, even those at traditional power programs, concern themselves only with the present and the future. Michigan's Brady Hoke puts the past on a pedestal.

Hoke's players know what the numbers 134 and 42 mean -- Michigan enters its 134th year of football and boasts 42 Big Ten championships. They know about the program's national titles and award winners. They see the Bo Schembechler quotes, the Big Ten banners and the legends lockers dedicated to program greats.

Many of the current Wolverines hadn't put on a helmet and pads in their lives the last time Michigan won a national title in 1997, but they know what the program was like because coaches like Hoke and defensive coordinator Greg Mattison, both Michigan assistants that season, tell them about it all the time. Offensive line coach Darrell Funk, who had no ties to Michigan before arriving with Hoke in 2011, often shows his players tape of former Wolverines stars Steve Hutchinson, Jake Long and Jon Jansen.

"There's a tremendous sense of pride that Brady instills," Mattison told ESPN.com, "and our entire football organization feels that 'Let's get Michigan back to the way we remember it,' where when Michigan gets on that field, everybody goes, 'Whoa, here they come.' That's what I envision. I want to do anything that I can do to help us get there, to get Michigan back to the football level it was when I remember it."

Senior linebacker Cam Gordon was 6 years old when Michigan won the national championship and 13 when the Wolverines claimed their last Big Ten title (2004, co-championship). But he hears about the glory days from coaches like Mattison and new outside linebackers coach Roy Manning, who played for Big Ten championship teams in 2003 and 2004.

"I do remember the stories about Michigan," Gordon said. "Before they even stepped on the field, the game was won."

The constant history lessons taught inside Schembechler Hall don't stem from an unhealthy state of nostalgia. Hoke wants his players to understand the standard at Michigan. He's also extremely blunt about the fact that the Wolverines have yet to meet it.

Hoke guided Michigan to 11 wins in his first season and ended the seven-year losing streak against archrival Ohio State. He has yet to lose a game at Michigan Stadium. He has pulled Michigan out of the fog of the Rich Rodriguez era. Recruiting is undoubtedly on the upswing, and Michigan looks more like its old self on both sides of the ball.

But Hoke's tenure to this point, by his own barometer, has been a failure.

"We didn't get it done," he said of the 2012 season, when Michigan went 8-5. "We were still in a second year of changing a culture and changing a philosophy to some degree, offensively and defensively and the whole scope of what we try and do as a team. But still, at the end of the day, this is about winning Big Ten championships. We have 42 of them, and we need to start on our 43rd."

Hoke's message is heard loud and clear from the team's best player on down.

"The standard at Michigan is a Big Ten championship every single year," All-American left tackle Taylor Lewan said. "That's the minimum. Everything else is a failure. The Sugar Bowl, the BCS game, that was awesome. It was such a great experience, Bourbon Street was cool, New Orleans was cool -- failure. Outback Bowl, close game, lost in the last 20 seconds -- failure.

"Those are all games that are failures. The only way this team would be happy, would be satisfied with one season, is if we win a Big Ten championship."

Things weren't that way when Lewan arrived in 2009.

"The main goal was to make it to a bowl game," he said. "I don't know if that's how it's supposed to be at Michigan. I don't know how much my opinion counts, but I think it should be a Big Ten championship every single year. These coaches have done a great job of preaching that.

"We're not going to settle."

It has been nearly a decade since the Wolverines could call themselves league champions, their longest drought since a lull between 1950 and 1964. Every year that passes without a title means Michigan moves a little further away from the great times, a little further away from regaining the mystique Mattison and others preach about.

Talking about a winning culture in the past only goes so far without establishing a winning culture in the present. It's why much of Michigan's offseason work has been from the neck up.

"There were times where we were down in games and we came back and won the game based off our mental toughness," wide receiver Jeremy Gallon said. "And there were times in games where we didn’t come back, and it was our lack of mental toughness."

Defensive tackle Quinton Washington said Michigan worked on breaking "mental barriers" this spring, one of which is playing better away from the Big House. The Wolverines dropped three road games (Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State) and two neutral-site contests (Alabama, South Carolina) last fall.

Michigan is just 5-7 in road or neutral-site games under Hoke.

"We didn't play well on the road," Hoke said. "We didn't play with the toughness that it takes. We learned a lot in the bowl game about us as people, especially the guys coming back, good and bad."

Hoke has a Sun Tzu quote displayed in the weight room that reads: Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. The goal is for the Wolverines to enter games with the same mindset as their predecessors.

Many think the Michigan mystique is dead, but Hoke's players are driven to revive it.

"If they don't fear Michigan," Gordon said, "then obviously that's something that we're going to have to change."

Beginning this fall.

"Anywhere you go in the world, everyone knows Michigan," defensive end Frank Clark said. "Anywhere in the nation, as far as college football, everyone knows Michigan. For the last couple years, we haven't lived up to those expectations. This next season, we have to.

"It's time. There aren't anymore excuses."

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- After a little more than a year away from Michigan, former player and graduate assistant Roy Manning decided to return to his roots.

Manning, 31, was officially announced as Michigan's new outside linebackers coach on Monday, a little more than a week after former defensive line coach Jerry Montgomery left the Wolverines' staff for a similar job at Oklahoma.

"I'm excited to come back home to the University of Michigan," Manning said in a statement released by the school. "I played and went to school here, and there is no place like it, anywhere."

Manning played at Michigan from 2001 to 2004, being named the team's top linebacker in his final season. After not being selected in the 2005 NFL draft, he played three seasons in the league for five teams before turning to coaching, first as a defensive assistant at Cincinnati and then a graduate assistant at Michigan in 2011.

He returned to Cincinnati last season as a running backs coach and took a similar job at Northern Illinois in January. Now, he is on the move again, this time heading back to his alma mater and on to the defensive side of the ball.

"We always knew if there was ever an opportunity to bring him back, we would love to," Michigan coach Brady Hoke said in a statement. "We think he's one of the top young coaches in our profession. He knows our expectations."

He learned those expectations during his first stint as a Michigan coach, when he worked with the offensive line and helped relay plays and messages on the field for offensive coordinator Al Borges. Manning's voice was instrumental working with quarterback Denard Robinson in the moments before the game-winning drive against Notre Dame in the Under the Lights game in 2011, Borges told WolverineNation last year.

Former offensive lineman Patrick Omameh said he believes it’s a good fit for Manning and he’s glad to see his return to Michigan.

“Coach Manning is a great guy on top of everything but is also a guy who clearly has a deep passion for Michigan football and for the sport in general,” Omameh said. “[He’s] very willing to help out a player with needs or questions and has a head for the game.”

It is a feeling echoed by his former teammates. What stood out the most to former Michigan linebacker Scott McClintock was what Manning did when he wasn't playing. McClintock said Manning was always watching film and delved deeper into football than the usual instinctual side of things.

"He had a good knowledge of the behind-the-scenes work that goes in besides the see-ball, get-ball mentality," McClintock said. "He understood the entire defense had to be involved in the play for it to be done successfully.

"That’s what makes for a good coach, understanding the whole scheme of things."

At times during games, Manning -- an outside linebacker -- would adjust McClintock or his teammates if they weren't in the right position.

Now he'll do it again at his alma mater from the sidelines instead of on the field.