UM Football Recruiting - by WM Wolverine

[hack]

No matter how looney the AD or dysfunctional the administration or whatever its the largest stadium in the country and the largest alumni base and the winningest program and the facilities are fantastic, and on and on. Recruits are going to come. If they don't fuck up with the coaching hire, that'll be fine. If they manage to get Jim Harbaugh we'll be beating them off. Everybody knows what a powerful combo that would be.

[iam416]

The next coach will have a good shot at earning some of those kids back.

The next HC should hang on to Cole and Weber. Clark is gone, IMO. I don't see anyone who has left coming back.

[Jeff Buchanan]

If Hoke gets fired, like he should, it will be a recruiting disaster (hell, it already is).

If he is retained, it will be a recruiting disaster as talent points out. 46/41 ..... no elite, NFL hopeful is going to come to M to play for the current coaching staff. Guys who want a degree AND have that kind of talent might but chances are slim. Great academics and a shitty set of coaches? ..... meh. There's USC, CAL, Washington in the PAC 12, Vanderbilt in the SEC, Duke and GA Tech in the ACC. All of these programs have great academics and a stable coaching staff that is far better than Hoke and his staff.

Guys that want a degree and are average players = MAC level Michigan football.

My concern is that Shissel and everyone else in the decision circle is quite fine with that.

[hack]

C'mon already. They're not fine with it. We know that. Ticket sales tell us so. We just don't know that they know how to do better.

[Jeff Buchanan]

While I admit I got a D in Accounting 101 and I really don't have the books in front of me, people that I talk to are accountants and have seen the books (some of them).

Stuff can be moved around to make them look fine. I'm sure Hackett is already undoing a lot of what DB put together and I suspect there's a lot of jiggering going on to make the Capital expenditure side of the books look right. Some of the money for Brandon's expansion are going to get moved to the Operating side of the budget with a concomitant reduction in the scope of Brandon's projects.

Operating expenses? Those are going to take a hit with declining stadium attendance and pissed off alumni who give rather large sums regularly and will refrain from doing so in protest of the shit product on the field delivered by the combo of DB and Hoke. But there are plenty of ways to cut costs and the personnel budget is going to get scrubbed first, travel next and who knows what else. Its doable in a period of shrinking revenue (receivables).

Its a scary time for M football. It's like Frost's ....."I took the one (road) less traveled by / And that has made all the difference." The problem for us, in particular, is with Frost's irony in that poem, you wont really know which road was the better one until some point in the future.

[hack]

I don't believe that. Certainly it will be interesting to see a remade AD budget, but in no way is the university embracing ``do more with less'' as a first option. If they aren't interested in fielding a winning football team they'll feel it in all areas as donations fall off. Bottom line: success in football is a key feature of this school's core strategy. The administration can resent it or challenge it or whatever, and from time to time they appear to have either done so or just ignored it to the point of detriment, but they have and will again learn how unwise that might be in the end and then and revert to trying to win as many games as possible, without cheating. That's what drives donations. Michigan exists to nominally to educate students, but in reality it exists to do that whilst also growing its endowment. Football is a major part of that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't believe that........

You are entitled to that view. I think it is wrong to some degree (to what I'm not certain) but there is enough going on to raise eyebrows.

If on a continuum of the recognition you speak of, with 10 being full recognition and embracing of the importance of M football to endowments, and 1 on the left, signifying no one gives a shit about football, Shissel is going to try to find middle ground.

Yale, Princeton and Harvard do fine with football that is a side show and not at all important to endowments. Michigan could easily choose that course or one similar to it (they won't of course). I think you know that giving by donors interested in football is a very small slice of the pie of donations and endowments at M .... a VERY small slice. So, there is that.

But if things are as you say (or you hope) they are, why is Hoke still on staff. The Morris incident and the blow-out loss in EL were enough to can the guy right then and if M followed the Florida Model (with that school, along with most of the SEC, definitely being a 10 on the continuum) he'd be gone. Instead we have what appears to be dithering as far as M's next HC is going to be, NFL time lines be damned in the case of JH X2

[hack]

Yale, Princeton and Harvard do fine with football that is a side show and not at all important to endowments. Michigan could easily choose that course or one similar to it (they won't of course). I think you know that giving by donors interested in football is a very small slice of the pie of donations and endowments at M .... a VERY small slice. So, there is that.

Football's been core to the school's identity for too long now and that's not gonna change. Even at schools where athletics isn't that big a deal, they still drive donations. I don't think Michigan can follow the Ivy model. I think it's possible that Shissel tries to find middle ground, but I think that ends up in failure and either he or the next person will eventually stop fighting it and accept the reality. I hope they accept it now. They've suffered enough already and so has everyone else. But they might try to fight it longer. We'll see.

[SeattleLionsFan]

The school's biggest donor owns a pro football team for gods sake. It's been the "smart football" school for too long to think that identity could just go away without serious disruptions.

(Which is not to say over the course of 50years it wouldn't be better. But in the short term there would be disruptions.)

[hack]

They inculcate it in freshman. The schools creates these expectations. Moving away from that identity would mean a generation of lost and disappointed alums. You'd see a big dip in giving for a few decades. No school president, serving for his or her 5-10 years, is gonna make that long-term move for which the benefits they would perceive probably wouldn't accrue, if at all, until after they die. Michigan is tied to football whether it likes it or not.

[Jeff Buchanan]

SLF ..... I'd argue the identity you speak of that includes football as a key element of that identity has been significantly eroded over the last decade.

