UM Ath. Dept Paid for Skywriting on Saturday
http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2013/09/university_of_michi…
Seems to be some varying stories on whether the "Go Blue" over East Lansing was supposed to be a target or not.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:29 PM ^
I ordered Michigan meat-branding irons for my groomsmen, and when they came in the mail they were all MSU. Customer support said they had just discontinued the Michigan version, so they sent me the "next best thing." It can happen...
September 19th, 2013 at 1:45 PM ^
have a new slogan.
September 19th, 2013 at 5:08 PM ^
If you go to the boathouse for women's crew, there are gorgeous candid photos of the team. They were taking by a professional photographer that MSU hired one year, when MSU went to nationals. The photographer took all his photos of the Michigan team instead because he didn't understand the difference.
I guess when MSU refused to pay him, he made an offer to UM (or maybe he donated them, I'mn not sure).
September 19th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
1. They should have paid for it to only be done in Ann Arbor.
2. That is not a fiscally sound use of money anywhere.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:39 PM ^
Are skywriters so rare that we have to bring them in from Arizona to do this job? I guess I just find that extremely odd if that is the case.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:26 PM ^
And the kick off was delayed for some reason. No one could figure out what the delay was. Then they just went ahead with the pre-game and kick off.
Later that evening on the news they said four guys parachuted un-announced into the Duke football game with UNC chutes. They jumped into the wrong stadium.
So, it would not surprise me if some dudes from Oregon mistook a football stadium in East Lansing for a football stadium in Ann Arbor.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:38 PM ^
Durham and Chapel Hill are like 10 miles apart. East Lansing and Ann Arbor are 60 miles apart.
September 19th, 2013 at 3:47 PM ^
...but when you're flying an airplane, it's a totally different sense of scale up there. The difference between 10 miles and 60 miles isn't nearly as obvious as it is from the ground.
Although I think the skywriting is stupid, I'll concede that it is possible that the writing near Lansing was a mistake of ignorance by non-sports fan pilots...especially if they were tasked to write a bunch of things over the southern half of the state.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:56 PM ^
If a parachute lands in a stadium and no one is there to see it, did it happen?
September 19th, 2013 at 2:00 PM ^
First, they're pilots -- they better have an idea of what SE MI is.
Yeah, but they're not, like, commercial airline pilots. Their job doesn't involve having to be intimately familiar with the nation's regions and airports. I think "SE Michigan" is sort of like "northern Virginia" - if someone says they're from northern Virginia, they always mean the DC area, never some place like Winchester which is also in the northern part of the state.
Regardless, writing GO BLUE in the sky all over the state is a really lousy use of money. Whether it's in Lansing or Southfield.
September 19th, 2013 at 2:02 PM ^
Especially if it's the AD funding it. You tell them "oh, don't do it over Spartan Stadium, by the way." It's not that hard.
The AD keeps making these "mistakes", it makes them seem incredibly incompetent and greedy. How that thought could not have occurred at any point is...well, amazing, really. I don't blame the pilots necessarily, they're the ones performing a job givena set of instructions. The guys who give out the instructions are to blame.
And really...how freaking embarassing would it have been if Akron had completed their last pass? Really.
Edit: Not to mention this is a gross misuse of athletic funds, if the AD did fund it. Which is even more baffling to me.
September 19th, 2013 at 2:11 PM ^
Especially if it's the AD funding it. You tell them "oh, don't do it over Spartan Stadium, by the way." It's not that hard.
Stipulated. Incompetence is a very reasonable explanation. I doubt the department actively decided to troll Spartan Stadium. Brandon thinks like a CEO, not a fan, and it takes thinking like a fan to do something like that on purpose.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:05 PM ^
It would be pretty funny if a Sparty alum pays up for a skywriter to do "Go Green" but it's during our bye week or a road game so no one sees it.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:38 PM ^
You can't post this enough.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:51 PM ^
Why didn't DB pay for the guy to spell this!!!! That would have been hilarious!
September 19th, 2013 at 2:17 PM ^
Someone get this guy more than 11 points.
September 19th, 2013 at 8:14 PM ^
September 19th, 2013 at 3:38 PM ^
Go Blue!
September 20th, 2013 at 10:13 AM ^
nice work!
September 19th, 2013 at 1:09 PM ^
There's just no reason for childish shit like this. What an embarassment. It's like a drunk frat boy is running the AD.
