Why Does Everyone On Here Hate Jim Delaney?
Outside of thinking that Rutger and Maryland don't belong in the conference, what are the reasons Michigan fans hate the guy? I realized today that I was happy that he is retiring in 2020...but I can't list the reasons.
Either I forgot why I don't like him (I've blocked football out of my brain since we lost to OSU so this is likely), or I always just took everyone's word for it.
Why do YOU hate Jim Delaney?
Whatever the kids think of the Penn State addition now, given the scandal there last decade, that addition was a slam dunk at the time. Prestigious program, probably no other like it in the country without an affiliation, with a living legend coach, added to the conference when no one else was even thinking of doing such things.
Then, when all the cool conferences were going to 12 just to justify the conference championship game and the cash that brought in, Delaney and the conference pretty much said they weren't interested in expanding just to expand. Other prestigious programs need only apply. (Notre Dame was the unspoken assumption).
I still put Delaney in the management equivalent of not-Venezuela, which in no way should inspire such hatred.
Good post - I tend to think Delany simultaneously gets (1) too much and (2) too little credit for the PSU addition.
The PSU invite was in motion before Delany even became Commissioner. It wasn't Delany's idea, it was the idea of the then Illinois President.
But after the expansion was announced (in a politically clumsy way), it seemed like the PSU invite wasn't going to happen. Delany then did a good job politically from December 1989 to July 1990, soothing the hurt egos and making sure there would still be the requisite 7 votes for expansion.
Delany was smart enough during early CY 1990 to realize that inviting PSU, then NOT inviting PSU, wouldn't have been good for the B1G in the longer-term.
That call was an epic screw job. It negated the huge fake punt gain but also came with the unsportsmanlike conduct cherry on top when Bo lost his mind.
Corruption sucks and too often those in power look away.
double......
Bo also knew, based on actual referee accounts, including the former Big Ten head of referees, that Delaney's predecessor, Wayne Duke, unambiguously had it out for him.
mandatory link from chicago tribute from 1990 talking about Delany's superpower, from Bo's point of view. Some fans have been waiting for 30 years for this to happen, many mgousers were not even born.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-08-16-9003080807-story.html
it's crap that the page required subscription, the article was open to the public two years ago. I don't know how to load it in google cashed link. Anyone can help?
If you use an incognito browser window in Chrome, you can get around the paywall.
Outside of thinking that Rutger doesn't belong in the conference? You could stop there for me.
I am starting to think Michigan fans, at least M fans that are on MGoBlog, have an unhealthy fixation on Rutgers.
I think that most people were just really disappointed in general that the two teams we added brought almost nothing to the conference from a competitive angle, and are also geographically aligned to be in our football division. And that they specifically were added purely for financial considerations. Rutgers in particular has no business of any kind being in the BIG.
Having a person make that much money at the expense of the players that are actually generating the revenue is the epitome of what people don't like about the NCAA. And as the post pointed out the success of the BIG (revenue growth) isn't some great feather in his cap. Anyone could have had similar success. So it begs the question does it really merit that large of a salary? Probably not. People always getting paid exactly what they are worth is a bit of a myth in certain circumstances.
Watch the basketball game Saturday night. We know which team Delaney wants the refs to help.
Bo believed Delaney lobbied the refs to call games in such a way to disadvantage Michigan.
Which further pushed him in that direction.
One of the 1st priorities the new commissioner should have is a more in depth background check on officials along with a criteria for scheduling games including the right for coaches to carry some type of veto power against officials they think are bias or incompetent.
This should coincide with increased training and a significant, significant increase in pay making the Big Ten the gold standard for where top officials aspire to work.
Delany didn’t give a shit about fair play.
He's a Dick!
I don't have the irrational distaste for the guy that some people on this board have. He's definitely done some good things with the conference, and I find all the conspiracy theory bullshit that some people on this blog float around about him hilarious and somewhat sad, but really the only thing he's done that I honestly didn't like was adding Rutgers to the conference.
Financially, it had to make sense. At least in the long run. They're an hour away from the biggest media market on the planet. That's a lot of eyeballs you can add to the BTN. But my god, from a cultural, geographic, athletic, and academic standpoint, they just really don't belong in the conference. Nebraska was a beautiful cultural and athletic fit, Maryland was a great academic add and solid athletic fit, but Rutgers as an academic and athletic institution add absolutely nothing of value to the Big Ten.
Quite simply: Rutgers is a joke in every aspect of the word. Cultrually and geographically don't make sense either. Adding Mizzou probably wouldn't have gotten you as much money, but they were just a much better fit in every other way. You would've given Nebraska a natural rival, they make much more sense culturally and geographically, great athletic school, and while the academics are probably decent, they're at least on par with Nebraska.
