Introducing Bo Merlot. Coming Soon: Bill Belichick Bile-Bordeaux

If you're going to make a wine that's named after a coach, make sure you get it right. If Bill Belichick were a wine, he'd be a corked Chateau Margot '64, expensive and sour. Bill Parcells? Thunderbird consumed from a homeless man's filthy boot, effective and hateful at the same time. And whatever Bo Schembechler may have been as a coach, I will tell you that this was not it:

Studer said the Bo Merlot offers an "intense fruit forwardness with a luscious berry concentration ... a rich presentation on the palate with a lovely, lingering finish."

"It's not a wine you chug down, but one you sip slowly and enjoy," she said.

A man who grumpily tried to out-stare and out-grizzle Woody Hayes for decades could be, at this very instant, punching his way out of his grave attempting to take vengeance on the parties responsible for picking namby-pamby Merlot to represent the paterfamilias of modern Michigan football. Merlot? Schembechler would at the very least be a robust Zinfandel, or perhaps even a Petite Syrah. (Pete Carroll's Pink Champagne Rose Bowl Rose we have no objections to whatsoever, since all things Pete Carroll must go well with hot-tubbing and a deep discussion of philosophy under the California stars.)

The other laughable bit about "Bo Merlot:"

Studer said she selected a California winery in Monterey, rather than a Michigan vintage, because California is the site of the Rose Bowl, which Schembechler set as the ultimate goal for his team each year.

Not because Michigan wines are just a scad more drinkable than "Georgia Muscadine Wine," which is itself just a shade above "Haitian gutter punch," which sits just above "Toxic Guangzhou Factory Slag Juice" for potability. Nope. Totally the Rose Bowl thing.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.