Question for Brian
Brian,
I am not going to call you out on your supposed "whiny" performance that everyone else is whining about. I happen to agree 100% with the site banner and DB can go eff himself for the cluster**** of a "National Search" he performed.
My Question is this:
When exactly are you going to come out and own up to the "Pimp Hand" meme that you propogated when DB was hired. You seemed so enamoured with this guy and were roasting those of us who dared he point out that his decisions have been highly dubious in his tenure.
Now that you are on the same page as us folks (who thought this guy was a slimy-politicial-blowhard-ahole), when are you going to come out an accept that you were wrong.
Side note:
I am actually encouraged by the fact that you were dead wrong about RR's pimpness (mea culpa also btw) and DB's pimpness. Maybe that means Hoke will actually be good.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:53 PM ^
I was wrong about DB. Now I know what his initials really stand for.
That is all.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:00 PM ^
Add me to the list too.
At this point, what's done is done, and I'm just ready to move past the whole coaching search debacle. Unfortunately there are slightly less than 8 months to go!
January 13th, 2011 at 1:44 PM ^
I was a blind faith believer in the pimp hand as well.
While I won't say I feel betrayed, I certainly feel misled and I believe DB has lost his credibility with the majority of the fanbase. Whether or not this is deserved or not will only be seen over time. I'm sure DB knows that if Hoke doesn't work he will be run out of town faster than anyone in recent memory.
I am as frustrated as Brian is over the whole process, beginning with firing RR and ending with Hoke, but I know that I have to move on because being mad won't get me anywhere. Not that that's easy right now.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:53 PM ^
January 13th, 2011 at 12:54 PM ^
No need to force mea culpas. We have our coach.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:59 PM ^
Can we all just get over this petty bullshit, Brian included! Obviously everyone can voice their own opinion, but 99% of you know nothing (myself included) about what went into DB's process of hiring Hoke and never will.
So since everything that has happened is out of our control and always will be, can we just support this hire and hope for the best!
In Hoke I Trust. Go Blue!
January 13th, 2011 at 2:05 PM ^
its been a couple of days and I see no results. What is taking so long?
January 13th, 2011 at 12:59 PM ^
Will you get a chance to change your MGoLog-in?
January 13th, 2011 at 12:59 PM ^
Or maybe DB did a good job and Brady Hoke was a great hire? I know thats not a popular opinion but it's what I'm going to roll with until proven otherwise.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^
Brady Hoke could be the best coach in UM history, and I will never approve of Brandon's actions these past 6 weeks.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:13 PM ^
If he truly believes that Hoke is an outstanding coach, and Hoke IS and outstanding coach, Brandon would have been putting him behind the 8 ball with the Harbaugh people who would have believed Jim was never given a shot. It would have led to yet more division.
Instead, he tried Harbaugh (who it appears backed out of a verbal agreement), when it didn't happen after the Orange Bowl and it blew up, he took 1 week to land Hoke after putting feelers out for Pinkel and Fitzgerald.
Who knows, maybe Harbaugh turning us down will be like Paterno turning us down. I've heard that Harbaugh recommended Hoke to Stanford.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:26 PM ^
Good point about the Harbaugh people. But in exchange for placating them (if that's what DB did) he alienated Hoke from the RR crowd, and probably a lot of casual fans.
At least if he had been seen as decisive and Hoke ended up winning, everyone would have been behind both Hoke and DB. Instead, an awful lot of people are expecting mediocre results from a "fourth or fifth choice" coach. In my opinion, Hoke got no favors from DB in all of this.
January 13th, 2011 at 6:34 PM ^
It's not like Rich Rod had a sparkling career at Michigan, which is why there's a Lloyd and Bo crowd. Brandon was probably least concerned about the Rich Rod crowd outside of those on the team.
In the press conference I thought Brandon made a good point about hiring someone with roots in the area. That's why a guy like Patterson probably wasn't even considered. I think alot of people who were undermining Rich Rod, wrongfully, also know that Hoke was most likely the second choice after Harbaugh. That's why there was such a crowd of former players, etc, there yesterday.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:31 PM ^
If I had to place a bet on a hiring decision or any organizational decision at all between Brandon and any of the opinions of the people on this board who have no idea what really happened, I would bet on David Brandon Every. Single. Time.
To criticize without knowledge of the facts is ignorant and arrogant.
I guess I'm just exhausted by the continual moaning on this board of people that presume they know so much because they can track an airplane or follow no name morons on twitter who are wrong 90% of the time.
Ultimately, there is one very simple fact. David Brandon is smarter than all of us. Any trashing of him should be done knowing that he has 1) Done more for our university than anybody on this board (assumes S. Ross and a few others are not contributors) and 2) Cares more about the school than any of us. And if you care to argue with number 2, I'd like to see you take an enormous pay cut to take a job where "fans" on internet message boards critique your every move.
