spartoon quinn article on Michigan Basketball culture
https://theathletic.com/5341993/2024/03/15/michigan-basketball-juwan-howard-culture/
A firm was hired to access the culture.
Jett got yelled at.
Culture of fear.
Not much substance.
Compare the culture of the football program and the basketball program.
What else needs to be said?
Warde is Hamlet, an indecisive tragic character who doesn't know ball.
(apologies for a Hamlet reference on the Ides of March, but I couldn't think of a Julius Caesar reference)
March 15th, 2024 at 10:07 AM ^
Perhaps, Juwan is Julius Caesar. 🤷
March 15th, 2024 at 10:48 AM ^
Who’s Brutus?
March 15th, 2024 at 12:39 PM ^
I am disappointed that this comment wasn’t made by Even You Brutus?
March 15th, 2024 at 10:49 AM ^
Juwan has his faults, but being a genocidal imperialist isn’t one of them.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:58 AM ^
Caesar won battles
March 15th, 2024 at 11:08 AM ^
Mark Antony was the brains behind the operation. He should have been given the reigns after.
Augustus was a nepo baby.
kidding…
March 15th, 2024 at 11:12 AM ^
The trains ran on time.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:51 AM ^
If we are honest with ourselves we know Caesar deserved it.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:05 AM ^
You're not wrong. Hamlet knew pretty much zero ball
March 15th, 2024 at 11:30 AM ^
I think it was Hamlet who said, “To ball or not to ball. That is the question.”
They hired a firm to assess the culture? What does the AD staff even do?
That has to have been the quickest & easiest "culture assessment" possible: after our assessment, we have determine the culture around the basketball program is, in fact, not good.
Whatever they paid that firm, I could have told them the same thing for half the money.
Can I offer you an even cheaper option? All the opinion you care to hear, only $29.95!
March 15th, 2024 at 11:10 AM ^
Given the Sanderson incident and the risk of litigation, I would make sure that I had a clear vision of the situation before letting the employee know. This is a good time to keep the lawyers in the office in the loop. This increases the probability of a firing considerably and just has the appearance of moving on.
With the tournament starting, I wonder how that will impact the timing?
March 15th, 2024 at 12:46 PM ^
I thought it would only be 2 cents?
No doubt you are correct, but sometimes you hire an outside firm to show impartiality and create evidence in case of disputes.
Or to put in writing what everyone has understood for a while. The old joke was that you hire consultants to look at your watch and tell you the time.
This makes it sound like Warde wants to fire Juwan but for some reason thinks he needs documentation.
Like thousands of others, I was introduced to that idea as a whippersnapper while on a business strategy project. I couldn't make complete sense of the situation. A senior person said "Our purpose in life is to provide cover for this C-level clown."
March 15th, 2024 at 10:23 AM ^
Yeah, this is pretty much standard business practice. The wide world of consultants. It also protects companies from legal action (not saying this is the case here, but people can be litigious when they get fired, so an impartial opinion can counter perceived bias).
Schools hiring firms to run investigations seems to have gotten out of control. What a racket for these firms pretending to be independent while getting paid by the administrators that obviously want a certain outcome.
It's a fig leaf for management.
As a former management type, I don't know how you evaluate culture in these circumstances. More than likely the current culture is a product of the fact that you just completed a dismal season. Or is the dismal season a product of the culture? Who knows. I do know that if you start winning games a lot of this stuff fixes itself.
You hire an outside firm to ensure any major decision is based on arms-length data.
Disclaimer: former management consultant
I’d be interested in understanding what Hypotheses they were examining - a and, the subsequent Conclusions and Recommendations.
I swear people keep being surprised that a school would want to cover their bases before firing someone.
Maybe they retain Howard for some stupid reasons, maybe this culture assessment gives them actionable reasons to fire Howard, I don't know. But it shouldn't shock anyone that a school would do this.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:03 AM ^
Agreed! Having been "one of the Bobs" and experience starting my own company, I learned it is surprisingly easy to let someone go legally. As long as the reason is not related to gender, race, etc., you can let people go fairly quickly without major risk of legal recourse.
With that, Juwan Howard is in a completely different league compared to most other every-day workers. He has a contract, a big contract at that. He is also a POC which, in my experience, requires extra thought/care when deciding to let him go. The actions that the AD is taking is quite prudent when considering these factors.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:11 AM ^
Yeah, I'm less concerned about Howard's race in this case since his boss is also a POC. But he's got a big contract and letting him go is politically thorny because people at UM do legitimately like him for his connection to the program's legacy.
What does bother me about this investigation is that it feels like they're going to, for lack of a better word, try to to rat fuck him out of a contract payout due to culture/off-court issues instead of just firing him for his poor performance on it. It's a bit like what happened with Mel Tucker - he's a massive creep but had his team gone 10-2 instead of 5-7 the year before my guess is the AD would have fought harder for him. If you want to fire someone, fire him for the reasons that exist and don't try to fabricate some bigger reason that you didn't have a problem with while winning. Hell, I still remember this place trotting out the "maybe Harbaugh is suffering from CTE" argument as a reason to let him go instead of just saying "he went 2-4 and the team is trending down", which was the reason people wanted him gone.
Fire Howard because he just fielded the worst team in UM history and probably won't make them any better next year. But I am a bit nervous that they'll dig up some "he yelled at players and was a bit of a bully" as if that doesn't describe 95% of college coaches.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:24 AM ^
The reason doesn't matter at this point...as long as Michigan doesn't self report handing out cash in McDonald's bags. A school should never go full Tennessee.
