IIRC Jace came in as a walk-on. He might have been on scholarship last year because we were a couple under the 13 limit but pretty sure he's not on a four year deal.
This is stupid. How can we be considered a repeat offender when we haven't even been found guilty of anything once? We just received our notice of infractions on the 2020 stuff in December and have yet to submit our response. Idk why anyone would listen to a podcast by such idiots.
No, they didn't. All the top coaches in the country have 10 year deals at $10+ million per year. They offered Jim a 7 year deal. And they offered him that a year too late. They waited until after Jim beat OSU and won the B1G for the third straight season and went on to win the CFP. Where was this offer after the 2022 season? Especially following the Rich Rod and Brady Hoke years, Warde didn't think beating OSU, winning the B1G and making the CFP for two years in a row was impressive enough to pay him as a top tier coach in the country? And it's not like Jim beat OSU and PSU three years in a row because they were having "down" seasons. He beat them at the top of their games. How could Warde not see how impressive that was and bend over backwards to make him feel wanted and keep him from leaving?
Why did President Ono have to step in a year ago to convince Jim to even return for the 2023 season? That's supposed to be the AD's job. In fact, at Michigan, it's arguably his most important job. Yet Warde totally dropped the ball, bickering over buyouts and other contract language to the point he never got an extension done at all. And as the University of Michigan Atletic Director, Warde Manuel barely had a relationship with his football coach by the end. Let that sink in. How is that acceptable?
Whatever Michigan offered Jim in late 2023 or early 2024 was a dollar short and a day late. That's not how you do "everything possible" to keep a championship caliber coach you really want to keep. It's a CYA move you make to minimize the fallout once you realize you've overplayed your hand and are likely to lose the best football coach in the country, a coach you didn't even hire but were extremely fortunate to inherit from the prior administration.
This is a cop out. It's Ono's responsibility to oversee Warde. And he is dragging his feet on doing that. Have you seen our baseball and softball teams lately? Neither will make the post season again this year. Warde gutted the volleyball program with the sudden firing of Mark Rosen with absolutely no explanation. Fortunately, ice hockey is going to barely squeak into the post season, but it's possible the program is at the very beginning of the same slow slide we have seen with every other sport except football over the past few years. Defense has declined steadily two years in a row and we are now down to 4th place out of 7 teams in the conference. Men's basketball missed the NCAA last year and literally set a record for dysfunction this year. And that leaves football, where we just lost the best coach in the country along with half the staff. At what point do people stop saying these are all out of Warde's control? Really, there was nothing he could do? If so, why is he paid $1.5 million per year (and apparently has been pushing for a raise and extension)? And have you noticed Warde usually just promotes an assistant coach at a fraction of the salary every time one of our best coaches leaves or is fired? He rarely even undertakes an official search for the best possible replacement. That alone should raise some concerns, don't you think?
Michigan is a top 5 athletic department at worst. We deserve one of the best athletic directors in the country, especially with all the significant changes in college athletics currently taking place (conference realignment, NIL, transfer portal, student athletes likely becoming employees). Can people here honestly say Warde is the guy you want shepherding the University of Michigan Athletic Department through the many critical decisions that need to be made over the next five years? Hell, do you even want him in charge of hiring the next men's basketball or baseball coach? He's the poster child for the Peter Principle. Is it really necessary to wait until he oversees the regression of the football program back to the Rich Rod and Brady Hoke years before we demand President Ono take action? I sincerely hope not, but that seems to be where we are. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck.
If President Ono had fired Warde a year ago, when he should have, no one would be calling for Warde to be fired now. We might even still have Jim Harbaugh & Co. plugging away in Schembechler Hall instead of in San Die ... oh, sorry, Los Angeles.
The truly sad thing is, no matter how bad things get across the board in Michigan athletics, it seems very likely we all will be having this same exact conversation a year from now because Santa Ono appears to believe everything is running like a well oiled machine. Can anyone name one thing Santa Ono has done that has made the University of Michigan better today than when he arrived? He's great on social media and showing up to take selfies with the one or two athletic programs that are still winning, but other than that he's pretty much AWOL when tough decisions need to be made. Warde needs to go ... and IMO President Ono has been a major disappointment so far.
I think he's a taller version of Russell Wilson. He's a natural leader. He's tough. He has a very strong arm and tight spiral that gets the ball from point A to point B quickly. He's an extremely efficient passer who rarely throws an interception. He had good yet not elite WRs in college. He can run for a first down on almost any play, but rarely does that. He uses his legs primarily as a threat to buy time and put defenders in a bind. You have to spy him on most plays and that takes away a defender. And he's smart. He will threaten to run to freeze a LB or S then throw to the guy that defender is supposed to be covering. Like Wilson, JJ is also sneaky good at ducking incoming pass rushers at the last second to avoid a sack.