And I'll simply close by saying that just because it is a sports message board doesn't mean we should behave like the morons on other message boards. Most of us are Michigan students or alum for christ's sake. We should act with dignity, before the term Michigan Man loses all meaning.
Probably tl;dr, but it's out of hand.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:59 PM ^
Is this the group that will be calling into WTKA and professing their desire for Michigan to lose to get a new coach?
January 13th, 2011 at 1:01 PM ^
Well I will.... oh wait you said Brian? I thought you said "Ryan".
Never mind.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:01 PM ^
I confess, I also was wrong about DB. I shall no longer refer to him as the pimp and the pimp hand is dead (not strong).
January 13th, 2011 at 1:01 PM ^
I'm positive I'll get negged for this. I have no issues with the way Dave Brandon handled the situation. He stuck with exactly what he said he was going to do and really didn't have a ton of options at his hands either.
Think about it really, if he were to fire Rodriguez after the OSU game as sooo many people think he should have, what would have happened if Michigan just walked all over Miss St? People here would all be calling for DB head for getting rid of Rodriguez.
So he did exactly what he's said he was going to do from the get go, wait for the season to end and the evaluate the situation. He did exactly that and felt that RR had to go.
A lot of fans get pissed about this because we are "hemorrhaging" recruits or more specifically that Dee Hart ended up going elsewhere. Well, if memory serves Dee pretty much flat out said that if Rich Rod got fired he wold look elsewhere... So what makes anybody think he would have stayed around if all of this happened back at the start of December? Either which way it wasn't going to make a difference (Just like Mallet really).
And the last thing people throw a fit over is the coaching search. That it took a week and we got the guy we could have gotten from the get go. Well, yeah that is how it ended up happening, but I'm not in the camp that thinks that Hoke was DB's last choice. I honestly think he did exactly what he said he did. He talked to a lot of different coaches, had some face to face meetings and picked the guy he wanted. I think he interviewed heavily both les miles and Brady Hoke and at the end of the day Brady simply interviewed better and he ended up deciding to go with him.
That's simply one simple mans view of the situation. And I also entirely understand frustration one may have with Dave Brandon too. I personally have no issues and will give his hire a chance. If his hire fails than my view of this situation will be different... I don't have that information in hand yet, so that's why I'm fine with the choice. I can tell you this much, he knows a lot more about the coaching candidates that he was going after and had a shot at than we do.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:08 PM ^
1). There is no good time to fire the coach of a college football team going to a bowl game. There may be more optimal times, but any of the choices have drawbacks.
2). Confirmation bias has the flaw that we tend to ignore the hypothetical issues that would be raised by alternatives in action.
3). As much as we want "passion" and "interest" and "information" to be the reason that a person has sway in a decision making process, it remains as it ever was, money talks. And if the money is unhappy, it doesn't come to the places you want it to hang out.
4). When faced with imperfect information, we fill in the blanks in a way that best supports our conclusions rather than taking the time to consider that what we don't know, or even the possibilities that what we don't know includes things we never even considered.
5). That liking the previous coach, thinking his dismissal was a choice driven by factors outside of football but understanding that those driving forces are louder than Xs and Os and scheme, and liking his replacement on the intangibles while still employing a strategy of watchful waiting apparently has little place on the internet.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:14 PM ^
I wholeheartedly agree with each and every point.
January 13th, 2011 at 2:32 PM ^
1. People would have been pissed, but they are also pissed now. That's irrelevant.
2. Doing what you say should come second to doing what is best.
3. It's opportunity cost. One extra month of recruiting is huge. Now we have a slim amount of time to find a half-decent recruiting class, thus possibly screwing over Brady Hoke in the future. This class was already undersized, and waiting a month nearly guarantees that it will remain that way.
4. He sure wasn't DB's last choice. He appears to be higher up on the list than a lot of better coaches. That's the issue there. Where was Patterson, Petersen, or the other successful coaches?
5. I'll give Brady Hoke a chance, because I'm a Michigan fan forever. However, Dave Brandon seems to have dithered around for a month instead of being decisive, which is what he's paid to do. There are many choices in life where any reasonable decision is better than stalling and putting it off; keeping RR or hiring Hoke is one of them.
It's entirely possible that I'm wrong, but I'll hold an opinion based on what I see, and what I see of Dave Brandon is more of a glove than a "pimp hand" (a phrase which I do not like, by the way).
