[Upchurch]

[Ed. A- I couldn’t make it to this presser, but Josh Henschke and our good friends at The Michigan Insider were kind enough to send along some video for me to transcribe.]

On who can make the call to change the years Michigan plays MSU on the road:

“It’s a combination of television, and where we have control it falls on the home team and not the visiting team, and that’s usually in conference and non-conference. But most of that now, any game changing assignments, time assignments, is usually done by television through the conference office. We don’t really have a lot of say. They may ask us what we’d like to do, but we now don’t have a say in picking the game times at this point.”

On breaking up the two home, two away format of the schedule and whether that’s something he’s pursuing:

“Conversations are continuing to be had about what we’d like but there’s 13 other schools in the conference. Scheduling, whether you have 10 teams in the league, eight teams in the league, or 14 like we do, is very hard to do. I don’t negate that. Would I love to see Ohio State and Michigan State on different years? Yes. Do I think it’s hard to do given where we are now? Yes. Will I continue to still have the conversations that need to be had to try to see if there’s anything that can be done? Yes. Is it easy? No.”

On whether he plans to present that to the board:

“I plan on having any conversation I need to have to the benefit of Michigan athletics. Listen, I have great colleagues. Jim Delany is a great commissioner. We have a great staff in the Big Ten. I have great colleagues across the conferences. We all have different things, tweaks, that we may like to see. I’m not the sole member that may want tweaks and changes to the schedule. As soon as we can have that conversation with everyone or individually, and conversations I’ve already had and discussion points, I’m working to understand as well as to talk about what I believe is in the best interest of Michigan.”

On whether Michigan will have to wait until the next batch of schedules is released to make a change:

“Probably, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s not going to change overnight. It’s trying to figure out how we can make any adjustments, and people know that we would like to see an adjustment to that.”

On changing the schedules that are in place:

“Listen, I’m not proposing that what we already have changes immediately, but I do want to have the conversation—I have had some—to understand and…but again, in talking to some of my colleagues, there are some things that other ADs would like to see on their football schedules. So, while we talk about the imbalance of Michigan State and Ohio State, both of them being away or at home, they have other tweaks or changes that they would like to see on their schedule. And once you start putting all that together, now you’ve got a big cauldron of issues that you’ve got to try and figure out, right?

“It’s not as simple as me saying, ‘Well, we want this’ and everybody saying, ‘Okay, we’ll just change it.’ If you start to make the changes—and you guys are very smart—as you start to look at the other schedules you’ll see that there’s more moves than just flipping one to one year and keeping the other on the other year. I mean, there’s more that needs to happen. So, it’s complex enough that the conversations need to be had and I’ll continue to have them when the issue comes up.”

[After THE JUMP: who has input on alternate uniforms, Harbaugh as attention lightning rod, and a bit about Harbaugh’s contract]

On whether other existing series might be changed a la Arkansas being dropped to add ND:

“I am looking at our schedule to try and figure out what is in our best interest. Talking to Jim, figuring out what we need to do to move forward, but there’s nothing that I’m here to announce today as it relates to any changes at this present time.”

On alternate uniforms and their process for consideration:

“You know, we’ll look at what they bring to the table and maybe some ideas that we might have about that. But for this year, we really like the look that they created for the team. I think the uniforms—I don’t know if a football uniform can be pretty or handsome or however you’d describe it, but I really love the look that they created for the team this year and we’re going to enjoy that and have conversations with them about alternates and ultimately we’ll see where that goes.”

On who makes the decision re: alternates:

“Yeah, whether we use them or not. And in my world, normally I would leave that up—Jim and I really haven’t had a conversation, but I would leave that up to Jim and how he wants to handle that either himself or with the team. Because you can create the alternate uniform, but—I may be a part of the conversation but I’m not going to dictate to my coach that on a certain game you’ve got to wear a certain uniform. We’ll work—if we want to have one on the shelf somewhere, I’ll leave it up to Jim and the team to make that decision whether or not they want to wear it.”

On unveiling Michigan’s Jordan basketball uniforms:

“Yeah, I believe we’re going to do something in September similar to—I don’t know how similar. I don’t know exact details yet but yes, we will have a rollout of the new basketball uniform.”

On how long a leash Harbaugh gets:

“No, I don’t have him on a leash, first of all. I mean, I don’t have leashes. That’s not the way I manage people. If there are things I need to talk to Jim about I talk to Jim about them. If there are things I need to talk to other coaches [about] I talk to them about them. But I don’t have leashes. I don’t look at it as anything that I need to control. I look at it as me helping this department manage effectively and put out there effectively what we’re trying to do. I don’t give anybody limits. We talk about things as they come up.

“I think the things that Jim has done have…they come up in the media. You guys react to it in different ways, our fans react to it in different ways, but Jim has been tremendous to deal with. Very smart, very knowledgeable, and so when issues come up that we need to talk about we talk about them. When something I say or some policy or something I implement comes up and he wants to talk to me about it we talk about it, just like any other coach. He’s been tremendous to deal with.”

On whether Harbaugh has free reign:

“Everybody has free reign. I have free reign. You know, President Schlissel didn’t say to me, ‘You can talk about A but you can’t talk about B and C.’ I don’t understand what’s the other context of the situation where it’s free reign versus a leash versus anything else. I guess I don’t talk that way, I don’t think that way about managing people. I let people be themselves.

