Since the beginning of time, Michigan’s goal each season is to play in the Rose Bowl. Win the Big Ten, head to Pasadena. This year, earning a berth in the Granddaddy of Them All means you get to play for a national title. Which suits Lloyd Carr just fine.

He’s got an easier schedule — at least there’s no West Coast trip, heck, no trips of any kind with two MAC teams and Notre Dame coming to the Big House in the nonconference schedule.

And they promise that the defense (which finished 42nd in the nation in points allowed last year) will be improved, focusing on playing better inside the 20 and no giving up the big play.

The offense, of course, retains its firepower. Chad Henne mentions that he maybe knew half the playbook last season. And the team will still be young.

Which brings us back to Coach Carr. Rosey’s column imagines life without Lloyd Carr.

For some reason, people tend to focus on what Carr isn’t. He isn’t an innovator. He isn’t a wisecracker. He doesn’t get the nation buzzing, and he doesn’t go undefeated every other year.

… Instead, he gets genuinely angry when the NCAA adds a 12th game to the schedule. He says hokey things like: “Winning outside the rules is not winning.” And when you ask if quarterback prodigy Chad Henne can be the best at Michigan, Carr simply says, “I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on him. I want him to be the best he can be, today.”

“What I’m always striving for … I tell the players: Once, I was part of a national championship team. That really changes the way you look at things. Once you do it, there’s nothing else, there’s no goal out there that compares to that one. “

Grudgingly, I’ll agree with him. As frustrating as it may become some Saturdays, Carr has become Michigan Football, and it’s an elite operation that would be the envy of just about anywhere else.

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