Hello, Loyal Readers,
Today I’m providing the short version of my commentary, which appears on Michigan Radio, and the link to the Yahoosport.com’s Postgame page, where the much longer version will appear some time Friday morning. (Follow me on Twitter to get the exact link when it pops.)
http://www.thepostgame.com/
Hope you like it.
See you next week!
-John
Michigan’s football team travels to Michigan State this weekend to renew their century-old sibling rivalry. It’s a big game for both teams – but for very different reasons.
Eighth-ranked Michigan State is favored to beat the struggling Wolverines by more than two touchdowns. A victory would mark the Spartans’ sixth win over the Wolverines in their last seven games, establishing unquestioned dominance over the state for the first time in 50 years.
Calling your little brother “Little Brother” gets a bit awkward when he keeps kicking your butt.
A win would also preserve the Spartans’ hopes of a national title – something no other Big Ten team can realistically claim.
Michigan’s dreams are more modest, but more urgent. The Wolverines have lost ten of their last 15 games – and they haven’t looked very good doing it. The game has changed a lot over the past few decades, but blocking hasn’t, and the Wolverines aren’t very good at it. They look poorly coached – especially when the coaches put only ten players on the field, when they’re allowed eleven. They’ve done that three times this season – probably more than your local high school team.
But, to the players’ credit, instead of giving up on their coaches and each other, they’ve played their hearts out the last two weeks. If they somehow manage to upset the Spartans this weekend, it could go a long way toward saving head coach Brady Hoke’s job.
If not, Michigan will likely be searching for a new coach for the third time in seven years. But who will do the searching?
Just four years ago, most Michigan fans considered athletic director Dave Brandon the school’s savior. But this fall, the students made their discontent plain by starting a petition to get him fired, launching a campus rally for the same purpose, and starting a chant, “Fi-re Bran-don!” at football and hockey games.
But the students don’t get to vote on Brandon’s fate. Nor do the deans or even the regents. Only one person gets to make that decision: Michigan’s newly minted president, Mark Schlissel. If there’s one problem President Schlissel does not to deal with his first year, this is it.
If he decides to fire Brandon, he’ll have to negotiate Brandon’s exit, form a search committee, select a new A.D., and oversee the hiring of a new football coach – when he’d rather be tending to teaching and research.
But doing nothing might be worse, resulting in falling ticket sales, dwindling donations and slipping school spirit, not to mention growing deficits, distractions, and dissension. President Schlissel’s dilemma could deepen after the November 4 election. If the Board of Regents becomes split, 4-4, on whether Brandon should stay or go, Schlissel might pine for the problems he has today.
But the most important issue is not wins and losses, ticket prices or revenues, but the timeless values upon which the University of Michigan was built: cooperation and compromise, transparency and truthfulness. The department has been notably lacking all four virtues. After each error in judgment, usually borne of arrogance, the department first denies, then dissembles, then invariably blames the “misunderstanding” on someone else’s “miscommunication.” It sounds less like a university department, and more like an embattled corporation.
It’s this tension between what the university stands for, and how the current athletic department acts, that will persist until someone deals with it directly.
And that someone can only be President Schlissel.
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Please join the conversation, but remember: I run only those letters from those who are not profane or insane, and who include their FULL name.
Radio stuff: On Friday mornings, these commentaries run at 8:50 on Michigan Radio (91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit and Flint, and 104.1 Grand Rapids), and a few minutes later, I join Sam Webb and Ira Weintraub LIVE from 9:05 to 9:25 on WTKA.com, 1050 AM.
After 12 years, I’m handing over my “Off the Field” hour on WTKA to my good friend Jamie Morris, who is launching his new two-hour show, “A View From the Backfield.” I’ll be appearing two last times on Sundays, the day after the Michigan-Michigan State game, and mid-December.
This gives me the time I need to join Michigan Radio’s great Cynthia Canty on her afternoon Stateside show every Thursday for a few minutes. Check it out!
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John, do you know if there is any truth to the report that Dr. Schlissel asked for DB’s resignation and that DB refused? There was an article out yesterday to that effect (can’t remember where, right now), and, if true, that DB wouldn’t resign at his boss’s request is most disturbing.
I am continually amazed by public figures and elected officials who fight their incompetence, pretend serious allegations against their leadership are not real, and steadfastly blame their “enemies” for the situation they now find themselves in… Enter Dave Brandon, Reportedly asked to resign by UM regents and refused. Appears he would rather force the issue. If I were President Schlissel, I would not fire Dave Brandon(thus saving the buyout) but I would demote him and hire the next AD soon. Dave would do well working on the “infrastructure” or “Taj Mahal” he claims he built (at the M Club meeting in Columbus last Spring).. So, a good job for Dave would be be managing the M parking facilities at the golf course. To make sure he is doing his job well , we can bring back Charlie Green to supervise.. But please get us a AD that understands the game of football as all the other sports depend on it..
John – great article. I hope President Schlissel receives a copy because it frames so well the situation he faces. He is a very smart man and he will provide the proper deliberation on these very difficult set of decisions. If I were him, I would hire one of the best strategy consultants who can do a quick independent assessment of the situation to determine the degree of the problem. The out of control spending concerns me the most – the facilities are wonderful but the operating budget is not sustainable with a losing football program. Don Canham said that the key to producing such a large surplus wasn’t through maximizing revenue with gimmicks, rather it was achieved by keeping operating spending under control. The type of revenue growth the football program has experienced is potentially too volatile and subject to an even greater decrease than you describe. The merchandising elements of the budget are critical and correlate directly to success on the field and to fan loyalty. The looming deficit in the budget over the next few years could be devastating to Michigan athletics – all teams are funded by the football program. A “bankrupt” athletic department is not something we can ever let happen. The President armed with a good independent assessment can do the right thing. But time is of the essence.