This is a Midwest conference: Maryland and Penn State don't fit either. Nebraska is arguably a cultural and regional fit, but then again they're the weakest school in the B1G academically by a pretty good margin.
Arguably, the original Big Ten is a Great Lakes conference (all except Iowa are border the Great Lakes) and Pennsylvania is a Great Lakes state, so they do fit, as well as culturally. I also had no problem with Nebraska due to the culture that you cite.
I would have much rather had Pittsburgh and Syracuse over Maryland and Rutgers.
Or Missouri. We could've had Mizzou jump from the Big 12 to us on more than one occasion and that would've been preferable to Rutgers or Maryland.
This all day. PSU and Nebraska were great adds, both traditional powers. Who would have foreseen both programs self-destructing. 'Cuse, PItt, and Mizzou were begging to join, and Delaney selects Rutger. For no other reason than cable subscribers . . . that is indisputable. Maryland . . meh. Nothing against them, they're an OK add, they just sold their athletic soul for $$$. However, a B1G East with Pitt/'Cuse and Purdue instead of Rutger and Maryland, and a B1G with Mizzou for Purdue makes both much more interesting.
Multi million$$$ retirement package squeezed from free labor? Nuff said
My reason: refs go unpunished after they clearly fuck over our team.
^^^ This!!!
The simple fact that those officials were even allowed to officiate The Game in 2016 is damning evidence -- no way that was oversight … no fucking way in hell.
First of all he hated Bo.
Second of all, every time there has been anything related to Michigan that is a close decision, he has always, ALWAYS come down against Michigan. ALWAYS. He has only done things that benefit us or rule in our favor when the situation has been so one-sided that he had to.
Don't we have an article that lays out the case about one inch to your left? And plenty of discussion there? I'm not usually the guy making this kind of observation--in fact I'm sometimes the guy supplying redundant info myself--but this is about as redundant as it gets.
Because he makes a lot of money.
A shorter response would be to list the things we like about Delaney.
Letting officials run wild,with no backlash.
Proven wrong doings
Ohio St-Michigan having officials that were NOT ALLOWED to officiate games,(based on the BIG10 own guidelines) yet these "illegal" refs making BS calls.effecting outcomes.
There are two things that I will never believe were random happenstance, and they indicate to me that Delaney is actually anti-Michigan.
First and foremost is the officiating shitshow we all witnessed in 2016 vs. OSU. It's one thing to have bad calls, no calls, and even a little home team bias. It's quite another thing all together to have the most consequential game of the entire Big 10 Conference season be officiated by officials who had previously been banned for being biased toward OSU. There is no way that this was an oversight. This was deliberate and calculated, and anyone who thinks otherwise, IMO, is delusional.
Coming in at a close second, IMO, is the scheduling adjustment that sent Michigan to East Lansing twice in two years. We were told that this was done by a "random draw" … bull fucking shit it was! Do we have a video of this alleged random draw? Again, just like the officiating in 2016, there is no way that a decision like this -- one that is not only going to have long-term consequences for two huge fan bases season ticket holders, but also for the balance of the difficulty of the schedule -- is going to be left up to random chance. A decision like this should have been made with every effort to have the least possible consequence, not nearly the greatest. The only change that could have been more consequential would have been to send Michigan to OSU twice in a row, but that would have been too obvious. The next best way to say, "FUCK YOU!" to Michigan -- especially when they're down -- is send them to MSU twice in a row and make them play BOTH of their rivals away every other year.
No fucking way Delaney didn't make BOTH of those happen.
Fuck that guy!
Mostly because he brought Rutgers in for the sole purpose of making himself and his friends more money. Money that is made on the backs of athletes who aren't allowed to benefit from their skills on an open market the way its done with every other skill set in the country.
Also, because when he brought in Rutgers and Maryland he gave MSU back-to-back home games in our rivalry. The 2nd largest rivalry in the Big Ten. That is asinine. On top of that, he gave Northwestern back-to-back home games vs. us in the same year. They sold a story of something having to give but to dick us over twice in the schedule while no other team was dicked over once, yeah, thats why he is so disliked by UM fans.
