Another Notch in the Brandon Branding Bedpost
The Sanford Robertson Offensive Coordinator
http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/052914aaa.html
Must've used all that money he's made from Duck Dynasty.
Painting the winged helmet on those beards. Get on it, Brandon.
/s
Both are/were tiresome, incessant, unreasonable, and flip sides of one another, but at this point I'd have to say
RR whiners > Brandon whiners
As someone that is completely sick of the money in college athletics...
I agree.
This is the day and age of college football. We should feel honored that a very successful person wants to give back to the university.
Excuse me but this paragraph:
University of Michigan donors Jay and Michaela Hoag graciously hosted Michigan Athletics friends and supporters during the annual West Coast "Team Tour." Special guests included John Beilein, men's basketball head coach; Brady Hoke, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach; and Dave Brandon, Donald R. Shepherd Director of Athletics.
Takes a special kind of psychopath to create. To take that money you have to think that any kind of dollars are more important than clarity of communication. If someone wants to give to the university and add their name to an adjective, the response should be "Absolutely not because it makes the University of Michigan look like a whore."
Yeah? When's the last time you donated $3 million anonymously? Most people like recognition for their work.
I think there might be a middle ground higher than total anonymity.
The Frankels got their name on a 100 year old part of the health system. Ross has his name on the business school. Nichols arb, Kellogg center etc. Multiple professorships which existed almost as long as the university are now endowed in the names of people who graduated maybe 50 years ago.
Oh but it's football. I forgot. We're still hitched on 'tradition'. Forget the fact that it might be beneficial for us to have millions rolling in. For the sake of being different, michigan fans would rather shoot themselves and the AD in the foot
It's one thing to put a person's name on a building. It's quite another to put their name on another person.
If that's the case, then why not put advertising inside Michigan Stadium? I mean, at some point when all of the GA's have endownments, where does this whole thing go?
Look, I don't want to see advertising in Michigan Stadium. If this all continues, I'm afraid at some point it might be the next "logical" revenue source.
Look, I would prefer to not have ads in Michigan Stadium. But I also want our teams to be in a position where we're able to do everything we need to do to compete. Not all of those cost money, but many of them do. Remember how difficult basketball recruiting was before all of the renovations? But once they were complete, we had many more top recruits looking at us and now we're a top basketball program again. That took money.
I want to hold on to "tradition" too. But if that tradition is holding us back from winning (which is the real tradition) than I will no longer be in favor of it.
You know money has nothing to do with Michigan not winning much in recent years, right? You have seen the lists where Michigan is always in the top 3 in revenue, haven't you? Michigan is telling its fans "this is what you need to compete today!" They have that very thing in spades and then go out and defy their very message on the field while they keep asking for more. You don't see why people find this fundamentally offensive?
Weren't the basketball renovations decided on when Martin was still here?
What place in revenue is Michigan football? 2nd behind Texas? Either way, we're right up there. It's not money that's holding us back from winning.
Yes and it's amazing that more don't know that Martin was the one who drove the money and planning for the basketball facilities. Probably because Brandon enjoys people mistakenly thinking it was him.
Really, the timing to get this AD position, do a bad job and not get blamed too much couldn't have been more perfect for DB. He got to put his face on re-dedications to Michigan Stadium and Crisler, neither of which he raised a dime for.
were promised to Amaker. They got delayed because it took time to raise money.
There's seems to be a vocal faction on this board, starting at the top, that is opposed to every possible method of increasing revenue. Advertising, endowed positions, alternate jerseys, Adidas, higher ticket prices, increasing BTN markets, mascots and pretty much any possible way of extending the Michigan brand are looked upon with scorn.
To be consistent, shouldn't we be opposed to the AD spending money too? Other that the few thousand spent on skywriting, it seems the only objections most have are to not spending even more.
I think a good argument can be made that colege athletics have gotten too big and our athletes aren't connected enough to the rest of the school. If we want Michigan to go in a different direction it shouldn't be because we hate fundraising. It should be because we believe that our student athletes should be students first and that's more important than being among the elite in every sport.