One other similarity is both Wilson and McCarthy came to the NFL from pro style teams with great OL and run games. They didn't come from spread offenses where the QB took all the snaps from the shotgun and just threw bubble screens and quick outs to the flats. Both learned the proper footwork and timing to drop back and get their heads up and read the defense very quickly. Both used a lot of play action. Both also targeted their TEs frequently.
Three obvious differences are: (1) JJ is much taller; (2) JJ is much younger and less experienced; and (3) Wilson threw a better deep ball coming out of college. IMO the deep ball thing is closely related to lack of experience. JJ has only been a starter for two seasons in college during which he averaged about 20 passes per game. How many of those throws were over 20 yards in the air? He just needs more live reps. Wilson was a fifth year guy who threw a lot before he even transferred to Wisconsin. Give JJ two years in the NFL (he's young at barely 21) and he will be one of the most dangerous QBs in the league.
The crux of the problem with all of these proposals with autobids and guaranteed seeding is no one has any faith in the CFP Selection Committee. They have very little faith the right teams will get in and even less faith the teams will be seeded properly. And this is not because the committee is incompetent or corrupt. It's because it's a nearly impossible task. Schedules vary so much within conferences let alone between conferences, how is anyone supposed to know with any certainty whether an 11-1 Louisville is better than a 10-2 Michigan or even a 9-3 Georgia? Of course, the lack of confidence in the committee was only compounded by their decision to leave a 13-0 P5 champion FSU out this past year. Unless someone can come up with a fairly objective method of ranking the teams, the B1G and SEC (and their media partners who are paying billions per year to televise them) are going to want insurance. And the insurance they are asking for right now is in the form of autobids and guaranteed seeding.
This is for 2026 and beyond, so the B1G and SEC will likely have picked apart the ACC by then. If ND, FSU, CLEM and MIA are all in the P2 by 2026, why would the ACC deserve two autobids? You could make the argument they will barely deserve one. And if those four schools are split equally between the B1G and SEC, the P2 conferences are likely to get a minimum of three and probably more bids every year regardless of whether they are autobids or at large bids.
One solution: let the conferences have their own 4 team playoffs at the end of the regular season to choose their own conference champions. And reduce the CFP from 12 to 8, with the P4 champions each getting an autobid and handing out 4 at large bids for the next four highest ranked teams. If you start the regular season one week earlier (ie Week 0), you can play the conference semis over Thanksgiving weekend and the conference finals the following weekend, which is exactly when the conference finals are played now. Move the Orange, Fiesta, Peach and Cotton Bowls up to Christmas weekend and use them for the CFP quarterfinals and then use the Rose and Sugar Bowls for the CFP semis over New Year's weekend. The overall season schedule barely changes from what it is now.
So was USC's OL. Williams spent the entire season scrambling for his life. He's incredibly talented but I also believe the hype is way overblown.
Fwiw I think JJ will turn out to be the best NFL QB out of the six. He's the youngest and has had the least number of starts in college (by a large margin vs all but Williams and Maye). And I think Maye is overrated because people look at his size and immediately claim he will be Josh Allen 2.0. That's lazy and overly simplistic. It rarely works out like that.
I also really, really like Jayden Daniels. He's two years older and has many more college starts than JJ, which means he might be more NFL ready as a rookie. But if you draft JJ and he pans out as a top tier franchise QB, you likely get two more productive years with him over the course of his career and he might actually have more developmental upside.
Mike Bohn was subsequently hired away from Cincy by USC, where he lured Lincoln Riley away from OU with a 10 year, $100+ million contract. And he got Caleb Williams and a bunch of OU's other top players as a bonus. Pretty sure he wouldn't have let Erik Bakich walk without a fight.
The Michigan AD generates $220 million in revenues every year. That's more than all but two or three schools in the country. My dog could balance that budget.
Warde didn't win any of those titles. The coaches and players did (and major donors like Stephen Ross who together donated over $160 million under Brandon/Hackett to substantially upgrade virtually all the olympic sports' facilities). Talk about a guy born on third base!! Warde inherited the greatest collection of major sport head coaches in Michigan history and all but one is gone. And in pretty much every sport in which he failed to retain those coaches - Basketball, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Volleyball, Swimming?, Tennis? - we've regressed substantially. The one major sport that is still thriving is football, but this cluster**** of a transition doesn't bode well for that sport going forward either. Sorry, but facts are stubborn things. And the facts are this is Warde Manuel's record. He needs to go.