Those entering the U in 2014 that are 17 and 18 years old, know the suck that has been M football since 2006. They might know distant images of the way things were but that is of little importance to a generation that lives in the now. Dave Brandon plays a huge part in destroying the glory days. He may have paid homage to it with his corny videos but that homage was shallow, without any kind of meaning in a decade of .475 football. A generation of potential M fans and future seat license payors, or more, has been lost.

What those of us that are in their 40s, 50s and 60s want a return to is unknown to anyone younger than that. So, the circumstances are ripe for a newly defined vision of what the University of Michigan is all about. While I think Schissel understands the past, he doesn't live in it if I have the right take on him. He is going to blaze new trails, take a different path. I simply do not see him jumping in with both feet to the world of the revenue sports that he has spoken of so derisively.

Sure, I think he is going to try to find the right AD and that AD will have the green light to find the right football HC but it could easily be Brady Hoke or someone very much like him. You won't see Schissel green lighting anyone immersed in the world of winning at all costs. It is simply not part of the culture of M, not part of the culture of the Big Ten.

Speaking of the Big Ten culture .... I do think you can play elite football here. osu has shown the path but their administration does have a clear cut idea of the importance of buckeye football to the osu's identity. They hired an immensely qualified coach in urban meyer that knows what needs to be done to play elite level football. Hiring him took exceptional insight into what it does take to put together a winning CFB team by the deciders there. I don't think the deciders at M have the first clue of what it takes and the last two HC hires made by M proves that point in spades.

[iam416]

OSU was lucky with UFM. Otherwise they would have retained Tressel. OSU also has the advantage of Ohio which, for some reason, produces a disproportionate number of quality HCs, most of whom would love to coach at OSU.

In any event, if Jim Harbaugh wants to come to M, then M gets lucky in the same way OSU did and begins what I think would be a fairly quick rise back to relevancy.

As for student perspective, it's interesting. Everything about M tells the students they should be good -- facilities, stadium, tradition, etc. And I think it's still plain to see that most students expect that and are really disappointed with the results. Especially when an in-state school is winning big and M's biggest rival is winning big. It's sort of in their face. And the rise of the hoops program is further evidence that M ought not suck total ass in big-time sports.

So, I don't think students have accepted M's mediocrity. Another failed hire or two might get them close, but eh, I dunno. I mean, this isn't anywhere near as bad, in terms of attendance, as the 60s. And Bo ramped that program back into relevancy in a heartbeat and packed the place -- the fanbase, while beaten down, still had hope and when Bo delivered they ate it up. I don't see things as much different today. That's why you pay Harbaugh $6M/year.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well, yes, of course ...... I think you're probably right about student interest level. Their recent agitation against Dave Brandon was certainly part of moving the needle to get some action.

Again, my concern is simply with the vibe I'm getting from Schissel. He's no Gordon Gee who, without question, understood what buckeye football meant to osu, infact, bled scarlet and gray. Whatever one might think of Gee, he got it when it came to making the right choices for osu football.

Regarding luck. I always thought meyer's entire career following his departure from Florida was managed so to speak. I think he knew exactly where he wanted to go (osu) maybe a year before he finally left UF. Had a plan, cultivated contacts that could help him get to where he wanted to go, went into a holding pattern with ESPN and once the plan looked alive, he and his people worked it furiously. I don't think it was luck for either party. Thoughts?

[iam416]

As to the underlying premise, I do think OSU is actually UFM "dream job" -- or whatever. I don't think it was ever ND. Indeed, he could have gone to ND in 2005 when Willingham was fired, but chose Florida. So, I agree with the premise that UFM wanted to coach at OSU.

As to the extent of the machinations to get to OSU, I'm dubious. I think he retired in 2009 because he was legitimately worn down. I mean, physically he had lost something like 30 pounds. I really don't have any reason to doubt his health issues in 2009, though I have reason to doubt the severity of them. More or less, it sounded like he just needed some time off to get himself right again, not that he was suffering from some condition that would prevent him from coaching again.

His retirement came in early December. At that time the OSU issues were still relatively minor. They were limited to the players. And there's no way OSU knew that Tressel failed to report the issue up the chain. I say that because when they did know, they reported it to the NCAA. So, when he retired there wasn't a hint that Tressel was going to be gone.

Now, at the time Tressel was 58. Maybe UFM figures he can take a 3-5 year hiatus, the OSU job will open up, and he can take it over in 2014 or 2015 when he's in his early 50s, his kids are mostly done with school and he's fully recuperated. If can easily buy that.

As it turned out, the timeline was accelerated. My guess is that by no later than the end of February (after the e-mail came out and Tressel was deposed by the NCAA), OSU had begun to process of reaching out to UFM. Everyone knew what everyone would know by then. I think the deal, in the most general terms, was in place by April-May. Once OSU felt they had UFM, Tressel was fired.

Consistent with that timeframe, I absolutely believe UFM was scouting out assistants and plays and everything in 2011. He knew he was coming back.

So, you know, maybe it isn't that lucky. As I said, there are a lot of Ohio coaches who would love to coach at OSU, and UFM is one of them. There was probably only a narrow window when he wouldn't have come to OSU (in his 2nd-4th year at Florida). Otherwise it seems probable to me that UFM was always a very viable option to replace Tressel. The timing, though, was lucky.

And it may be that M ends up with the same "lucky" timing with JH. It seems like he and SF are near the end of their relationship.

[Hannibal]

Since Tressel got a show-cause, I don't see how OSU could have retained him.