"There's seems to be a vocal faction on this board, starting at the top, that is opposed to every possible method of increasing revenue."
I'm not opposed to every possible method of increasing revenue... but one must consider that we're already the #2 or #3 in all of college sports in revenue.
Increased revenue, at minimal "cost" that benefits students or athletes - I'm all for it.
Increased revenue, derived from scrapping tradition, that mostly exists to grow the athletic department bureaucracy... that I'm not very interested in.
It's 2014, not 1960. Money wins college football games.
If your traditions hold back the program from winning, they need to go.
Then why do both Texas and Michigan suck so much?
How long have you been following college football? Texas and Michigan have both gone through a similar transition where a long-time, HOF coach got too old to be the coach and maybe stuck around a bit too long. Neither will likely be in this transition for too long, partly because of the big bucks they bring in. Keep in mind that both Texas and Michigan both have huge athletic department full of teams that are elite on the national level.
I do think the mgoblog staff has gone a bit far with some of the condemnation that's come about because of DB raising revenue, but there must be a line somewhere right? Most people seem to hate the alternate unis. I sure do. And if the department loses out on a little money because there aren't alternate unis, then I'm fine with not having state-of-the-art facilities for every sport and instead just having really good facilities. Same with ads inside the stadium.
Really, it's good that we have other sports, but I honestly don't care that every sport has the highest-paid coach and the best facilities in the country. As long as they get the opportunity to play and get whatever health care and educational opportunities they need, I think that's enough. I'd much rather preserve some of what makes college football and Michigan unique.
Although I don't want to see advertising inside Michigan Stadium, I've accepted that it's going to happen. I'm not sure when - a couple of years or a dozen years, it's going to happen.
As I said, at some point, there are only so many new revenue streams.
I've accepted it with one condition - the brands advertised are consistent with the Michigan brand (e.g. no walmart, pawn shops, dollar stores, etc.).
dislike of ads in the stadium. How do I know? I asked him face to face at a program he did with about a hundred other people in the room. Although he didn't say flat out there would NEVER be ads in the stadium, he did say it was not something they were looking at - at least a year ago when this program was held. So, I believe accepting large donations and naming buildings, facilities, or job positions after donors is one way to avoid having to have ads in the stadium. Because Michigan seems to be committed to not let anyone "out-facility" us anymore, the money to pay for it has to come from somewhere.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/schools/finances/
I don't think Michigan is having any issues competing with other schools when it comes to money.
If it's anonymous, how would we know about it? Then again, I will save up $5 million dollars if I can endow the QB position. I want to hear my name every time the offense snaps the ball.
Only the folks that run MGoBlog could take someone giving $3 million to the university and turn it into a bad thing.
Everyone here needs to toe the company line.
Wow you just bummed me out. I was going to ask DB how much he would charge for me to endow the Bill in Birmingham Big House Latrine Cleaner position. But you dropped the Kim Jong bomb and ruined my enthusiasm.
what those who run the site do you're more than welcome to go elsewhere.
Talk of "The Purge" last night brings that line of thinking back 'round. As a blog you don't seem to appreciate people being "mean" to those who write here. That is, you don't like people commenting on your work when it's unnecessarily rude or demeaning. (yes I'm sure the above is meant as a joke, at least partially, just as were many of the critiques of Brandon (Brown) that led to The Purge)
Yet you as a blog do not seem to feel conflict in commenting on other people's work in that same manner.
Further, my assumption is that if someone from the athletic department saw your post here and banned you from UofM facilities, there would be much howling. Yet you banned M-Wolverine and others from this site because of their comments re. your work. There is a disconnect here that you may reflexively try to explain away, but I ask that you take a moment to consider it.
Good grief. It's their blog, man. If you don't like how they run it go read something else.
this is 'murica, and if I don't like, I can just git out?