January 13th, 2011 at 1:05 PM ^
Time will tell who is right and who is wrong. The reality is what it is. Brandon is the AD and Hoke is our coach. You can either get behind them or stay in the bushes and prepare for another ambush in 2-3 years.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:11 PM ^
Oh, not that Bryan
January 13th, 2011 at 1:13 PM ^
Give Brian a fucking break! Yeah, he's not infallible, and sometimes he'll hold an opinion other than the one you wish he would hold. But Brian will be fair to Hoke when it comes time to assess the team in the fall. Until then, I see no problem with him being dubious about the hire and the way it was carried out.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:15 PM ^
Look at me! I can post again!
January 13th, 2011 at 1:20 PM ^
This is MGoBlog! Brian can do and say whatever the hell he wants. The only way I can see you influencing his words is by clicking under Beveled Guilt and paying for your influence. I've grown weary of people calling this guy (who brought us all together) out.
I think he's dreamy!
January 13th, 2011 at 1:28 PM ^
and an opinion. I am amazed at some of the comments, 'Brian is too sarcastic', 'I don't like kittens or nukes' etc. Really?
Everyone here reads a blog by a guy that writes TWIS.... and his ability to be Swiftian (?) in his commentary is quite extraordinary.
For those that don't like their football analytics sprinkled with a heavy dose of sarcastic wit I wonder why you click here at all.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:40 PM ^
The idea that if Brandon was going to hire Hoke all along then he should have done it a long time ago does not fly with me. Had that been the case, then the whinefest from JH and Les lovers would have made the current round of complaints sound like a Kumbaya chorus. He hired a coach 3-1/2 days after LSU's bowl game. I'm not sure what else was feasible.
I can't believe anyone on this board could have any complaints about DB being snippy to sports reporters. It wouldn't have bothered me if he blasted the crowd with pepper spary (U of M engineering student excepted).
One thing I will judge DB on is that he needs to excercise more leadership than Bill Martin about brining people together and pruning any bad branches of the family tree. Instead of complaining that RR didn't get the same treatment, it would be better if people put more pressure on others to be better this time.
Brian has a point that there's a sense of loss by some of us that Michigan is devolving offensively. That said, I hope those most affected will get their mourning period done quickly (please). I for one choose to be cautiously optimistic and will let it go from there.
I was struck by the few words devoted on defense. For me, the biggest unknown is whether Spielman is right and the crew is Martin and a bunch of Indiana benchwarmers or whether it's terrible coaching and inexperience that doomed us this year.
Acknowledge that at least Cook can be persuaded when presented evidence (cf. discussion of Sam's recruiting column). Can you say the same?
I choose to drink the Kool Aid with eyes wide open. It's the only way I can have some fun.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:50 PM ^
I was right about DB. He never fooled me for a second. I'm an excellent judge of character and his seemed weak to me.
/s
/just saying
January 13th, 2011 at 2:39 PM ^
The original post is really, really stupid. A thread to complain about Brian getting an opinion wrong? Really? How many times have you been wrong in the various insipid comments you've posted in various threads? Try posting about several of your own errors (beyond the obvious one of making this thread) before you start creating a thread based on whining about the blogger being wrong. Maybe Brian should apologize for thinking that RR was a good hire, or that we wouldn't go 3-9, or many of the other incorrect but well-researched opinions he's espoused. Big deal.
January 13th, 2011 at 3:04 PM ^
I'll admit it: he had me fooled, too. But not when he started commenting about how he was going to better "monetize the athletic department." I have been expecting the Big House to eventually look like rather large minor league baseball park in the near future ever since.
DB has said that he would never have advertising on the field and boards of the Big House, but he also said he wasn't going to make a decision on RR until the end of the season. Basically, I don't believe anything he says anymore. I am also firmly convinced that he will be gone within a few years to pursue his "other interests."
I just hope he doesn't do too much more damage to the brand while he has his position at Michigan.
January 13th, 2011 at 8:33 PM ^
The idea that Brandon was singularly in favour of hiring Hoke is consistent with the timeline that we can observe, though you do have to ignore what Brandon actually said. It's possible that he's just bs'ing. But, the timelien is also consistent with everything that Brandon has actually said. So, what does one believe? Tater firmly thinks it's the former. As for me, not only is there not enough evidence to convict, there's not enough evidence at a much lower standard of proof. Then again, if one were arguing the opposite hypothesis, there's reasonable doubt. What I find fascinating is that people have the need to come to a conclusion. Why? I'm fine shrugging and saying "I dunno." Does that mean I simply trust anything Brandon says? No. I'll evaluate the next statement the next time he makes it.
January 13th, 2011 at 4:13 PM ^
Stop bagging on Cook, dude knows what he's doing.
January 14th, 2011 at 8:53 AM ^
The ability to sit in the peanut gallery and criticize decisions made by people in a position of authority is not exactly difficult. That being said, Cook does know how to do it.