les miles

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)

Via mgovideo:

The critical bit:

"I'm told that we will speak, that time and place has not been identified," said Miles, a former Wolverines assistant coach and player. "It's hard for me to speculate to the substance of the meeting."

That is a deeply weird statement, but this is Les Miles after all.

ALERT THE MEDIA… Er. Nevermind. I see you're on top of that.

Hello. How are you? Getting used to the idea that limbo is you permanent home? Thinking about buying a couch?

Miles-date. The Louisiana media details what they know about Miles's movements over the past couple days and where he'll be in the next couple:

Saturday morning, Miles flew from Dallas to Baton Rouge with the LSU team and official party, and was seen entering the LSU football complex.

Vincent said Miles is scheduled to fly back to Dallas on Tuesday, where he is slated to deliver a speech during the American Football Coaches Association convention. Miles is then scheduled to fly immediately back to Baton Rouge, Vincent said.

This would seem to blow up the rumor that Miles was actually in Ann Arbor over the weekend. Miles showing up in Dallas would be a convenient place for the Dominos plane edition of David Brandon* to interview Miles, if he hasn't already, and the News says they will talk then.

Local folk are asserting the end result is likely to be similar to last time according to the proverbial "person close to the situation":

"My impression is that he'd like to say 'No,' without saying 'No,'" he said. "He doesn't want to be on the list of people who turned him (Brandon) down."

Former Michigan recruit and LSU commit Trai Turner was pinged by the RBs coach, who told him "there wasn't anything to worry about" and added that "from everything else I hear, Coach Miles is staying," but they're always staying until they aren't. Miles is currently being battered by questions he won't answer at a press conference assembled to announce Patrick Peterson's departure for the NFL, so expect word of some evasive non-denials shortly.

Plane-date. So the plane above went to Baton Rouge and people said it was carrying organs and should not be paid attention to, then it went a bunch of places seemingly relevant to key players in the Michigan coaching search and then it went back to Baton Rouge and people were like "dude, this plane should be paid attention to." FWIW, I'm getting more emails about who or what is on that plane that say it shouldn't be paid attention to because its owner rented it out for three months. (Whoever rented it out must really love screwing with Michigan fans on the internet.)

It's uncertain if the thing actually is doing anything other than providing Baton Rouge TV stations with gold, Jerry, gold. The coincidence is a little much, but on the other hand if you were flying around the country trying to have clandestine conversations with a currently-employed college head coach you'd have to be epically stupid to do so in your blinged-out winged helmet learjet.

A not quite entirely pointless Gruden update. I'd completely forgotten about this but an emailer pinged me back in early December, stating that he was close to someone in the Gruden loop and that Michigan had contacted him to gauge interest in the job. The result was "strong" interest. I decided not to mention something seemingly so off the wall since Gruden comes up in literally every coaching search that happens and Rodriguez seemed like he'd have a job in 2011. But here we are.

That source updates by saying he can confirm Gruden has spoken with Brandon and there is still "interest." I'm not sure if this is Gruden's MO or a genuine candidacy. But he is the guy with the second-most buzz at the moment, behind Miles but seemingly ahead of Hoke or anyone else. As Jennifer Hammond suggested, take it with a grain of salt.

*[Ablauf on Brandon's location: "That's a good question. I'm on a need-to-know basis."]

The plane that may or may not have David Brandon and the crabby ghost of Don Canham aboard has returned to Baton Rouge, landing about fifteen minutes ago. Tiger Droppings scrambled F-16s…

…but they apparently didn't make it. Meanwhile, the other plane that may or may not have Dave Brandon aboard is in Dallas, where a coaching convention is going on. So either Les Miles is approaching done or Brandon is in Dallas interviewing anyone who looks at him funny and the winged helmet plane heading to Baton Rouge every hour on the hour is just a bizarre coincidence.

Or both. It's likely that UM reps of some variety are in both places, so Les Miles is in play and they're talking but nothing is certain so they're trying to scout out backup plans.

Don't look at me, lady. via

As of about 5:30 LSU's athletic director was saying he hadn't been contacted about Les Miles and would shoot any Yankee who came within 500 feet of him: "Les Miles is LSU's head coach and we are going to do everything we can to keep it that way. He has had great success here and we plan to keep enjoying that success under his leadership."

But now drums in the deep say that is one lying-ass athletic director:

Michigan expressed interest in talking to LSU coach Les Miles prior to the AT&T Cotton Bowl and it is expected the meeting will occur soon, sources told ESPN.

One source close to Miles said a time and place has not been finalized. Another source said the coach would give LSU 24 hours notification before the interview and that had not occurred. Miles, a Michigan alum, would be interested in listening to athletic director Dave Brandon, one source close to him said.

In this case, drums in the deep are Joe Schad. If you work for ESPN please change his password to this.

Now… this exact same article was written three years ago—almost to the letter—but apparently no meeting ever happened or was set up. Les Miles did get punched in the face with millions of dollars, though, and his agent probably plays "have a nice day" as part of his hype-up video to this day. I'm always deeply skeptical of "sources" who are talking to the WWL and no one else because a good chunk of the time they're lying-ass agents. ESPN scoops == 50% agent vapor.

Meanwhile, my inbox has accounts that 75% guarantee Brady Hoke will be coach having a dance-off with accounts that 75% guarantee Les Miles will be coach. I don't really believe any of them, because the one thing that seems like a rock-hard certainty is that about five people have any clue WTF is going on. Even last time when there was a committee leaking left and right, almost everything that got reported about Michigan guys turned out to be crap—Hoke was never in play, and neither was Miles—and the best information came from third parties who were close to Ferentz, Schiano, and eventually Rodriguez. Rodriguez and Schiano came so far out of left field that the actual media was ahead of the rumor train—the Sporting News was the first entity to mention Rodriguez in connection with Michigan even counting GoBlue1856 and his four posts on Rivals.

This time we're dealing with a pro-Hoke crowd who knows him personally and the LSU fanbase, so… yeah. Maybe that's just me engaging in wishful thinking that the next coach's best asset won't be his ability to find Cubs' AC without a GPS, but since those two guys are so bleedingly obvious it seems easy for misinformation about them to get passed around. A similar drumbeat about a guy without connections to Michigan would be an all but certain hire. This I don't know.

The thing I was told before this all started blowing up, long before it, was that for a lot of reasons Miles would never be seriously considered for the Michigan job. Obviously I'm wavering from that point but I still think Michigan's coach is more likely than not to be someone no one is talking about right now.

COMPLETELY BOGUS PERCENTAGES:

30% Brady Hoke
20% Les Miles
50% Hot Coordinator Du Jour

BONUS: We've officially reached that bit of the coaching search: sources say Jon Gruden is "interviewing for" the job, and by "interviewing for" FSD's Jennifer Hammond means "golfing in the vicinity of." Seriously, even she hashtags that baby "takeitwithagrainofsalt." Will do, Ms. Hammond.