Brandon Statement Released

Standard operating procedure for the Dave Brandon Athletic Department. Drop it at inopportune time, try to control the narrative, but instead just look like you're doing exactly what you're trying to do: Deflect attention from obvious incompetence.

What a joke all around.

There is abosolutely no accountability with the football program... Dave Brandon down to Brady should be ashamed!!

Fuck this athletic department. Bunch of liars who only care about themselves.

Shane Morris has a mild, probable concussion and if he took one more big hit it could have been much, much, MUCH, worse than we could ever imagine. Absolute joke.

If you follow Wall Street this is SO WALL STREET.  When corporations have bad news to announce it is usually after 5 PM Friday when many people clear out early.   I thought when Brady said "later today" it would either be after 5 PM or after the newspaper deadline for tomorrow - not sure what time that would be - 11 PM ish or so.

He is so corporate it is sickening.

The AD and head coach are going down in flames. This is unreal.

Jesus, take the wheel.

Is someone going to step in and exhibit some fucking leadership?  President Schlissel, it is up to you at this point.

Here is the shitshow cut and pasted

Full statement from Michigan AD Dave Brandon re: Shane Morris/"probable, mild concussion" -- "Ultimate responsibility for the health and safety of our student-athletes resides with each team’s coach and with me, as the Director of Athletics. We are committed to continuously improving our procedures to better protect the health and welfare of our student-athletes.

I have had numerous meetings since Sunday morning to thoroughly review the situation that occurred at Saturday’s football game regarding student-athlete Shane Morris. I have met with those who were directly involved and who were responsible for managing Shane’s care and determining his medical fitness for participation.

In my judgment, there was a serious lack of communication that led to confusion on the sideline. Unfortunately, this confusion created a circumstance that was not in the best interest of one of our student-athletes. I sincerely apologize for the mistakes that were made. We have to learn from this situation, and moving forward, we will make important changes so we can fully live up to our shared goal of putting student-athlete safety first.

I have worked with Darryl Conway, my Associate Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Health and Welfare, to develop a detailed accounting of the events that occurred. Darryl is the person who oversees all athletic training personnel and serves as the liaison to the physicians we work with through the University of Michigan Health System and University Health Services.

It is important to note that our athletic trainers and physicians working with Michigan Athletics have the unchallengeable authority to remove student-athletes from the field of play. Michigan Athletics has numerous medical professionals at every football competition including certified athletic trainers and several physicians from various relevant specialties.

I, along with Darryl and our administrative and medical teams, have spent much of the last two days carefully reviewing the situation regarding Shane Morris. We now understand that, despite having the right people on the sidelines assessing our student-athletes’ well being, the systems we had in place were inadequate to handle this unique and complex situation properly.

With his permission, I can share that Shane Morris suffered an ankle injury during the third quarter of Saturday’s game. He was evaluated for that injury by an orthopedic surgeon and an athletic trainer several times during the game. With each of these evaluations it was determined that his ankle injury did not prevent him from playing.

In the fourth quarter, Shane took a significant hit and stumbled after getting up. From the field level and without the benefit of replays, medical and coaching staffs did not see the hit. Because they did not see the hit, the athletic training staff believed Shane stumbled because of his ankle injury. The team neurologist, watching from further down the field, also did not see the hit. However, the neurologist, with expertise in detecting signs of concussion, saw Shane stumble and determined he needed to head down the sideline to evaluate Shane.

Shane came off the field after the following play and was reassessed by the head athletic trainer for the ankle injury. Since the athletic trainer had not seen the hit to the chin and was not aware that a neurological evaluation was necessary, he cleared Shane for one additional play.

The neurologist and other team physicians were not aware that Shane was being asked to return to the field, and Shane left the bench when he heard his name called and went back into the game. Under these circumstances, a player should not be allowed to re-enter the game before being cleared by the team physician. This clearly identifies the need for improvements in our sideline and communication processes.

Following the game, a comprehensive concussion evaluation was completed and Shane has been evaluated twice since the game. As of Sunday, Shane was diagnosed with a probable, mild concussion, and a high ankle sprain. That probable concussion diagnosis was not at all clear on the field on Saturday or in the examination that was conducted post-game. Unfortunately, there was inadequate communication between our physicians and medical staff and Coach Hoke was not provided the updated diagnosis before making a public statement on Monday. This is another mistake that cannot occur again.

Going forward, we have identified two changes in our procedures that we will implement immediately:

We will have an athletic medicine professional in the press box or video booth to ensure that someone will have a bird’s eye view of the on-field action, have television replay available and have the ability to communicate with medical personnel on the sidelines.

We are also examining how to reinforce our sideline communication processes and how decisions will be made in order to make sure that information regarding student-athlete availability to participate is communicated effectively amongst the medical team and to our coaches.

We have learned from this experience, and will continue to improve ways to keep our student-athletes’ health and safety our number one priority."

It's no wonder how bad our program's been when you have these clowns running it. I bet Brandon doesn't last another week.

So Hoke went in front of a presser today and lied, because that's just what he does in every single press conference he ever gives, and his AD cuts his balls off at 1am and thinks the time and that saying "Mild" will make it less horrible.

Just set the whole thing on fire.

I particularly like how the medical staff charged with managing an injury issue (Shane's ankle) was following the ball downfield too rather than monitoring said issue.

I'd like to add it looks like the lines of communication between Brandon and Hoke have either been severed by brandon distancing himself or Brandon sabotaging Hoke.  I doubt Hoke "lied".  I imagine Brandon didnt communicate it to him.  I am not in the camp that Hoke is an evil person who went out today with intent to lie to the media.  So that leaves information kept from him.  On purpose IMO. (speculating)

And that folks is how you cut dead weight from you as you try to climb the corporate ladder - lessons Brandon has learned over 30 years.  Instead of standing side by side with the Hokester - Brandon is attaching the lead anchor to him.  

We'll see when Bacon gets the real story in 2018 or so.

These motherfuckers...I don't even know anymore.  How incompetent do you have to be before you're released from you're godamn job.  Especially Dave Brandon...aside from the fiasco over the weekend, the fact that this asshole still has a job going on Tuesday shows how ridiculous this has all become.

I'm not an alum but I truly feel sorry for you all for putting up with this and hardly being able to do anything about it.

We we now have a bird's eye view - in other words headset.  The other option is to have coaches with functional observation skills.

Reading this through a second time, it's absolutely astonishing how many holes there are here.

80,000 people in the stands saw the hit. 80,000 people saw Shane stumble and stagger around like a punch-drunk boxer. 80,000 people screamed at the coaching staff to take this kid out of the game.

Yet, Dave Brandon actually believes the roughly dozen key people in charge of making the decision here all independently failed to see what 80,000 people managed to watch and react to moment by moment.

And then the medical staff, a day later, comes up with a diagnosis that Shane, indeed, was concussed. Yet they didn't tell the head coach before he went in front of the press?

Dave Brandon, that is one magic loogie.