Go Blue! Beat State!
John I really enjoy your radio spots and articles. I thought I would share the following article emailed to me by Michigan Heritage – a great website if you or your readers haven’t perused it before.
http://heritage.umich.edu/story/two-against-football/
It is an interesting twist that nearly 100 years later Michigan is still debating the role of football and academics. President Schlissel may have preferred a different outcome back then so we were still playing at Ferry Field and maybe part of the Ivy League, but alas that is not our modern fate.
So the problem is – how do we fill this big stadium? We need to restore THE RIVALRY and there is an option. It just happens to involve an old fraternity brother of mine and a football friend at the same time, but that is just the coincidence that hatches this crazy idea. So here goes.
There was this skinny kid from Port Huron who was a walk-on for Bo … good QB in high school, coach’s son. Bo sees the moxy and gives him a shot to make the team … Bo said, “lift weights and get bigger” and he did. Made the starting kickoff team and eventually Bo awarded him a scholarship. This kid was all about sports and would rise in the world of college athletics – not as a coach but as an administrator. At very top Universities … Vanderbilt, Miami of Ohio and now Boston College. A true collegiate sports wonk … and he has found the later-day Bo Schembechler.
Bo you say? We all know no one could be as ornery and big-hearted as Bo all at the same time … but he found him. I have seen this coach in action at a Temple recruiting camp and sat with him. He can coach’em up and deliver that Patton-like speech – recruits hanging on every word – just like Bo. But here is the big twist for this mad musing … he was Urban Meyers’ offensive coordinator at Florida thru some of their greatness. Wow, this could truly be Bo and Woody again … protege and master dueling in the autumn air like never before. Restoring THE RIVALRY.
This is a package deal … Brad Bates and Steve Addazio. Sorry to my friends at BC, but a higher duty calls. Its crazy musing, I know, but Brad found Coach and can bring him to Michigan. Bo vs Woody … incarnate. Jim Hackett stays on until Brad gets everything under control and then Jim becomes “AD emeritus” – senior statesman like the Chairman of the Board for Michigan Athletics.
“He is amazing,” said BC athletics director Brad Bates. “He’s very meticulous at paying attention to details. He has very high expectations for his players and his staff. He has a great sense of people’s capabilities, and he doesn’t settle for anything less than what they’re capable of doing. The best teachers, the best professors, the best coaches I’ve ever been around had that unique ability. And the art of that teaching and coaching is to bring out the very best in those individuals.”
ESPN – “Addazio might be something of a miracle worker, rebuilding a program twice in as many seasons while most coaches need years to establish a foundation, but he doesn’t see it that way. For Addazio, it’s simply a matter of wanting to win by any means necessary and passing that urgency on to his team.”
its time for change i can’t watch anymore
John: great article. Well stated. For those of us grads from the Bo years, this all seems so sad and crazy to witness. Where is Brandon’s humility? Where is the president’s decision-making? Why does Hoke keep feeding the press lies about the team’s progress? I for one miss RichRod being honest, humble and showing emotion. Too ironic that the university could not stomach him for one more year. RichRod’s football was at least entertaining.
Our new President Schlissel, according to alumni edition articles new so little about Michigan’s football traditionshehad “no comments”.
Dave Brandon wants to be the football coach, but Brady can’t getting Dave out of the film room so he can do his job!
Mark Dantonio starts sounding like “little sister” hanging on the back of the pant legs. He wants someone to see the ” little stake” in the ground. They better hope they don’t play the FSU Seminoles as they put more than a “little sister” stake in the ground.
This whole thing resembles some bad movie- I keep thinking Bo is watching from above and saying, I thought I raised you guys to be “Michigan Men”. Remember, Bill Frieder was a Michigan Graduate Burt not a “Michigan Man” when he decided to go south on the red eye.
The hole thing just makes me sick.
Sorry for all the.misspelled words, it simply demonstrates my frustration in watching this situation get worse.
I read the longer version and, as usual, it’s really insightful John.
I want to add a point that I think you imply, and that regent Andrea Fischer gets exactly backwards: what is the whole point of all these new facilities? If it is to help recruit the very top athletes in “minor” sports, why should a university care about that? I am not talking about cutting out these sports or even cutting the number of students who play them or the scholarships or support they get. But if you get a slightly less competitive lacrosse team and save millions on a new facility?
Here is what I wrote less February, when Schlissel was named:
From the Ann Arbor News:
“Brown has 37 Division 1 sports teams, compared to Michigan’s 31 such teams.
Brown has about 900 student athletes and, according to Schlissel, has somewhere in the vicinity of 100 to 110 recruited athletes. Michigan has 919 student athletes, with 533 of them on athletic scholarship.”
So Brown, with far fewer students, has as many of them participating in varsity sports (and gives them 20% more varsity teams to join) than Michigan. About one-ninth of Brown’s athletes are even arguably part of a small, unrepresentative group of elite athletes, compared to most of Michigan’s. None of Brown’s athletes loses his/her scholarship if she quits playing sports; all of Michigan’s do.
So, in terms of supporting actual student athletes–does Mark Schlissel really have anything to learn from Michigan?
George: that is a superb point you make with the Brown comparison – Billy Wilson
John Schlissel needs to seize the moment — ‘If UM President Schlissel Sits in Student Section at Tomorrow’s Indiana Game, He Becomes a National Folk Hero’ http://wp.me/p15xE1-wC