Who as a Michigan insider can we trust the most?

True insiders are all going to adhere to "the code."  It's like kayfabe; they won't reveal the secrets of the carnival to outsiders.  I am guessing most of the info so far consists of educated guesses from those who are only one degree of separation from being true insiders being passed to those another degree down the chain.

;)

Whoever tells me exactly what I want to hear. Only problem is that this changes daily.

hard to come by. Those involved with the search are rarely sources. Instead the rumors and bits of info are leaked by agents and potential candidates. There's no inside source for them as they're scattered all over. They're often self serving anyway, designed to get a raise to stay put or just to get their name out there..

Seems to trend towards whoever is giving Harbaugh to Michigan the highest probability.

It depends.  "Inside" of what?

To get inside this current staff/team, Sam is the guy.  But this staff is about to get swept out, so it'll be interesting to see what happens with Sam as a source, and we don't know who, if anyone, will have that kind of access to the next staff.

Bacon has some institutional and AD connections, but he almost certainly isn't connected to Schlissel or Hackett, and some have questioned whether Bacon tends to hear one side of multi-sided stories.

Probably no media member is connected to Schlissel or Hackett in a useful, insidery way, since Schlissel is brand new to the Michigan community and Hackett has been detached from it for some time.

Brian's run for the Board of Regents (and possible seat on the Board) could provide access to a lot of interesting information, and I'm eager to see how he handles all of that.

Then there are other ways of getting access, though the information is messier.  Some of the recruiting types (like Tom VH) have access to players, because they got to know them while covering recruiting.  Others are connected in one way or another to potential coaching candidates, though it's hard to know what to make of any information that comes from that direction.  This includes a supposedly decades-old Bacon-to-Harbaugh connection, though I can't tell whether there's a meaningful, ongoing relationship there.  (Others might know more.)  Gregg Henson seems to have access to a former player, but he likely presents his access to the program and coaching decision-making as much better than it actually is.

There's a chance that we'll be very much in the dark about this coaching search until very late in the game.

THE KNOWLEDGE.

is not going to be saying anything, or they will no longer be allowed to know anything.

Those who claim to know are at best guessing. Most are simply fishing for attention and clicks.

own personal humble perspective it doesn't seem like anyone knows anything, with the possible exception of BRIAN in his Searchbits posts ... he seems to know something about something or another. 

EDIT: And I am glad that making this pronouncement is what puts me over 1000 MGoPoints. Glad it wasn't my posting the Arizona-Utah score every so often during the Maryland game thread which got several folks surprisingly heatedly upset. 

with actual knowledge isn't talking.

There is no sportswriter, blogger, radio or tv announcer who knows anything whatsoever about this process. 

They are all blowing smoke.

The ones that are honest about it will say "I don't know anything, but" ....and then proceed to speculate without any grounds whatsoever.

The other thing to keep in mind is that none of them have ever had a position of responsibility or other experience that is even remotely comparable to the AD and HC evaluation, hiring and firing processes, so their opinions on the subject are utterly worthless.

Sam Webb

There are people who claim to have inside sources.  There are people who actually do have inside sources.  And there are the inside sources themselves.  Every one of those people has an agenda that they are pushing.

So even if information is coming from somebody who actually knows something, the fact is that person is pushing an agenda by releasing the information to the public:  they are either trying to make something happen or to keep it from happening, and putting the information out in public is often the best way to accomplish what you want. 

For a perfect example, remember the whole ESPN/Les Miles thing in December 2007:  if somebody wanted to prevent Les Miles from becoming Michigan's head coach, they could not have accomplished their purpose any more easily than by making him choose between Michigan and LSU on the day of the SEC championship game.  So somebody had an agenda, pushed some "information" (whether true or false doesn't matter) to ESPN, and kept Miles away.  Maybe it wasn't going to happen anyway, but they made sure that it didn't happen (and that it looked like Miles made the decision, not Michigan).

I trust recent history.  My conclusion is that we will, somehow, fuck this up and continue to turn into Purdue.

Everyone is bursting my Harbaugh bubble!

Why would we trust anyone? All they're trying to do is get headlines and clicks. Nobody has useful information--or at least nobody has proven so when it comes to coaching searches in the past. Boy am I looking forward to the coming months of more speculation and hypothetical threads that are already out of control.

/s

The Beaver from GBW is clearly clueless when it comes to recruiting, but I seem to remember during the 2007 and 2010 coaching searches that he was right about a few things when it came to the coaching coach.   He seems like the type of creep that will hide in bathroom stalls around campus to try to get some inside information.

I wouldnt really trust anybody because those that have "solid sources" can't talk for fear of burning a bridge. Those with no sources are obviously not to be trusted and all others (MSM) are just throwing out anything that is out there.

That said on the Rivals message board today (last night maybe) one of the mods said Les Miles is not going to be offered the job, just as Martin wouldn't and just as Brandon wouldn't Hackett will not either. I believe that to be true FWIW.

The mods said the reason was not so much stemming from the Moeller thing,  it had more to do with some sort of recruiting conference call a few years back that Bo and Brandon (!!) were on with Les and Les really pissed off the Michigan faction with whatever was said.

Anywho... onward and upward.