In addition to the OP-mentioned Rutgers/Maryland debacle:
(A) His scheduling of football puts Michigan at a severe disadvantage every other year, and is shitty for ticket holders
(B) His handling of scandals has been poor, and made the conference look bad
(C) His handling of the horrible performance by referees has been embarrassing
(D) The constant pursuit of TV money to the detriment of the product (BB tournament in MSG, a bunch of other scheduling stuff)
(E) The fact that all this TV money and revenue increase has disproportionately gone to him and other execs, and much less to the schools and especially the players
(F) He has supported rules changes and policies that hurt Michigan and stopped Harbaugh from doing Harbaugh things
(G) He often appears to have an anti-Michigan bias, but that admittedly could just be our own confirmation bias showing
(H) Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Generally he just seems like an empty suit who has no "only I could have done this" accomplishments, it's all stuff that any reasonably functional executive type could have achieved, yet he's made countless millions for doing stuff. In sports terms, he's a replacement level player who's being compensated like an all star.
I don't hate (Delany), I pity the fool.... Prediction? Pain.
because he sucks
next question
Already hated Delaney. Reading through the comments here have only made that feeling stronger. What a dick.
Because he did exactly what he was hired to do and did it well. Its hard to look at college athletics kindly if you admit that, so instead people act like he is masterminding conspiracies.
Wow, an attempt at a little humor and neg'd. Almost forgot about Political Compliance from my days in Ann Arbor. Guess I'll go back to read only while battling my "inadequacy."
For the same reason everyone overvalued Dennis Norfleet....
/lookingatB
- Rutgers and Maryland
- Leaders and Legends
- Went out of his way to campaign that it would be an unfair advantage for Big Ten teams to get to host college football playoff games in cold weather
- Seems like more often than not, when he's involved, Michigan has gotten the short end of the stick on scheduling and officiating decisions
- The fact that he's getting rich off his ass but is offended by the idea that the guys who are generating that money get paid at all
- Did I mention Maryland and Rutgers?
From the US News 2019 Best Colleges (National Universities) list
- Rutgers is rated #56, with a 58% admission rate.
- Maryland is rated #63, with a 44% admission rate
- Missouri and Nebraska are tied at #129. Mizzou accepts 78% of its applicants, while Nebraska accepts 64%. Nebraska, however, has a fabled football program and wanted to get out from under Texas's shadow, so Delaney welcomed them with open arms.
It's true that Rutgers (and Maryland, with or without Max Bortenschlager) football have taken longer than anticipated to become league-competitive. But Rutgers' BB program has improved, while MD's BB team is nationally ranked.
Unfortunately other BIG football programs who've added a new HC recently have also taken longer to improve than anticipated. One school that comes to mind has in four years only beaten STAEE twice, Notre Dame nunce, and as to the School Down South, well, this team I'm thinking of in four years hasn't beaten them at all. But now we find that the reason is that Jim Delany has conspired with the game officials to make sure that accursed, down-south football program wins every time. That sure does explain last season's 62-39 score --- that score would have been a lot closer if the officials and Delaney hadn't plotted, schemed, colluded and conspired to make the evil team's victory certain.
Dolla dolla bill yo.
There are more important things in life, and it seems to me that college athletics should hold some higher values. But this is 'murica.
My hatred starts back to the beginning of his tenure. He's been anti-Michigan since day one.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-08-16-9003080807-story.html
We can start the list with compressing the season in 2018 to hold the b-ball tourney in NYC. Not only did if force the schedule, it screwed the fans too. The cost of a trip to NYC with $400 night hotel rooms priced it out of many fans budgets. It shows he doesn’t care about the players or the fans, he just cares about TV.
I would also add the despite his greed for $$, he wants to make certain the players never see any of it. He went as far as to say if players ever get paid the B1Gmight punt on the whole thing and go to a non-scholarship Division III model.
"These alternatives would, in my view," Delany said then, "be more consistent with the Big Ten's philosophy that the educational and lifetime economic benefits associated with a university education are the appropriate quid pro quo for its student athletes."
While it was an empty and hollow threat, it validates his greed, the same greed that brought is Rutgers and Maryland.
Another gripe is his abscence of ANY leadership or voice on the B1G missing the football playoff 3 consecutive years. Can you imagine if the SEC had been left out how their commissioner would have reacted??? If Bama and Ga were the 5th and 6th best teams in the country and the SEC was left out, the conference would have staged an uprising. Delany didn’t say a single word about it until reporters questioned him and then he shrugged it off and basically said some conference is going to be left out every year. Not making the playoff for 3 years is horrible for the conference. Hell, ND has more pull than Delaney. Aside from starting the B1G network, he is trash
Bo hated him too!
He gets some credit for the B1G network which added significant revenue and gives the viewers many more option to watch. That’s it though.
Mediocre people that are exceedingly wealthy will always earn people's enmity.