WTKA Roundtable 5/25/2023: Get an MBA and Walk Around Looking Cool
Things Discussed:
- Shemy: They had two months to do a cursory vetting. Harbaugh was trying to do a thing for Bo.
- Problem in coach culture that they feel the need to find everybody a job.
- Problem in Michigan's athletic department that they don't have enough attention to detail.
- The lesson isn't just check what you say in public; check some of these ideas when they're on their way into your head.
- NOTE: I erased a short bit where the panel got the Schembechler son mixed up; Matt is the one who made dubious claims re: Dr. Anderson.
- To be clear, it was hundreds of likes of racist ideas, not just one tweet (though the one tweet was very bad), and once they were public it would have been a major issue for Michigan, which is in the PR business.
- In the break Brian explains how Twitter works to Craig.
- The Big Ten's contract situation: How did Kevin Warren screw this up so badly? Guy sold the rights to a game he didn't own, and promised night games in November—what was his job other than to know these things?
- OSU is going to host a night game vs MSU on November 11 (Michigan had the IU game just as late in the year).
- MSU is going to move their last home game, vs Penn State, to Ford Field on Friday night—MSU season ticket holders must be pissed? Seth: MSU's last home game is usually empty and miserable anyways.
- November night game solution: USC and UCLA can play them at home.
- And they're paying a search firm to understand if they need to pay him a bonus for a contract he didn't complete when his contract didn't say he gets one, why, because Delany got one? Brian: Executive culture is messed up—these guys are all replacement level.
- What's the fallout? Sam/Brian think Michigan didn't have any concessions; Seth thinks MSU horse-traded their Senior Day at Ford Field and a night game at OSU in return for an easier schedule when Michigan is going to get USC. We figured that would happen anyways.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is here. You can watch the video here:
MGoBlog Roundtable https://t.co/JTiGjRqP9h
— Sam Webb (@SamWebb77) May 25, 2023
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It's a never a good sign if you're thinking about an executive and you're reminded of a scene from It's Always Sunny.
You are largely right that this was an unforced error that shouldnt have happened. And I agree with virtually all your points regarding his very public opinions on racial, sexual and other politically charged matters having a negative impact on doing his job. You seem way more upset about it than I am but I really do agree with almost everything you wrote.
But Craig is also right IMO, in saying this is a "nothing burger" that will go away and be quickly forgotten. The last ESPN story on the issue was three days ago, same with The Athletic and both the Free Press and the News. The only media outlet that had anything on this more recently was MLive two days ago and that was simply to report that a regent was disappointed this happened. I doubt you'll see another word written on the subject unless they do something stupid like this again and even then it will only be brought up as evidence to show Michigan makes stupid decisions from time to time.
I agree that it'll be a nothingburger in the larger context; nobody will be talking about this by June rolls around, if not earlier. But Craig was being needlessly dismissive. The role wasn't "much higher than a janitor" as Craig intimated; it's my understanding that it is basically the same job Denard does and that pays $100k/yr and is a public-facing position. Saying the university got rid of him when they "figured out" who he was online is also disingenuous; it became an issue when multiple external parties started noting his online history. It shouldn't have, and had UM done some base-level due diligence online they'd have found it before he announced his hiring. So again, it didn't have to be a big issue but because they screwed up it became a multi-day story and so it was, objectively a non-non-story. That's the only point I'm making here, and I promise you that if MSU or OSU had hired some racist dipshit we'd definitely think it was some degree of a story.
I'm actually not all that upset beyond the fact that there's no need to display this homerism when discussing it. The guy doesn't work at UM anymore, and the school was dragged in the media for failing to properly vet him. You can just call that out and say they screwed up, and while I get Sam being unable to do so because WTKA's reliance on AD access, Craig doesn't need that and it was annoying to hear him wave it away. As you noted it won't be an issue unless UM does something dumb again, but as Craig noted their big problem is the extreme opaqueness they operate in and how that, naturally, leads to things blowing up more spectacularly when they do go sideways because they seemingly come out of the blue.
There are undoubtedly people who feel otherwise and that's their choice, and in the grand scheme of things hiring and firing a guy who turned out to be a bad hire doesn't mean much. But I thought it was telling how Seth has posted here as well on Twitter that he was wrong about Glenn and how the University messed up in how they handled it. It's just recognizing reality when new information comes to light, and it's something you don't see that often and (I felt) was lacking in Craig's response. But again, your mileage may vary ("you" being the royal sense).
bB/others:
I think your view is about the same as most UM fans. One of my best friends wrote me.
Craig, you are wrong about Shemy. You aren't on social media. It's a big deal. It makes UM look like morons. It will be used against them.
Well, I began to waffle during the show but it still feels fairly inert to me. I might completely fall on my sword but for the first time in 40 years my wife agreed with me about something.