March 15th, 2024 at 12:14 PM ^
This is all a fair point that I hadn't really thought about. Apparently Howard's buyout is $3 million. That's not a trivial sum, but it's also not Tucker-level money. Or to put it differently, you don't spend $1 million on consultants to worst-case save yourself $3 million.
Considering who Howard is, I can’t imagine they would try to fire him for cause and avoiding paying him just for the message it sends to a revered former player and member of the fab five. Perhaps it is cover to push back on alumni/donors who aren’t yet swayed by the miserable record and godawful basketball being played and they can say “see it’s bigger than just our record”
March 15th, 2024 at 10:52 AM ^
Maybe Warde isn't too good at math and can't figure out that the completely objective 8-24 stat is, how do you say it, umm, bad.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:25 AM ^
Michigan is so good at this basketball thing they do it 8 days a week, 24 hours a day.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:01 AM ^
It’s CYA DD
JFC
March 15th, 2024 at 11:02 AM ^
We all need to create some "firm" together and get hired by these dummy ADs and just make a killing. It could be about anything and we would get hired.
MGoBlog Consulting Firm.... pick a topic and we got you
March 15th, 2024 at 11:32 AM ^
The funny thing about this comment is there is a very broad and deep collection of experience, knowledge, and talent on this board. We probably could create a very good cross-industry consulting firm which would be top notch in a lot of fields.
The one potential issue would be every recommendation would start with firing Warde. I could see the leadership teams at Apple, Boeing, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc all asking,
"who is this Warde guy you want us to fire immediately and why is he so harmful to our company?"
March 15th, 2024 at 12:51 PM ^
Obligatory “wish I had more than one upvote to give.”
Your comment made me chortle hard enough to hurt my ribcage. Yes, I’m calling my doctor right now to have him assess why.
We're gonna out-McKinsey McKinsey.
“I don’t like what the author is saying, so I’ll lob a dumb insult and claim there’s no substance.”
I would also like to defend Quinn a little based on your "spartoon" comment. While it is true that Brenden has been known to write a lot of pro-MSU pieces over the years, he's always been very pro-Michigan too. He did a podcast on UMHoops with Dylan for almost a decade and wrote plenty of pro-Michigan stuff. The reason he comes off as so Sparty favorable?? THEY GIVE HIM ACCESS!!
Among Juwan's many failings is his complete ineptitude when it comes to PR. While I totally understand that's a shitty part of being a head coach, it is a really critical one - and even more critical in this era of NIL and the portal. Juwan never talks to the media, never says one interesting thing, never let's us inside his bubble to see what kind of person or coach he is, never shares his vision for the program, never sucks up to donors for support, etc. As a result, when times get tough there isn't one person out here advocating for him to stay.
Izzo is a slimeball that I would never send my kids to play for because of how he treats his players on the court and the fact that he hasn't improved someone's pro potential in almost a decade.....but he works his PR muscles better than anyone. Media, fans, donors, boosters, admin all defend his failings and pat him on the head like the troll he is because he works hard to keep them engaged.
I still think it's that Quinn first broke the sign stealing story. It obviously came from Izzo to him. Izzo definitely knows the importance of keeping friends in the media.
I still think it's that Quinn first broke the sign stealing story.
Pretty sure he did not first break it. It was Yahoo. Dellinger probably.
From the MGoBoard post:
Dellenger and Wetzel.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:04 AM ^
The Athletic's golf and college basketball writer is somehow the lead writer on this story on October 19th. You don't have to be the Day Detective Agency to know what's going on.
https://theathletic.com/4978212/2023/10/19/michigan-football-sign-stealing-michigan-state/
March 15th, 2024 at 10:19 AM ^
Quinn is probably the closest Atheltic writer to the M program as a whole. It's not surprising he would be the lead writer.
(I know Austin Meek covers the football program, but I gather he's a step or two below on the org chart than Quinn)
March 15th, 2024 at 10:29 AM ^
Not sure on the Michigan side. I'd say Nick B. is closer to the football program. Quinn definitely is on the Michigan State side. As described above Izzo wants a close relationship with the media and he basically is the athletic department there. Also, the leak of this story wasn't coming from Michigan. This was the Michigan State game week and they were extremely concerned about player safety....
March 15th, 2024 at 10:33 AM ^
Oct. 19: Yahoo Sports breaks the story that Michigan is being investigated by the NCAA for impermissible in-person scouting.
I don't have an Athletic subscription so I can't read the Quinn story. Not sure if he cited "sources" like Yahoo did. If Quinn cited "sources" then he had a source other than Yahoo, but he wasn't first.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:55 AM ^
This one from his article screams Michigan State source:
"One source who was briefed on the allegation said Michigan is being accused of using a “vast network” to steal opposing teams’ signs. The alleged evidence appears to suggest UM had knowledge of what play an opposing team was going to run before the play occurs."
They both posted the story around noon on 19th.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:06 AM ^
Well stated. Quinn isn't some Sparty slappy, he's a Philly guy.
ETA: He spent a lot of time on the Michigan and Michigan State beat before moving over to doing more golf, so it's no surprise that he has sources at both schools.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:21 AM ^
Yeah, people who say Quinn is a "spartoon" don't understand the difference between a national writer and Sam Webb.
Also, people upset about Quinn reporting that MSU wanted to cancel the football game for safety reasons -- we know that was said, because the AD came out later and said it. Is he...not supposed to report that? It was news -- and, it made MSU look dumb too.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:04 AM ^
To be fair, the MSU AD was right about player safety.
The Michigan game broke their mental health.
Knowing that your rival could have beaten you 78-0 but took pity on your soul can’t be good for your football psyche.