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Next stop for the Dominos plane is an airport approximately 90 miles from San Diego. Touchdown is scheduled for about 6 PM.

UPDATE: Local paper has picked up on this and put some meat on the bones, at least sort of:

The agent for San Diego State head football coach Brady Hoke has been in discussions for Hoke to possibly become the next head coach at the University of Michigan, a source close to the situation said.

Trace Armstrong, Hoke's agent, has declined comment. Hoke and other SDSU officials have not returned messages for several days.

Hoke was in the Los Angeles area Tuesday recruiting for SDSU. Meanwhile, Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon has planned to fly to nearby Orange County for a meeting Tuesday.

So… he's in LA, where Brandon is apparently meeting him. It's unclear how much of this is solid, but… yeah. Probably solid. This "national" search is national in the sense that people who played or coached at Michigan comprise a nation, which they do not.

UPDATE II: Despite the newspaper article above I have two sources saying that the Domino's plane is now being used by, you know, Domino's, and is no longer ferrying Dave Brandon around. There is a conference called ICR going on that starts tomorrow in Dana Point, California and features a presentation by Domino's at 8:25 AM, so the above newspaper article may be speculation or wrong or this is false hope and Dave Brandon is in some other jet.

UPDATE III: Our respite was brief:

SDSU Coach Brady Hoke recently visited with Michigan, source says

If we're seriously talking to him he's all but announced since he'll take twenty dollars and donuts twice a week to coach at M.

Via everyone, the LSU AD:

“I am pleased to announce that Les Miles will remain the head coach at LSU."

It's coordinator-or-Hoke time.

Part one: LSU officials "reacting quickly" to Les Miles meeting with Michigan officials apparently did not so much happen:

First, there was no late-night meeting with Miles and LSU AD Joe Alleva or other high-ranking university officials in an effort to convince the coach to stay. After Miles’ meeting with Michigan AD Dave Brandon, Miles went home.

Part two: Adam Rittenberg reports via his Big 12 compatriot that Les Miles is not in Dallas despite being scheduled to speak at 3 PM. If he is taking the job, he would be at Michigan's scheduled meeting with the players at 4.

UPDATE: Flight tracking suggests that Miles isn't in Dallas yet but probably will be. This flight leaves essentially now:

For what it is worth, a twin prop is scheduled to go from Baton Rouge to Love field in Dallas at 11:12 CST. The plane is owned by a Med transport company, but is most likely chartered by LSU for the trip. Plane is making a 11 minute flight from Lafayette to Baton Rouge prior to the Dallas trip.

Either that or Les is flying American Eagle to DFW. Yeah right.

[HT to Kirk Fauri.] So… if the meeting gets moved that's a good sign. If it doesn't, not so much.

UPDATE II: LSU sources at their Rivals site and some local radio station are reporting Miles will stay at LSU. Radio is whatever but usually Rivals guys are plugged in. The Rivals stuff is currently paywalled, however, so its unclear how definitive that information is.

The love boat is not actually the Brandon plane but I can't help what people photoshop and send me

Dave Brandon's plane visited Baton Rouge last night and returned to Ann Arbor. Les Miles has a speaking engagement in Dallas at the AFCA convention. There's a players' meeting scheduled for 4 PM. The athletic department is pushing a contest where you—yes, you—can attend the historic press conference when Michigan's 19th head coach is named, something which will no doubt thrill and delight the assembled throng when you ask "how long is 35 seconds, Les? Is it 35 seconds? Please say it's 35 seconds."

What I'm saying is that today is the day we find out whether or not Les Miles is Michigan's head coach and then either get busy living with it or get busy dying as Dave Brandon flies to San Diego or Auburn or somewhere. As of about 9:30 AM on F5 day, I believe but can't confirm it will be the former. Les Miles will probably be Michigan's coach by the end of the day.

While it's possible this is all a rumor storm built from the obvious plane movement and obvious candidacy of Miles, there are many, many people saying it's a done deal ranging from Tiger Droppings posters to serious-seeming but not confirmed people in the inbox. Circumstantially, if Brandon met with Miles and didn't immediately return to Dallas—the place with more football coaches per capita than anywhere else in the world right now—or headed to some other place containing a coach of interest he's probably got his man. I can't imagine an athletic director not working around the clock on January 11th when he's got an open head coaching job and little time to fill it. A return to Ann Arbor should mean something is done.

While that could be Miles not working out and Brandon agreeing to a fallback plan with someone he met with in Dallas, I think it's Miles.

Debate about which plane is which is now moot because the one in Dallas is headed to Baton Rouge:

Brandon's likely on it, and that Tuesday meeting may start happening in about 45 minutes. News, yes or no, could come any time tonight. Light a candle.

(HT: @daveduncan)

So of course it didn't work out. This piece on the rise of the spread offense comes in anticipation of tonight's spread-mad national title game and recommended by Herb Hand, a branch of the Rich Rodriguez coaching tree. In it Rodriguez is approvingly cited multiple times:

Kelly constantly visited other staffs, including Clemson, Wake Forest, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, Oregon and West Virginia. When Kelly visited West Virginia, he was most intrigued by the speed of Rodriguez's offense, Hand said.