“But Jim has his own limits that he sets on what he does and he understands the rules. He understands the Michigan culture, and so do I have to—I have to make sure all my coaches are educated on the rules. I have to make sure all my coaches have a sense of the culture. I have to make sure that we have those discussions as a group [and] individually when necessary. But I don’t really think about it as…I want Jim Harbaugh to be Jim Harbaugh.”

On whether Harbaugh is the most powerful person in the department:

“Jim Harbaugh is a great colleague in this department. I mean, that’s what I’d say to you. You guys can determine who’s more powerful and who’s all-seeing and all-knowing. That’s not for me. Jim’s a great colleague. He’s a great head coach of our football program and he’s a powerful figure in the University and a powerful figure in intercollegiate athletics and football because he is the head coach at Michigan, he’s had a tremendous career, [and] he is very bright. You guys can put all the…however you want to frame it, but I know he’s a great colleague to work with and that’s how I look at it.”

On whether Manuel’s ever seen a college coach garner the attention Harbaugh has, and whether he likes the attention Harbaugh draws:

“I don’t know the answer to the first part of the question. I guess I’m immersed in what I’m immersed in now. It’s a lot of attention on him, but he garnered a lot of attention when he was a head coach at San Francisco. He garnered—I don’t know if it was as much—attention when he was at Stanford. I don’t mind it. It doesn’t bother me, if that’s the gist of the question. It is what it is.”

[Reporter clarifies that it’s not whether it bothers Manuel, but whether it feels different for someone to get so much attention even during the offseason]

“In my mind it has a lot of positives to it. When I look at the coverage and I look at what he’s doing and what’s out there about him and the program, it has a great deal of positiveness to it from my perspective. So, it’s not something—you know, I don’t sit down with him and say ‘Jim, I need you to do more’ and I don’t tell him to do less. He’s doing what he’s comfortable doing and there’s nothing at this point that would cause me any concern about the amount of coverage or the things that are being covered. And let’s call it what it is. He’s not…he’s doing some things, but most of the coverage is coverage by the media. It’s not Jim every day putting out a story or saying, ‘Hey, every day I want you to shoot a video of me every day.’”

[Another reporter says that he probably knows what kind of reaction he’s going to get.]

“Probably. It’s just like this today. As I’m coming over here I look and I look at my buddy Mark, because I’m teasing him today, and he said to me, ‘We want to talk to you at football media day’ and I said, ‘What do you want to talk to me about? I’ve got nothing to say.’ Right? He said, ‘Well, we just want to spend time with you.’ Well…I get it. Y’all want to spend time with me, I’ll come. And do I know there’s going to be stories written after this? Yes, I do. Because when you go in front of the media that’s what y’all do.”

On how Harbaugh seems to be looking for a reaction via his use of subtweets:

“Yeah, but some of the tweets that he tweets are reactions to things other people have said or done, not him going, ‘Hey, give me attention.’ Right?”

On Harbaugh’s contract’s compensation structure:

“It isn’t unique. It was something that was started prior to me getting here and it is something that has been utilized in the business in terms of additional dollars for…through insurance and through the coverage. I wasn’t involved in the negotiation of the structure of it so I can’t tell you that I understand all of the details, but it’s true to what we committed to Jim. The structure of it might be unique, but the dollars are what we had committed from day one bringing him here.”

On using that structure in other coaches’ contracts:

“It’s all dependent. I think it’s—the structure of the way everything lined up is it’s a win-win for both coach and the University, and any time you get into negotiation of contracts and employment contracts and incentives and those kind of things, whenever you can get to win-win in that situation where both sides feel great about where you are, that’s what you look for. And in this particular case this is the way it was structured, and I think it’s a win-win for both Jim and the University.”

On why it’s a win-win:

“I think the structure of it. The way it’s structured for him and the way it’s structured for us financially on both sides, it has got that balance that I think both sides appreciate.”

On where Harbaugh ranks in the heirarchy of coaching salaries:

“Probably not relevant because when we look at salaries we look at obviously internally but also externally at the marketplace as we do our analysis of where we are, what we would want to pay, the cost, what’s the market for a coach. So you look internally and also externally to try to balance that.”

On whether it’s intentional that Harbaugh’s close to but not the highest paid coach in the country:

“I don’t know. You would have had to ask Jim [Hackett] that question. Doesn’t bother me that he’s that close to the top. I think he’s worth everything we pay him and we’re happy to have him as our coach, so I don’t get into those details of how close he is or those kinds of things.”

On whether Harbaugh’s contract is considered an investment that, considering the attention he’s drawn and the Nike/Jordan deal, has paid for itself:

“I hope that as we all work to have success here at Michigan that people look at what we do and say we’re all worth what we’re paid in that we bring that benefit, and I think that Jim has proven that he brings tremendous benefit to our football program, to this department, and to this university. So, I don’t have any problems. I think he’s worth every penny that he makes.”

On the new weight room and setting a construction start date:

“We should get some more refined cost estimates by the end of this month, which would be sometime next week and if not then the following week. We’re waiting on more refined cost estimates and drawings to be able to know exactly what the costs are, where we are, where we need to be from a development standpoint—fundraising, and they’re working diligently from my understanding, the architects, getting that firmed up next week.

“Maybe spring, depending on the cost. I would thin the earliest we’d be able to put things in motion would be next spring. And as a part of this project, Oosterbaan’s roof needs to be replaced. Given the weather conditions, obviously that’s not going to be able to be started until the spring-time anyway. How that ties into the roof and all those things—or to the building, I should say—we just need to figure that out.”