Good grief. It's their blog, man. If you don't like how they run it go read something else.Given that this site has changed from a personal hobby of Brian's into an actual business, I don't think he would actually want everyone who has any sort of disagreement with his blog to stop reading. The site is Brian's brainchild but the readership has allowed him to make a living off it. It shouldn't be taboo to make any sort of constructive criticism. ("Constructive" obviously being the key.) Personally, I still visit the site, but I will say that it seems like Brian and the other writers have become increasingly preachy and intolerant of opposing viewpoints - and it's starting to make me less interested in what they have to say.
The contempt you show for these donors is really disgraceful. Do you feel the same way about people who donate enough to get their names put on buildings? How about the Ross Business School?
You dismiss the similarity to academic chair endowments so casually. How is what the university doing with those any different? They're selling the right to put your name on a university position. I don't see what makes coaching positions sacrosanct so that one is morally wrong (psychopathic!) and the other is not. What should be intuitively obvious is that these coaches aren't going to be referred to by those full titles in the media very often, That's for official press releases. How often does the media call Brady Hoke the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach? Is it 1% of the time? 0.1%? 0.01%? I'll take the under.
Our AD isn't running some sort of rogue operation. The Board of Regents unanimously approved this. All but one of the Ivy League Schools and Stanford had already been endowing their coaches. You may feel nothing but contempt for people who want recognition for their contributions, but try to have a little perspective. That kind of attention has been for sale for a very long time at a very, very long list of institutions.
Criticizing donors for their choice of recipients is heading down a very slippery slope. You could make the same argument for any donations to a school with an endowment like Michigan's. For every worthy cause, you can probably find one even worthier if you look hard enough. Is the athletic department really inventing insane things to spend their money on? For an organization the size of Michgan's AD there's bound to be disagreement about some expenditures. The $3000 skywriting taunt was silly. Put into perspective it's one mistake and an infetesimal part of the budget. You should have a lot more to back up an over the top statement like that. I wonder what our athletic campus would look like without the generosity of our donors.
To take that money you have to think that any kind of dollars are more important than clarity of communicationCome on - not only is endowing positions a common practice across the country (including at Ivy League schools), but the "tradeoff" is basically zero - few people outside the press even read these media releases. This is one of the more innocuous ways of raising money out there. There are certainly worse alternatives.
I will give you $10 Millon to rename your username the "State Street honorary writer of things that occasionally interest me Seth" to be disbursed in any way that MGoBlog sees fit.
You turning that shit down?
Special guests included John Beilein, men's basketball head coach; Brady Hoke, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach; and Dave Brandon, Donald R. Shepherd Director of Athletics.
Like others, I fail to see what's so terrible about this sentence. For one thing, it's part of a press release and is not unlike thousands of similar sentences included in press releases every week. The sentence is entirely grammatical correct, with each person's name/title separated by semi-colons and the titles following the person's name separated by a comma. That's a standard style for these types of things and reads much better than a style that is too often used where the title precedes the name, as in:
Special guests included men's basketball head coach John Beilein, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach Brady Hoke, and Donald R. Shepherd Director of Athletics Dave Brandon.
Bottom line: It's not like you're being to forced to use these formal titles when referring to Hoke, Brandon, or whomever, so why get so upset about it?
This is exaclty right. It's not like any fan ever will use the official title. And it's not like ESPN or BTN or ABC or whoever will say that title while calling the game on on a recap or anything. In fact, I bet many huge Michigan fans who don't read MGoBlog might go years without even knowing about this change. Such a fuss over nothing. Nothing, except that Michigan just made $3MM.
If I hear arms race one more time I'm gonna snap.
Michigan football is rolling in money and the football team hasn't been good for a while. It's not all about cash. Competent leadership is mandatory. We don't have it in the AD office and might not have it in the head coaching position either (that one will become more clear after this year).
Doesn't he know he can add sponsorships to the END of the name too? Where's the "presented by Coca-Cola", Brandon? See, this is why he couldn't cut it as a Bowl Committee executive.
/s