1. If by "very rich business people" you mean Warde Manuel who will soon have earned close to $10 million plus a very lucrative retirement package during his tenure as the AD at UM, you might be onto something.
2. Santa Ono hired Mike Bohn as AD at Cincy who in turn hired Luke Fickell and supported him with an unprecedented pool for assistant coaches and staff and significant upgrades to facilities. The result was five highly successful seasons which included two conferemce titles and the selection to the CFP in 2021. And that helped make Cincy attractive enough to get an invite into a P5 conference. Not too shabby IYAM.
Don't jinx it. KBA is the only one left. And I have zero faith Warde Manuel has a well thought out strategy to keep her if a school that really wants her comes calling hard. Warde's plan basically consists of waiting until it happens and then claiming there was nothing he could do. Oh, and then promoting one of her assistants at half the salary.
We seem to be coming at this from 180 different perspectives. You think Warde is doing a great job and there is no crisis. I think the exact opposite.
But please don't credit Warde for record revenues and barely balancing the budget. Revenues have skyrocketed under Warde for two reasons: skyrocketing tv revenues and Jim Harbaugh beating OSU, winning the B1G and making the CFP the past three years. Winning puts butts in the seats and enables you to raise ticket prices. And the opposite happens when you lose (see the Rich Rod era). Fwiw OSU just announced enormous jumps in revenues the past two years (they have soared to around $280 million as of latest). They are literally leaving us in the dust. We used to be $10-$20 million behind them. If our latest budget projections prove accurate, we will soon announce we have hit $220 million. Sounds like a lot, but we are not keeping up. That's a $60 million gap. We are steadily falling behind.
Agree. And it doesn't have to be done all in one year. Launch an NIL endowment fundraising campaign to raise $100 million over several years. Once the NIL endowment is built, it could easily generate $5+ million per year toward NIL. It wouldn't meet all our NIL needs, but would cover a large part of it. And that's the problem right now. We are not proactive enough. We need to start planning several years ahead instead of just scrambling to put out the latest fire.
Oh, c'mon. Ceding power? Guys like Ross already wield tremendous power and influence at UM. And then there are the tv networks like Fox. Have you been asleep for the past 20 years? I am not talking about ceding any more power than they already have, but simply accepting some desperately needed help. If UM allowed Ross to bankroll Harbaugh's new contract or the retention of guys like Elston and Herbert, would you be saying the same thing? Or when Ross donated $100 million to the athletic department to fund all the south campus athletics campus projects?
Ross is a businessman. He's probably fired plenty of people over the years he considered friends. Nothing personal, just business.
But if you are correct, if Warde is tied to the hip with Ross, why isn't he stepping in to help him? Keep Warde as AD, but send him someone to help him out. If anything, your point makes it even more confusing that Ross is just sitting by and watching Warde go down in flames.
I understand. Then again, maybe the current situation can be used to change minds. OSU was dragging their feet a bit on NIL too ... until they lost to us for the third year in a row and watched us go on to win the national championship. Then the floodgates suddenly opened. Michigan alumni have plenty of money and we have quite a few large boosters. It pains me to say it, but it's time to take a page out of the OSU playbook.
True, but he hasn't donated hundreds of millions to UM over the years for no reason. And from what I hear, he was willing to commit a ton of money to help fund Jim Harbaugh's contract extension. So UM and UM athletics must be somewhere on his short list of priorities. But you might be right. I might be the only person who thinks this is a crisis. I sincerely hope that's not the case.
Although I don't think it's essential, Stephen Ross has plenty of people with experience in athletics, football even. He owns the Miami Dolphins. And he's not Michigan's only mega-successful alum/booster. I find it unbelievable that none of them have within their organizations or know of anyone who could step in and clean up this mess. That's what they do for a living at this point in their careers ... hire the best people to run their various businesses. This is not a football or even an athletics crisis. It's a management crisis.
NCAA going down again. They just don't seem to get it. They are effectively a monopoly. You can't abuse your market power as a monopoly. It's antitrust 101. Restricting player transfers is an impermissible restraint of trade. Restricting NIL is an impermissible restraint of trade. Wait until someone challenges the fundamental student/athlete requirements, e.g. a player is limited to 4 years in a 5 year window. Guess what ... also very likely an impermissible restraint of trade.
Peter Principle. And Ono should have seen this a year ago, when he had to step in and smooth things over with Jim last February. Part of this is on Ono.