I wish the AD would say, "Harbaugh hired this moron and didn't ask for our opinion. When the news about his twitter posts became known to us we fired him immediately. We can't countenance such attitudes. And we apologize for our negligence in not reviewing his social media activity. Cowboy days are over for us, in this regard. Unlike certain dinosaurs in the old-world media or kinda-media (Craig Ross) we need to pay attention to social media."
Is it a big deal then? Is it any different? I dunno. I still don't see it as some major scandal. I wish the AD was more open about events.
Michigan already made a concession in flipping the Texas games.
Purdue @ Michigan on Nov 4 will be a night game competing against either LSU/Bama or ND/Clemson (CBS will def pick LSU/Bama, but not sure when the play it).
And I think Michigan @ Maryland on Nov 18 will also potentially be a night game - it's either that or Wisconsin vs Nebraska.
This is probably what Michigan is irked about, possibly two November night games (1 home and 1 away) and they won't know until October. This undoubtedly was what Warde meant about "tolerances", since there's no way Michigan would be blanket okay with 2 night games in one November - has this ever happened before?
- Brian: Executive culture is messed up...
Now I'm really confused. I always thought that "break shit and leave with tons of money" was the only way to CEO.
Something that wasn't really brought up is the fact that we were hiring someone with the last name "Schembechler" in the first place. That in itself is a bad look and is going to be scrutinized. Then, to not vet someone with such a high profile last name is just insanity
Thing is... you can either be a nepotism hire OR you can be screamingly unfit for your job. Most of us have been working long enough to see both these things happen all the time and generally you shrug and move on. Problem is that Shemy was both, which is why U-M is taking this very public and very deserved L. This will wash away, yes, but only because of the nature of the 24/7 news cycle but it's a dumb and avoidable error to make that news cycle in the first place.
Well--and I'm gonna repeat this here--Jim made the hire. And the hire, in the end, speaks for him. Blaming Warde is a deflection. Yes, it's his fuckup, too, insofar as the buck stops somewhere. But only secondarily. Jim doesn't ratify his hires, ordinarily, with Warde.
Early on, Brian and to some extent Seth rightly make the point that this along with several other incidents form a bad pattern in the Michigan athletic department. tgey are absolutely correct. but what is interesting is that Seth banned a Free Press writer a couple of months back for writing the exact same thing. it was true than, it is true now. maybe Mgoblog should also look at its policy of covering up Michigan's misdeeds.
For those that think they know JH's political leanings, he testified in Congress for support for Legal Aid Foundation (LAF). I can tell you that my very conservative brother thinks LAF is a Marxist plot to allow lefties to sue the US Govt and collect millions. LAF is absolutely hated by many conservatives.
Michigan's Harbaugh makes pitch for access to legal aid | AP News
The guy has views that don't align to any party. He is who he is. And he's MY coach.
Go Blue!
"Doing a thing for Bo"
Or said another way, doing a favor for a man that has been dead for almost 20 years.
That's such a weird, North Korean mentality. Bo may as well be named "Eternal Head Coach" at this point with this weird insistence that everyone working in the program be a discipline of his or in the direct bloodline. At the very least you had to have known him! No better way to get hired at Michigan than to have a personal story about the time Bo told you to shut up or get to it or whatever.
So much so that you hire his moron son despite the guy having multiple social media accounts where he professes his hatred of non-whites, democracy, etc. This cult is so innate to Michigan at this point that a fn moron going by Schemy Shembechler doesn't get audited by...anyone...because of his name. Take your old man's desk and have at it, Schemy!
Lmao, it still blows my mind.
It is incomprehensible that an idiot like that could get any job at the University of Michigan, let alone one with a fairly high profile.
I don't even know what to say.
I can see how it would happen, though. Harbaugh loved Bo, modeled his coaching career after him, probably couldn't imagine his mentor's son being a such sad excuse for a human being, and made the hire without proper investigation. Big mistake that rebounded very badly on the university and the program.
That's not an excuse, it's a guess as to how the error was made.
"So much so that you hire his moron son despite the guy having multiple social media accounts where he professes his hatred of non-whites, democracy, etc."
Is this true? I didn't see all his tweet likes but the few that were linked here (presumably some of the most controversial) don't seem to fit this description at all. One supposedly controversial tweet was in agreement with (in an arguably clumsy manner) the comments of an esteemed Black intellectual, Thomas Sowell.
Comments like this make me wonder about the overall characterization of Shemy here. It's disturbing.
Yes, it's true. It's bad. The outcry exists for a reason and even many that immediately defended him thinking it was an ultra-pc witch hunt backtracked when they saw the extent of it.
His Twitter was tame compared to his couple Facebook accounts, btw. He actually had deleted some of that stuff before this story bles up but many saved it and it's nasty. The dude is beyond any political ID, he's just a racist that apparently supports sedition and thinks Jim Crow was totally cool and actually beneficial.
If anything he has somehow kept the major media from fully bringing to light the insane BS he has spouted and supported openly online.
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