Stephen Ross wanted Dave Brandon to stay on as AD
I guess money can't buy you everything.
I'm tempering my expectations. I am perfectly fine with 8-9 wins this season. If we can win 8-9 games and switch back to Nike, there’s a good change we haul in a top 10 recruiting class.
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Look at USC when Pete Carroll took over for Paul Hackett. Hackett's last team had finished 5-7. Carroll took over with future Heisman winner and NFL starter Carson Palmer as his starting quarterback and finished a glorious 6-6. It wasn't until after Carroll had a year to work with Palmer and the team that he Southern Cal started to win consistently again.
Part of that was that Palmer was poorly coached under Hackett and threw a lot of interceptions and was generally ineffective. Does that sound familar? Carroll eventually got him performing at a high level, but it took some time.
In the long run I think the team is in much better shape with Harbaugh, but there are too many question marks on offense for them to do markedly better than they have the last couple of years. If everybody stays healthy and progresses faster than expected, sure, it could happen. If we have some key injuries and not all players progress at the speed we'd like, it could still be a long year.
(For the record, I hate using Carroll as an example here because he was such a sleazeball at Southern Cal.)
Also worth noting that all of those things would be true AND Ohio State would be coming off a national championship. We would have been absolutely buried this offseason had we stuck with the status quo. Change was necessary, and it needed to be huge in the stratosphere of Harbaugh.
ICP in the House!
Ross is probably still friends with Brandon and for how much the MGo community dislike's Brandon, a guy like that always has friends in high places. Ross is just being nice here and humble (which is far better than him acting like his money means he has more say).
Well said.
This just goes to show that even brilliant minded businessmen can have massive lapses in judgment.
I think he had a personal relationship with Brandon and liked him, I don't know about you, but I generally would prefer for people I like to succeed at their jobs and be admired.
I think he was realistic about the situation and didn't seem to have hard feelings about any of it, not sure if there's really a story here.
Usually, when one refers to a person who "brings the house down", they're referring to a dynamite performance. Dave Brandon turned that on its head. He was incrementally bringing the Big House down, taking it apart. Incredible how quickly Hackett and HARBAUGH have begun putting it all back together.
thinking about another year with Hoke/Brandon. No thanks.
TIME TO STAND UP. no fucking way . tickets were off he just did not hack it. would be one hell of a outcome either way. even pizza does not want him.
I don't know what it is, but your profile picture makes me more irritated with your posts than I should be.
jk
That's kind of what I was going for.
Bravo...
PS: who the heck is that?
It all makes sense now.
Carry on.
He looks like every advertising creative from the late 80's. Where's your bolo tie and gringo snakeskin cowboy boots?
Well, with all due respect to Mr. Ross, I'm glad the decision wasn't left up to him. We were headed down a dark dead end with Brandon.
of ticket sales we were headed for.
It wouldn't have mattered if Ross had bought ALL the tickets. Ticket sales don't mean a thing to a team unless accompanied by passionate people in the seats. It's the energy and yes, noise of 100,000 people that gives the players the drive to go that one extra yard.
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Things are never that black and white.....probably wanted him there for reasons that may have had little to do with Michigan Athletics. Sometimes people place personal preference (alliteration!) above what is best for everyone else.
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Wonder if Ross has begun to reconsider his support for Brandon based on how things have turned around already in terms of how people view the program? If not, I wonder if he will reconsider after watching a couple seasons of football under the new regime? I suspect so.
I'm not a business major, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express recently:
SMR doesn't let emotions and feelingsball dictate how he makes decisions. He's a businessman and his decisions are based on the bottom line. If he's privvy to ticket/suite/merchandise sales numbers following the hire, perhaps he'd sing a different tune.
Of course, if he's such a supporter of DB he could always hire him to be his marketing VP for the Dolphins.
may have been the problem. Brandon is his guy, and with Ross being from the NFL and donating huge $$ of course any input he gives, DB would use. He may have helped determine some of the more "NFL-izing" actions we've seen taken.
Once DB was gone his direct line of contact was gone. I think some booster involvement can be detrimental.
"Dominoes began to fall for Brandon over the summer"
Brandon was a weenis-face.
While I obviously appreciate the donations he's made to the athletic program/University, the Dolphins haven't had a winning season since he bought the team in 2008, and he wanted to keep Dave Brandon... maybe we shouldn't be looking to him for advice on sports. Business advice, sure.
Good for him. Unfortunately, Michigan Football has a constituency that expands beyond the university's biggest donor. Ross should realize that. But it seems indicative of the culture Dave Brandon brought to the department that Ross felt that way.
Just becuase Ross wanted Brandon, doesn't mean he was willing to pull his money in order to keep him.
And for that I give Ross a lot of credit.
EDIT: meant to reply to OP.
From what I've heard about the meetings last fall, Ross didn't have to be dragged kickimg and screaming into accepting the AD change. I would not read his comments here as a kind of protest.
I think this article reiterates how blessed we are to have Ross as a supporter of the program and the University. He gives generously and doesn't (appear to) threaten to take his ball and go home if things don't go his way.
He had his ideas on what he was going to do. The fact you're a big donor doesn't give you the right to usurp them.
I remember that there were some conflicting reports of Ross' actual feelings on the matter, but it is interesting that he wanted Brandon to stay. I would imagine some donors who were focused more on the business end of the department might have felt that way, but kudos to Ross and those folks for not trying to stand in the way really too and having no real ill will about it. That being said, as someome alluded to above, I wonder how much of the department's balance sheet Ross might have seen.
Well, here's the thing: Goss was a well-liked and fairly competent guy running a department that was phenomenally and absurdly dysfunctional from top to bottom. Since Bo became AD, there was a string of nearly a decade of just terrible management and oversight. Goss didn't do himself any favors, but he also wasn't working with a whole hell of a lot.
Brandon took a functional department and tried to radically transform it into his own image--and it blew up in his face. By all accounts going in, he was a guy people tended to respect, he said and did all the right things, and once he was in the job, showed his true colors in the worst possible way.
It's apples and oranges. Two bad ADs, but two entirely different contexts.
Ross has done more for Michigan than many other donor. He didn't get in the way when we fired Brandon and he opened the door for us getting Harbaugh. No hard feelings here.
are being interviewed about college athletics. Tells you something.
Pickens at Oklahoma State, Ross at Michigan.
I was glad to read Ross didn't try to overstep his bounds and over exert his influence in this decision. Obviously money does buy access so my guess is that he didn't want to be on the wrong side of history.
Hackett has shown every sign that he is just one hell of an impressive person, as a man and as a leader of men.