This all should have been thought out months ago. Even Sherrone should have had a list of 10 guys at each position he would want to go after as assistants in his desk drawer. He knew he was on the very short list for the UM job if Jim left and he also knew he would probably get a HC job somewhere else soon if Jim stayed. I am giving him a pass because it's his first rodeo as a HC and he's young, but that is why Warde needed to be double prepared to assist Sherrone. He should have been meeting with Sherrone regularly over the past few months to help him prepare for this contingency and he should have opened the checkbook a bit wider to keep critical guys like Herbert and Elston
This transition has been a failure on so many levels is hard to process. What have all these people been doing the past 6-12 months? Isn't there anyone at all in the athletic department competent enough to see this slow motion trainwreck coming and capable of steering Warde in the right direction? What about Ono? And the regents? And HR? Communications/PR? Did absolutely no one see how unprepared Michigan was for this? Jim Harbaugh nearly left three other times. How in the world could we be so unprepared and absolutely no one notice?
How about Gloria Nevarez? I've heard great things about her. She's MWC Commissiomer, but with things rapidly moving to P2 and everyone else maybe she would see it as a step up? Also, throw money at her if need be. And why does it have to be a sitting college sports administrator? What about someone from business like a younger Jim Hackett?
Unfortunately, at this point Ono is probably going to wait unti the NCAA investigation into the Connor Stalion matter is completed and maybe even until UM has received at least a draft notice or have a negotiated settlement. It would be risky to can Warde right now. But once that happens, I think Ono will act. Warde has about 26 months left on his existing contract. I expect the NCAA thing to be resolved by the end of this year and Warde to announce his retirement shortly thereafter. I don't think Warde wants to be the guy who has to fire Juwan Howard.
Warde didn't win the championship. The football coaches and players did that. If anything, they won despite Warde. Michigan should not be behind just about every other major program in NIL (football and basketball too). And Jim Harbaugh should have received a $10+ million extension A YEAR AGO!! Warde dragged his feet over buyouts and other language and let the entire year go by with no extension. And then leaked out whiney stories when Jim wouldn't suddenly sign one after he beat OSU and won the B1G for the third year in a row. He tried to make it seem like it was all Jim Harbaugh's fault. Who would want to work for a sneaky slimebag like that? Warde is an incompetent buffoon as an AD and is way overdue for being fired.
Well, the football program is the only program that was firing on all cylinders the past 2-3 years. Maybe that's what Strack meant, ie Harbaugh was the thing holding the football program together. And now that he's gone, football is at risk of going the same way baseball, softball, volleyball, basketball, etc have gone.
There's a simple solution. I have hired people for decades. Decide who you want and pay them enough to stay. Period. This is a fragile time for Michigan football. It's a transition to a new head coach, a guy who has never been a HC before. We all want him to be successful, but it's pretty much a crap shoot. If you were Mike Elston or Steve Clinkscale (or Minter, Herbert, et al), would you feel more secure tying your future to Jim Harbaugh or Sherrone Moore? Michigan might have to "overpay" a bit. Call it combat pay if you want. You just saved about 7 million per year on the head coach. Overpay to keep who you want. This is a Warde Manuel problem not a Sherrone Moore problem. Pay Herbert 2 million per year. Pay Minter $3.0+ million if need be. Pay them all. Or lose them.
And you tell them "no". You keep Herbert and let anyone else who wants to walk, walk. Can you name even one of them? Warde already lost Jon Sanderson. And now Herbert. But lucky us, we still have whoever is in charge of S&C for field hockey. Yaaay!!
Then Warde should be fired for hiring the wrong coach. If Warde believes DeBoer, Lanning and Fisch are worth nearly 2x what Moore is worth, why did he hire Moore? Doesn't he believe Michigan deserves a top 5 coach in the country? Go hire DeBoer, Lanning or Fisch, then. Or someone in that tier. That's the problem here. Warde is cheap. It's the same reason we lost Bakich. And hired Juwan Howard for $1.2 million per year!!
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IIRC Jace came in as a walk-on. He might have been on scholarship last year because we were a couple under the 13 limit but pretty sure he's not on a four year deal.
Bring Brandon Graham home.
Butt kissing just jumped the shark.
This is stupid. How can we be considered a repeat offender when we haven't even been found guilty of anything once? We just received our notice of infractions on the 2020 stuff in December and have yet to submit our response. Idk why anyone would listen to a podcast by such idiots.
