Go Blue has become Woe Blue.

Michigan is one defeat from the first eight-loss season in its 129-year football history. The fear among the faithful is that eight losses isn’t the absolute bottom.

Rich Rodriguez’s first season officially became a disaster last weekend at Purdue, when the Wolverines assured themselves their first losing season since 1967. He’s cracking a bit from the weekly assault, and he lashed out at reporters Monday who dared employ common sense by suggesting that a five-game losing streak, coupled with the school’s first non-bowl season since 1975, was a big deal.

Rodriguez doesn’t lack confidence. He’s certain that he’s a big-time coach. But he’s clearly uncomfortable confronting the stunning realities of a big-time program falling to the status of sleeping giant.

Who’s to say now that Michigan isn’t the next Nebraska, a steady but increasingly stale program that brought forth a radical personality change and only made matters worse?

“I’m sure a lot of people are saying that I’m a bad coach,” Rodriguez said Monday. “Everybody can have their opinion, but I’ve been here 10 months. I feel as good as I (ever) have as far as I know we can build this program to be one of the best in the country. … We’ll get it right. I mean, everybody wants to push the panic button. Ten months, geez.”

Rodriguez preaches patience, but it doesn’t help his cause that Nick Saban only has been in Tuscaloosa for 22 months and already has Alabama sitting atop the Bowl Championship Series rankings.

At Michigan, they’re spoiled. They’re arrogant. They feel entitled. They took 9-3 seasons with annual losses to Ohio State for granted, lusting for their program’s rightful destiny. And they will demand significant improvement from Rodriguez in his second season or he will face a BCS-or-else ultimatum in his third year.

Saban’s quick Alabama transformation just made it harder for every other coach.

“You see other coaches have some success,” Rodriguez said Tuesday, during the weekly Big Ten teleconference. “Obviously, it’s not always going to happen so quickly in the second year. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t.”

But with possibilities come pressure – and Rodriguez is feeling it now.

“I don’t want to say that it’s been the toughest,” he said of this season. “I think it’s similar to what I went through seven years ago in my first year at West Virginia.”

Rodriguez grows more defensive when he and his staff are criticized, but even he must concede he has done a horrible job, considering the talent he inherited from Lloyd Carr. It might not be as good as its inflated recruiting ratings suggested, but it’s certainly good enough to render a potential 2-10 season unacceptable for a program like Michigan.

It also doesn’t help Rodriguez that the Wolverines could suffer their historic eighth loss Saturday against Minnesota. The Gophers were 1-11 last year in coach Tim Brewster’s first season. They’re now flirting with a New Year’s Day bowl invitation.

But looking at Minnesota and Alabama only widens the chasm within the Michigan football family.

Patience now for Rodriguez gets measured with a stopwatch.