When Hand was at Tulsa a couple years ago and watched film of a future opponent playing New Hampshire, he immediately noticed the West Virginia tempo.

"You cannot relent on the tempo," Hand said. "When you first install some of this stuff, you've got to understand it's going to be very ugly early. We used to say you have to coach in short verbal blasts.

"It's not like you're going to have 35 seconds to make your point. The execution is eventually going to catch up to the speed. Now, when you combine the tempo with the execution, then it's a beautiful thing. That's where Chip and Gus are at."

And we're where we are. I think Rodriguez did have to go after the bowl game but that was with the assumption Jim Harbaugh would be the next coach. With our current situation leaning towards either Les Miles or the guy who thinks zone running is insufficient for the needs of MANBALL, I wonder how many Michigan fans are having firer's remorse as they watch the recruiting class disintegrate and Michigan seemingly poised for plan C at best. It's not like Brandon had any good options after the bowl game, but whatever this is seems like the worst possible outcome.

Michigan will have to be more patient with whoever the new guy is than they were with Rodriguez if they want to get out of the massive hole they continue to dig themselves. Hiring a spread guy to continue the transition they've started seems like the best approach—possibly a reason why Miles and his flexibility with offensive styles would be preferable to Hoke.

OMFG. AnnArbor.com has an article featuring reacts from former Carr players and this is diametrically opposed to what we'd read for the last three years:

Part of that rift has been the alienation former players have felt from the football program. Rueben Riley, an offensive lineman from 2003 to 2006 who later played three years in the NFL, said former players have not been included in the program as they have been in the past.

“When I was around, you’d see guys like Hutch (Steve Hutchinson) come back and talk, (Gary) Moeller come back, and you could just see their passion,” he said.

“For a coach to have Lloyd Carr on campus and never have him back to talk to the team? That’s unbelievable to me.”

That is unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as Michigan's head football coach coming under constant assault and getting nothing more than a single tepid statement of support from Carr over the course of his tenure, or various former Carr players badgering Brandon to fire Rodriguez on a near-weekly basis, or Mike Barwis's testimonial page having quotes from dozens of Michigan athletes who didn't play for Rodriguez, some of whom (like Jack Johnson) didn't even play football. Feeling "disconnected" from Michigan football is the flip side of Carr-era players largely treating Rodriguez like crap.

But wait, there's more!

Shea said it rubbed him the wrong way when Rodriguez disregarded the team’s traditional offense and installed the spread upon his arrival. He’d like to see the next coach return to running the football, playing stout defense and employing a fullback.

“And multiple tight ends,” he said.

And more!

“I think the most important thing, whoever it is, I want a guy that understands what Big Ten football is,” he said. “That’s the criteria, along with knowing the pressure that the job entails.”

This is the genesis of all the Hoke stuff, no?

Hockey bits. Michigan split with Michigan State last over the weekend thanks to a combination of stupid penalties and terrible refereeing that saw Michigan end up down 5-on-3 twice late, with State converting both times against Shawn Hunwick. Michigan's erratic offense got a few goals on Saturday and that played out much like the Big Chill did.

Just past the halfway mark it's time to start looking at RPI and the Pairwise—though the latter should be taken lightly given how much jitter it has. Michigan finds itself in a solid position, seventh in the PWR and eighth in RPI. Shockingly, if the season ended today Western Michigan(!) would probably make the tourney at 14th. With the dissolution of the CHA there's only one small-conference autoo-bid and the ECAC actually has some respect in the PWR this year so it's unlikely more than one autobid results in a team that otherwise wouldn't make it. Perpetual HE bottom-feeder Merrimack is also tenuously in the tournament, and Yale is far and away the #1 overall seed at the moment. Weird year.

Michigan also filled in another hole in its 2011 recruiting class by adding forward Phil Di Giuseppe from the Villanova Knights of the OJHL—the same league that sent Brandon Burlon and Louie Caporusso to Michigan. Yost Built has a recruiting profile on him; he's got a 14-30-45 line in 36 games and is the third-leading scorer on his team. The two guys in front of him are three years older, though, so he's obviously the best prospect his team has. He's the league's leading scorer in his age bracket. Here's Di Giuseppe throwing down:

Di Giuseppe's about a month too young for the upcoming draft so he's not on the CSB radar yet. It's hard to tell how big of a land this is for Michigan as a result. His coach provides a little scouting report:

"He is very coachable and more than willing to take advice from others," said Baker. "Phil is a very offensively gifted hockey player his speed and stick skills are second to none. He has made major improvements this year in his defensive play."

At the very least Di Giuseppe sounds like a scoring line type, though maybe not right away.

Goldilocks. If 113k was silly and 85k equally so, then this number—the final one—for Big Chill attendance seems just right:

Resolution to the attendance drama per Sara Wilcox at Guinness World Records PR: “Final number is: 104,073”

And lo, it shall stand for all time unless Michigan does this again at some point.

Etc.: Perry Dorrestein may have a gig waiting for him at the Milwaukee police department. Maize 'n' Brew spends a lot of time fisking Michael Rosenberg, which like… what's the point? Section 1 will love it, at least.