No, they didn't. All the top coaches in the country have 10 year deals at $10+ million per year. They offered Jim a 7 year deal. And they offered him that a year too late. They waited until after Jim beat OSU and won the B1G for the third straight season and went on to win the CFP. Where was this offer after the 2022 season? Especially following the Rich Rod and Brady Hoke years, Warde didn't think beating OSU, winning the B1G and making the CFP for two years in a row was impressive enough to pay him as a top tier coach in the country? And it's not like Jim beat OSU and PSU three years in a row because they were having "down" seasons. He beat them at the top of their games. How could Warde not see how impressive that was and bend over backwards to make him feel wanted and keep him from leaving?
Why did President Ono have to step in a year ago to convince Jim to even return for the 2023 season? That's supposed to be the AD's job. In fact, at Michigan, it's arguably his most important job. Yet Warde totally dropped the ball, bickering over buyouts and other contract language to the point he never got an extension done at all. And as the University of Michigan Atletic Director, Warde Manuel barely had a relationship with his football coach by the end. Let that sink in. How is that acceptable?
Whatever Michigan offered Jim in late 2023 or early 2024 was a dollar short and a day late. That's not how you do "everything possible" to keep a championship caliber coach you really want to keep. It's a CYA move you make to minimize the fallout once you realize you've overplayed your hand and are likely to lose the best football coach in the country, a coach you didn't even hire but were extremely fortunate to inherit from the prior administration.
This is a cop out. It's Ono's responsibility to oversee Warde. And he is dragging his feet on doing that. Have you seen our baseball and softball teams lately? Neither will make the post season again this year. Warde gutted the volleyball program with the sudden firing of Mark Rosen with absolutely no explanation. Fortunately, ice hockey is going to barely squeak into the post season, but it's possible the program is at the very beginning of the same slow slide we have seen with every other sport except football over the past few years. Defense has declined steadily two years in a row and we are now down to 4th place out of 7 teams in the conference. Men's basketball missed the NCAA last year and literally set a record for dysfunction this year. And that leaves football, where we just lost the best coach in the country along with half the staff. At what point do people stop saying these are all out of Warde's control? Really, there was nothing he could do? If so, why is he paid $1.5 million per year (and apparently has been pushing for a raise and extension)? And have you noticed Warde usually just promotes an assistant coach at a fraction of the salary every time one of our best coaches leaves or is fired? He rarely even undertakes an official search for the best possible replacement. That alone should raise some concerns, don't you think?
Michigan is a top 5 athletic department at worst. We deserve one of the best athletic directors in the country, especially with all the significant changes in college athletics currently taking place (conference realignment, NIL, transfer portal, student athletes likely becoming employees). Can people here honestly say Warde is the guy you want shepherding the University of Michigan Athletic Department through the many critical decisions that need to be made over the next five years? Hell, do you even want him in charge of hiring the next men's basketball or baseball coach? He's the poster child for the Peter Principle. Is it really necessary to wait until he oversees the regression of the football program back to the Rich Rod and Brady Hoke years before we demand President Ono take action? I sincerely hope not, but that seems to be where we are. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck.
If President Ono had fired Warde a year ago, when he should have, no one would be calling for Warde to be fired now. We might even still have Jim Harbaugh & Co. plugging away in Schembechler Hall instead of in San Die ... oh, sorry, Los Angeles.
The truly sad thing is, no matter how bad things get across the board in Michigan athletics, it seems very likely we all will be having this same exact conversation a year from now because Santa Ono appears to believe everything is running like a well oiled machine. Can anyone name one thing Santa Ono has done that has made the University of Michigan better today than when he arrived? He's great on social media and showing up to take selfies with the one or two athletic programs that are still winning, but other than that he's pretty much AWOL when tough decisions need to be made. Warde needs to go ... and IMO President Ono has been a major disappointment so far.
I think he's a taller version of Russell Wilson. He's a natural leader. He's tough. He has a very strong arm and tight spiral that gets the ball from point A to point B quickly. He's an extremely efficient passer who rarely throws an interception. He had good yet not elite WRs in college. He can run for a first down on almost any play, but rarely does that. He uses his legs primarily as a threat to buy time and put defenders in a bind. You have to spy him on most plays and that takes away a defender. And he's smart. He will threaten to run to freeze a LB or S then throw to the guy that defender is supposed to be covering. Like Wilson, JJ is also sneaky good at ducking incoming pass rushers at the last second to avoid a sack.
One other similarity is both Wilson and McCarthy came to the NFL from pro style teams with great OL and run games. They didn't come from spread offenses where the QB took all the snaps from the shotgun and just threw bubble screens and quick outs to the flats. Both learned the proper footwork and timing to drop back and get their heads up and read the defense very quickly. Both used a lot of play action. Both also targeted their TEs frequently.