I'd get it if we were PLAYING there. Then it would make sense.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:14 PM ^
It is a well known fact that former bros run this world.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:49 PM ^
would agree.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:25 PM ^
Yes completely lame. I get that UM is overflowing with money out of every orifice but rather than doing stupid things like this give $1500 to a deserving non scholarship student-athlete to help pay for those sky high tuition costs that are pricing out many of our middle class. This just looks bad and childish... and the karma almost got us. Pathetic.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:47 PM ^
September 19th, 2013 at 2:23 PM ^
the scholarship is not based upon athletics ability and it is given to someone who was not recruited as a high schooler, it doesn't count against scholarship limits.
The athletics department routinely transfers in excess of $1 million of its annual surplus into the General Fund for exactly that purpose.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:51 PM ^
September 19th, 2013 at 1:54 PM ^
Also, who gives a damn? Would it have been better if M was playing in East Lansing? Absolutely. It happened and the AD didn't tell the pilot to do it over East Lansing.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:10 PM ^
Fire Dave Brandon.
Yes, I'm goddamn serious, and yes I know this post would get downvoted to oblivion if the voting thing was still around. All my student ticket prices went up for this garbage??? Infuriating.
I look forward to the day he's no longer our athletic director.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:13 PM ^
What'd I do to you?
September 19th, 2013 at 1:30 PM ^
Brandon should take his clown show elsewhere. Maybe a minor league baseball team would be a good fit.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:32 PM ^
It may have cost everyone $0.03.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
It's not the cost, it's the thought process.
"Gee we need some more money, let's bump up the student prices again."
"Well now that we have the money, Mr. Brandon, what should we spend it on?"
"...let's go write shit over Spartan Stadium. Yeah. Let's do that."
"Really Mr. Brandon? Why not use that money on something that benefits our student athletes or the fans? There are many other things we could do."
"Nope. We're going to go with writing shit over Spartan Stadium. Wow experience right there."
September 19th, 2013 at 2:27 PM ^
to make sure that students would feel invested enough to use the tickets.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:40 PM ^
10 cents?
Which sounds like a better usage of funds?
September 19th, 2013 at 2:09 PM ^
Time for Dave to take "the future" elsewhere. I will eat Domino's pizza exclusively for the rest of my life if they'd just take him back. And I LOVE Cottage Inn.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:12 PM ^
If the AD literally paid money to make this happen then someone should step down or be axed. And I never say that sort of thing. I truly believe this is an embarrassing misuse of donor funds. Gross.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:24 PM ^
September 19th, 2013 at 1:16 PM ^
Would have been nice for Dave Brandon to pay this Suzanne Asbury-Olivery person a little bit extra to keep her mouth shut and not talk to the media about it.
And I see 20,000 got raised for cancer awareness for the direct result of this. If I were DB, I'd make a statement saying it was the master-plan to get Sparty so fired up that they'd do something like this, therefore the UofM will be taking credit for this money.
September 19th, 2013 at 2:47 PM ^
September 19th, 2013 at 1:17 PM ^
If I had to guess, I would think that this might be something related to ongoing dares /pranking between the two Athletic departments. Like how MSU got a Domino's franchise to spell out an "S" on a pizza in green olives for their annual golf outing last year.
Obviously the pizza thing is smaller scale, but you get the idea. These guys like to mess with each other.
I'm not saying this from personal knowledge, it's just that my spidey senses are tingling. I doubt our athletic department would pull something like this without an interesting motivation. I suspect there is a backstory, probably one that goes very high up, and that we won't ever hear about, unfortunately.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:42 PM ^
If it had been revealed it came out of Dave Brandon's own pocket. But for the department to do it? The money would have been better spent on golf lessons for the staff so they could actually win one of those things.
September 19th, 2013 at 4:10 PM ^
Green olives on pizza? Gross.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:18 PM ^
Next time this happens I hope some deranged State fan does not try to shoot down the plane.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:20 PM ^
This makes that whole seat cushion thing seem rather inconsequential now doesnt it.......
Wow. Truly mind-numbingly stupid use of funds. And pretty dickish to boot.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:31 PM ^
First the chicken dance now this?
Bush league crap from the Ath Dept. Yay Dave Brandon.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
The chicken dance is a little different. It was in our house during the week of the actual game and we just beat them. If they played it after a loss that would have been embarrasing.
September 19th, 2013 at 1:43 PM ^
This was pointless.