Approaching 1 year as interim AD, Jim Hackett's tenure coming to a crossroad

There is a glitch in the mgomatrix. The original poster gets a single point for putting up a thread. No more. No less. Once a thread is up, the points in the comments tabulate, both positive and negative.

Back in the beginning of mgotime, points were tabulated as they should have been. And a few of the savvy and witty original posters amassed a wealth in points. TomVH was upvoted and upvoted for his wonderful inside recruiting info. Conversely, when a post was downvoted, and especially when the OP like a moth to the flame couldn't resist commenting in the threads, some posters dropped hundreds and hundreds of points in a single hour. You actually could see the poster's point total recalculate up or down as you voted on their brilliance or their folly.

In the dark ages, after one of the mgoservers went down, there were no points awarded for votes. Anarchy reigned on the board. There was no board self-policing, and moderators burned out left and right. Things have been partially restored. The ability to give or remove points has brought back some measure of board self-moderation. But there are still glitches in the matrix. I don't know where all the trapdoors and easter eggs and idiosyncrasies exist in mgoblog. But they are still there.

TL;DR. My point:  your negs of the OP are irrelevant. He is impervious, so long as he doesn't venture into the comments, where he could be soundly downvoted.

 

Gotta keep 'em honest with MGoPoints on the line.

ohhhhhhhhh i'm changing mine to a minus 1!

I negged him because I just didn't get it?

Ah, but will they drop they interim label permanently?

#HIREJIMHACKETT

if only music was as good as this still

I propose we celebrate it by dressing up in costumes and going door to door getting free candy.

So you're advocating for stability by asking that the current guy leave? Makes sense to me!

Also George Costanza leaving on a high note! But seriously, my biggest concern is that many of the people in this world who are capable of running the athletic department are going to want to put their stamp on the organization. Per BLL, Coleman had preordained that DB would get the gig, but still set up a phony search process. We need a real search process, based on well vetted criteria that is broad ranging in scope. Dean searches often take around a year, so I hope for a similar timeframe once they actually get the ball rolling on this.

Need stability, with someone who can commit to being here a decade at least, and I doubt Hackett wants to be that guy. Don't forget, the man had only just started a well-deserved retirement before Schlissel called him in to clean up the Brandon mess. I would imagine his wife and family aren't interested in him staying in another all-consuming job for another 5 or 10 years.

Hackett's done an awesome job, and knocked it out of the park on two HUGE tasks that alone will ensure his legacy in the annals of Michigan sports (landing Harbaugh and the new Nike contract). The best way to cap his achievement is for him to identify and hire a great successor -- one who will run the AD w/a Hackett-style vision rather than a Brandon-style one. And that successor will have some pretty damn big decisions to make in his own right, including:

• Hiring Berenson's successor as hockey coach (really important to get this right and move the hockey program back in the right direction; love Red and appreciate all he's done, but these last few years of UM hockey have the whiff of late-era Carr football)
• Hiring Beilein's successor. JB's contract runs through the end of the '18-'19 season, when he'll be 66; maybe he'll want to keep coaching, but it's prudent to assume he'll hang 'em up at that point. Need to get this one right so we don't throw away everything Beilein has done to rebuild Michigan basketball as a perennial Big Ten contender.
• Theoretically (and I hate to even think of it, but one must look forward), identifying and hiring Harbaugh's successor if he decides at the end of his contract to return to the NFL or retire. Not saying it's likely, just that it's something the next AD will potentially have to handle.

 

I think what the athletic department needs most is competence, and Hackett is providing it in spades.  Stability - not that important, we're not in the market for either a football or basketball coach so there's nobody that needs to be convinced of a stable future.  Hackett should stay for as long or as short as necessary to undo the mistakes Brandon and return to having goodwill from their stakeholders.  I think he's still here because he and Schlissel want to turn over a well-run ship, on very solid footing, with a good reputation, and there's unfinished business along those lines.  Hackett should stay til that work is done.

Hackett has put in a lot of years at Steelcase and in a very high stress job.  Now, after having his hips replaced he has moved into another high stress job.  It sounded to me from the JUB book that prior to being asked to be the interim AD he and his wife had been looking forward to a nice retirement.  So, I don't imagine he wants to do this for a long time.  I'm sure he will know when it's time to turn things over to a younger person.  Apparently, there's still the ongoing Brandon mess to clean up.  Maybe he wants to do some of that before he leaves.  But, I heard thru a former, now retired high level U-M official that things in the athletic department are still largely in  a state of "disarray".  Most of this he thought was due to a large number of Brandon hires still being there and the experienced "old guard" employees not being there any more.

Seems like him staying through the end of the 2016-2017 school year might be the best solution for all involved. As great as he's doing, I can't imagine he wants this to be a 5-10 year thing, and he can have plenty of time to conduct the search for the next one while making sure everyone's on the same page.

I actually don't like this electronic ticket idea. I have bought my Northwestern and Rutgers ticket through the university this year as opposed to Stubhub because I like to collect my ticket stubs.

Brick, if you can get to a game, GO!

Winning obviously helps, but I'd say it has been pretty interesting overall. My observation has been that they have been slowly evolving the game day experience back to a more traditional one. As they do that, they've been asking questions along the way. "Does everyone want more of the band?" "Is it feasible to have them play that much?" There are other questions, but I think they have taken a very measured approach in changing anything, rather than wholesale changes at once. Ultimately, I've really enjoyed the atmosphere this year. My experience is limited (1st year season ticket holder), but it feels like the crowd has a bit of a more youthful vibe. Just my $.02.

some (volume level and frequency) and introduced more of a mix between newer and older stuff.  They've still been honoring past teams, current champion teams in different sports, and past players during the game.  The cheers are basically the same.  The concessions are still at astronomical David Brandon pricing, so that's a negative.  I like the addition of the James Earl Jones narrated video at the beginning right before the team runs out of the locker room.  Other than that, things are basically the same. 

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