Three obvious differences are: (1) JJ is much taller; (2) JJ is much younger and less experienced; and (3) Wilson threw a better deep ball coming out of college. IMO the deep ball thing is closely related to lack of experience. JJ has only been a starter for two seasons in college during which he averaged about 20 passes per game. How many of those throws were over 20 yards in the air? He just needs more live reps. Wilson was a fifth year guy who threw a lot before he even transferred to Wisconsin. Give JJ two years in the NFL (he's young at barely 21) and he will be one of the most dangerous QBs in the league.
Uh oh ... someone posted something on mgoblog that wasn't pre-approved by the mgoblog cult. Off with his head!!
The crux of the problem with all of these proposals with autobids and guaranteed seeding is no one has any faith in the CFP Selection Committee. They have very little faith the right teams will get in and even less faith the teams will be seeded properly. And this is not because the committee is incompetent or corrupt. It's because it's a nearly impossible task. Schedules vary so much within conferences let alone between conferences, how is anyone supposed to know with any certainty whether an 11-1 Louisville is better than a 10-2 Michigan or even a 9-3 Georgia? Of course, the lack of confidence in the committee was only compounded by their decision to leave a 13-0 P5 champion FSU out this past year. Unless someone can come up with a fairly objective method of ranking the teams, the B1G and SEC (and their media partners who are paying billions per year to televise them) are going to want insurance. And the insurance they are asking for right now is in the form of autobids and guaranteed seeding.
This is for 2026 and beyond, so the B1G and SEC will likely have picked apart the ACC by then. If ND, FSU, CLEM and MIA are all in the P2 by 2026, why would the ACC deserve two autobids? You could make the argument they will barely deserve one. And if those four schools are split equally between the B1G and SEC, the P2 conferences are likely to get a minimum of three and probably more bids every year regardless of whether they are autobids or at large bids.
One solution: let the conferences have their own 4 team playoffs at the end of the regular season to choose their own conference champions. And reduce the CFP from 12 to 8, with the P4 champions each getting an autobid and handing out 4 at large bids for the next four highest ranked teams. If you start the regular season one week earlier (ie Week 0), you can play the conference semis over Thanksgiving weekend and the conference finals the following weekend, which is exactly when the conference finals are played now. Move the Orange, Fiesta, Peach and Cotton Bowls up to Christmas weekend and use them for the CFP quarterfinals and then use the Rose and Sugar Bowls for the CFP semis over New Year's weekend. The overall season schedule barely changes from what it is now.
So was USC's OL. Williams spent the entire season scrambling for his life. He's incredibly talented but I also believe the hype is way overblown.
Fwiw I think JJ will turn out to be the best NFL QB out of the six. He's the youngest and has had the least number of starts in college (by a large margin vs all but Williams and Maye). And I think Maye is overrated because people look at his size and immediately claim he will be Josh Allen 2.0. That's lazy and overly simplistic. It rarely works out like that.
I also really, really like Jayden Daniels. He's two years older and has many more college starts than JJ, which means he might be more NFL ready as a rookie. But if you draft JJ and he pans out as a top tier franchise QB, you likely get two more productive years with him over the course of his career and he might actually have more developmental upside.
The only person Warde appears to have no problem negotiating lucrative contracts for is himself.
#FireWardeNow!!
#FireOnoNow!!
https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2021/02/warde-manuels-new-michigan-contract-includes-huge-compensation-bump.html
Mike Bohn was subsequently hired away from Cincy by USC, where he lured Lincoln Riley away from OU with a 10 year, $100+ million contract. And he got Caleb Williams and a bunch of OU's other top players as a bonus. Pretty sure he wouldn't have let Erik Bakich walk without a fight.
It's early.
Exactly how I feel about Warde's continued employment as UM AD. Please make it stop!!
Lol ... can you imagine Warde in charge of the rebellion?
There's a very simple wat to make it stop ... Fire Warde Now!!
The Michigan AD generates $220 million in revenues every year. That's more than all but two or three schools in the country. My dog could balance that budget.
Maybe they need to be fired too.
So was the Titannic.
Or a civil case for fraudulently impersonating an athletic director.
Warde didn't win any of those titles. The coaches and players did (and major donors like Stephen Ross who together donated over $160 million under Brandon/Hackett to substantially upgrade virtually all the olympic sports' facilities). Talk about a guy born on third base!! Warde inherited the greatest collection of major sport head coaches in Michigan history and all but one is gone. And in pretty much every sport in which he failed to retain those coaches - Basketball, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Volleyball, Swimming?, Tennis? - we've regressed substantially. The one major sport that is still thriving is football, but this cluster**** of a transition doesn't bode well for that sport going forward either. Sorry, but facts are stubborn things. And the facts are this is Warde Manuel's record. He needs to go.
