A call for patience (but not calm)

"It is possible that the delay in firing Hoke is simply Brandon spending a few days lining up what he perceives to be the right person to take over on an interim basis."

Worked so well a couple years ago, why not let him do it again?

you stop asking "Who is going to take over" and "Where do we go from here."  And many times the best answer is "anywhere but here."  People who get divorces don't have the first clue how to answer those questions, but they know that remaining where they are is destructive for everybody involved and that whatever "it" is needs to end before anything else can begin.

Now, firing Hoke may not be the entire answer, in fact I am sure it is not.  I don't know where this program goes from here, and I think we are again at the point where it gets worse before it gets better.  But I think pretty much everybody is ready for that to happen at this point.  I think that your thoughts still had some merit after the Utah game, but Minnesota was the kind of all systems failure that requires actions at a program like Michigan.

And they have capable interim coaches.  There is no reason that Mattison could not coach them to the end of the season, even Nussmeier could feasibly do it.  But it has gotten to the point where nothing can happen in this environment.  They have to worry not only about losing recruits but losing players to transfer (one in particular I would already be concerned about).

Another possibility: The Regents, et. al. have reached the end of their rope with Brandon the way the rest of us have.  They have stripped his decision making authority while they try to work him out of the job.  They can't deal with Hoke until thy address the AD issues.  It may be that they are busy calling lawyers trying to figure out how to can DB without owing him alot of money -- that can take some time.  

I cannot believe for a second that even Brandon can see the cascade of negative press and think that Hoke is a viable candidate for even the rest of the season.

Why not?  From Brandon's perspective, what is the worst that will happen if Hoke stays on until the end of the year?

Unfortunately, I think Brandon will hold off until Michigan is mathematically eliminated from winning the Big Ten, which could be another 2-5 weeks. Brandon knows that he will be blamed for hiring Hoke, and will ride this out as long as he can.

While we were being "patient" in 2010, we lost Anthony Zettel, Jake Fisher, Dee Hart, and God knows how many other prospects that Hoke could have been out actively recruiting if we had the good sense to name him our new HC after the OSU game. 

The fact that Hoke was allowed to issue that bullshit statement last night and his responses during that farce of a press conference indicate that there has been a total breakdown of leadership within the athletic department. Given what we know about David Brandon, I highly doubt that there's anything going on behind the scenes. Hoke absolutely deserves to be fired immediately for that stunt, but the sad reality is that, barring intervention by Schlissel and the regents, he'll still be employed through the Ohio State game. Because this is Michigan, fergodsakes.

Leaders and Best™ 

Historically, the University has had a pretty low tolerance for bad press.  Gary Moeller got canned for a whole lot less than the firestorm Hoke is facing now.

The interim coach is already on the staff.  Mattison.  If he doesn't want to take it because of his friendship with Hoke, then Nuss.  There is no need to go outside for an interim coach.

Wasn't patience the biggest problem when transitioning from RR to Hoke? I understand your point but hope that our AD isn't "patiently" waiting for this to go from extremely terrible, to even more extremely terrible and worse and then fire Hoke in 3 months. Just do it likea bandaid, right off!

My issue is that after graduating from Michigan I worked there for a bit and the attitude was often "Michigan [the institution] does not need to answer to the masses.  We are Michigan and a top tier school thus you cannot understand why we do the things we do, because you are not smart like us."  

This leads to Michigan often abusing FOIA, HIPAA, etc when say a Doctor is found watching child porn at UMHS, etc.  This school is fucking amazing at burying stuff in dark holes in the ground as much as we like to think otherwise and believe there is a higher standard here.  

When we can't bury it we start talking about all the good we do for the state and people, the top tier services we provide, etc and make it seem as if attacking us is a bad thing because of all the good works you impact.  It's almost its own section in the Standard Practice Guide (Michigan's policy guide for things).  

There needs to be a mob, the the Regents need to start thinking this will be an actual issue with legs that might haunt them during the next election, the new President needs to see our name getting destroyed on the national news, because my personal bet is that lots of bureaucrats in both Schembechler Hall and Fleming are saying "We can talk our away out of this and bury the skeleton."  This isn't just Brandon, Brandon might be the master of this practice, but the school was honing to an art form long before he started drawing a paycheck here.  Too many people otherwise smart people get really dumb and start thinking the Block M is coated in teflon.

If you need to fire the coach immediately (we do), then you do it.  You then start asking someone (Mattison would be my first choice) to serve as interim coach.  This is not only the right procedure, it also has the benefit of making it more likely Mattison would accept as compared to if he was asked before Hoke were fired.  If Mattison says no, then ask Jackson, Moeller, maybe Nussmeier (although he is tainted too), Manning, Carr, the Ghost of Bo, whoever.  Someone will say yes.  It's better than leaving Michigan hanging out there as a national punching bag day after day.

on his poor reads and INTs. We might be undefeated and all in Happytown.

I think the best interim coach option would be if Carr came back and be the caretaker for the rest of the year. It would be the ideal transition, he could recruit with the message that he will take care of the kids and that he will still be with the program once the permanent coach is put in place. Although with the recent unfortunately news with his grandson, it is probably best to spend as much time with Chad and family as possible.

I think that if nothing improves over the next two games they will fire him during the bye week. This will give whoever the interim coach is a little extra time to adjust and develop whatever type of plan he has for the rest of the season. As for who that is, I have no idea, it would be intersting to see Nuss, just to see what he would do if Hoke wasn't around influencing the offense.