1. If by "very rich business people" you mean Warde Manuel who will soon have earned close to $10 million plus a very lucrative retirement package during his tenure as the AD at UM, you might be onto something.
2. Santa Ono hired Mike Bohn as AD at Cincy who in turn hired Luke Fickell and supported him with an unprecedented pool for assistant coaches and staff and significant upgrades to facilities. The result was five highly successful seasons which included two conferemce titles and the selection to the CFP in 2021. And that helped make Cincy attractive enough to get an invite into a P5 conference. Not too shabby IYAM.
Someone needs to tell Michigan that "hope" is not a strategy.
Hope is not a strategy.
Don't jinx it. KBA is the only one left. And I have zero faith Warde Manuel has a well thought out strategy to keep her if a school that really wants her comes calling hard. Warde's plan basically consists of waiting until it happens and then claiming there was nothing he could do. Oh, and then promoting one of her assistants at half the salary.
We seem to be coming at this from 180 different perspectives. You think Warde is doing a great job and there is no crisis. I think the exact opposite.
But please don't credit Warde for record revenues and barely balancing the budget. Revenues have skyrocketed under Warde for two reasons: skyrocketing tv revenues and Jim Harbaugh beating OSU, winning the B1G and making the CFP the past three years. Winning puts butts in the seats and enables you to raise ticket prices. And the opposite happens when you lose (see the Rich Rod era). Fwiw OSU just announced enormous jumps in revenues the past two years (they have soared to around $280 million as of latest). They are literally leaving us in the dust. We used to be $10-$20 million behind them. If our latest budget projections prove accurate, we will soon announce we have hit $220 million. Sounds like a lot, but we are not keeping up. That's a $60 million gap. We are steadily falling behind.
Agree. And it doesn't have to be done all in one year. Launch an NIL endowment fundraising campaign to raise $100 million over several years. Once the NIL endowment is built, it could easily generate $5+ million per year toward NIL. It wouldn't meet all our NIL needs, but would cover a large part of it. And that's the problem right now. We are not proactive enough. We need to start planning several years ahead instead of just scrambling to put out the latest fire.
Oh, c'mon. Ceding power? Guys like Ross already wield tremendous power and influence at UM. And then there are the tv networks like Fox. Have you been asleep for the past 20 years? I am not talking about ceding any more power than they already have, but simply accepting some desperately needed help. If UM allowed Ross to bankroll Harbaugh's new contract or the retention of guys like Elston and Herbert, would you be saying the same thing? Or when Ross donated $100 million to the athletic department to fund all the south campus athletics campus projects?
Ross is a businessman. He's probably fired plenty of people over the years he considered friends. Nothing personal, just business.
But if you are correct, if Warde is tied to the hip with Ross, why isn't he stepping in to help him? Keep Warde as AD, but send him someone to help him out. If anything, your point makes it even more confusing that Ross is just sitting by and watching Warde go down in flames.
The University of Oregon would like a word.
I understand. Then again, maybe the current situation can be used to change minds. OSU was dragging their feet a bit on NIL too ... until they lost to us for the third year in a row and watched us go on to win the national championship. Then the floodgates suddenly opened. Michigan alumni have plenty of money and we have quite a few large boosters. It pains me to say it, but it's time to take a page out of the OSU playbook.
True, but he hasn't donated hundreds of millions to UM over the years for no reason. And from what I hear, he was willing to commit a ton of money to help fund Jim Harbaugh's contract extension. So UM and UM athletics must be somewhere on his short list of priorities. But you might be right. I might be the only person who thinks this is a crisis. I sincerely hope that's not the case.
Although I don't think it's essential, Stephen Ross has plenty of people with experience in athletics, football even. He owns the Miami Dolphins. And he's not Michigan's only mega-successful alum/booster. I find it unbelievable that none of them have within their organizations or know of anyone who could step in and clean up this mess. That's what they do for a living at this point in their careers ... hire the best people to run their various businesses. This is not a football or even an athletics crisis. It's a management crisis.
Please no to the Iowa St AD. The last thing we need is anyone with connections to Matt Campbell.
NCAA going down again. They just don't seem to get it. They are effectively a monopoly. You can't abuse your market power as a monopoly. It's antitrust 101. Restricting player transfers is an impermissible restraint of trade. Restricting NIL is an impermissible restraint of trade. Wait until someone challenges the fundamental student/athlete requirements, e.g. a player is limited to 4 years in a 5 year window. Guess what ... also very likely an impermissible restraint of trade.
Dave Heeke was recently fired by Arizona. Apparently he's not very good at math.
https://collegesportswire.usatoday.com/2024/01/23/arizona-wildcats-ad-dave-heeke-fired/
Peter Principle. And Ono should have seen this a year ago, when he had to step in and smooth things over with Jim last February. Part of this is on Ono.
This all should have been thought out months ago. Even Sherrone should have had a list of 10 guys at each position he would want to go after as assistants in his desk drawer. He knew he was on the very short list for the UM job if Jim left and he also knew he would probably get a HC job somewhere else soon if Jim stayed. I am giving him a pass because it's his first rodeo as a HC and he's young, but that is why Warde needed to be double prepared to assist Sherrone. He should have been meeting with Sherrone regularly over the past few months to help him prepare for this contingency and he should have opened the checkbook a bit wider to keep critical guys like Herbert and Elston
This transition has been a failure on so many levels is hard to process. What have all these people been doing the past 6-12 months? Isn't there anyone at all in the athletic department competent enough to see this slow motion trainwreck coming and capable of steering Warde in the right direction? What about Ono? And the regents? And HR? Communications/PR? Did absolutely no one see how unprepared Michigan was for this? Jim Harbaugh nearly left three other times. How in the world could we be so unprepared and absolutely no one notice?
How about Gloria Nevarez? I've heard great things about her. She's MWC Commissiomer, but with things rapidly moving to P2 and everyone else maybe she would see it as a step up? Also, throw money at her if need be. And why does it have to be a sitting college sports administrator? What about someone from business like a younger Jim Hackett?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Nevarez
Most of these departures could have been prevented with the right contracts. Sherrone is being set up to fail. And yes, I blame Warde.
Unfortunately, at this point Ono is probably going to wait unti the NCAA investigation into the Connor Stalion matter is completed and maybe even until UM has received at least a draft notice or have a negotiated settlement. It would be risky to can Warde right now. But once that happens, I think Ono will act. Warde has about 26 months left on his existing contract. I expect the NCAA thing to be resolved by the end of this year and Warde to announce his retirement shortly thereafter. I don't think Warde wants to be the guy who has to fire Juwan Howard.
Born on third and picked off trying to steal second.
Warde didn't win the championship. The football coaches and players did that. If anything, they won despite Warde. Michigan should not be behind just about every other major program in NIL (football and basketball too). And Jim Harbaugh should have received a $10+ million extension A YEAR AGO!! Warde dragged his feet over buyouts and other language and let the entire year go by with no extension. And then leaked out whiney stories when Jim wouldn't suddenly sign one after he beat OSU and won the B1G for the third year in a row. He tried to make it seem like it was all Jim Harbaugh's fault. Who would want to work for a sneaky slimebag like that? Warde is an incompetent buffoon as an AD and is way overdue for being fired.
Well, the football program is the only program that was firing on all cylinders the past 2-3 years. Maybe that's what Strack meant, ie Harbaugh was the thing holding the football program together. And now that he's gone, football is at risk of going the same way baseball, softball, volleyball, basketball, etc have gone.
There's a simple solution. I have hired people for decades. Decide who you want and pay them enough to stay. Period. This is a fragile time for Michigan football. It's a transition to a new head coach, a guy who has never been a HC before. We all want him to be successful, but it's pretty much a crap shoot. If you were Mike Elston or Steve Clinkscale (or Minter, Herbert, et al), would you feel more secure tying your future to Jim Harbaugh or Sherrone Moore? Michigan might have to "overpay" a bit. Call it combat pay if you want. You just saved about 7 million per year on the head coach. Overpay to keep who you want. This is a Warde Manuel problem not a Sherrone Moore problem. Pay Herbert 2 million per year. Pay Minter $3.0+ million if need be. Pay them all. Or lose them.
Well, Ol' Warde is going to get the hostage killed.
And you tell them "no". You keep Herbert and let anyone else who wants to walk, walk. Can you name even one of them? Warde already lost Jon Sanderson. And now Herbert. But lucky us, we still have whoever is in charge of S&C for field hockey. Yaaay!!
Then Warde should be fired for hiring the wrong coach. If Warde believes DeBoer, Lanning and Fisch are worth nearly 2x what Moore is worth, why did he hire Moore? Doesn't he believe Michigan deserves a top 5 coach in the country? Go hire DeBoer, Lanning or Fisch, then. Or someone in that tier. That's the problem here. Warde is cheap. It's the same reason we lost Bakich. And hired Juwan Howard for $1.2 million per year!!