Dave Brandon appreciation thread
For all the unwarranted criticism he gets around here, Dave Brandon is an exceptional human being.
He donated more than 4 Million dollars to build Mott Children's hospital, and contributed to the Michigan Stadium renovation fund before he even took the office. He earned the Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2007, The Bennie Oosterban Award for Service, Dedication and CEO Coach of the Year in 2008. He raised 3 sons and a daughter, and "enjoys spoiling" his 7 grandkids.
He took a 3 Million Dollar pay cut to take over an athletic department that was hemorhaging credibility like a stuck pig. He was tasked with cleaning up his predecessor's disastrous 3,5,7 win football hire and a basketball team that after finally breaking into the tournament seemed to be sinking back into mediocrity at 15-17.
Brandon provided strong leadership and a stronger backhand through one of the darker(albeit ridiculous) chapters in Michigan football history.
He hired a coach who immediately breathed life into a program on the ropes. That coach took a 5 win/yr team to an 11-2 record and a BCS bowl win.
There have been some disappointments since then of course, but think where the program would be if that injection of credibility hadn't have happened.
He hired this man
And this man
Who have helped bring Michigan to the Championship game and the Elite Eight a year later.
He took this guy from the Ravens(and paid him)
And this guy from the 'Tide
(folks around these parts seem a little excited about that one)
He oversaw the rebuilding of Crisler Arena
which continues to help land elite recruits.
I think it is a fair assumption that Brandon has done more for Michigan athletics and the world at large than 99% of us on the board, a fact that can get lost in petty vendettas and very real differences of opinion.
In this man's opinion, Brandon has made very real sacrifices and deserves a great deal more respect than he gets on this board.
Hoke is unquestionably his biggest hire, and the jury is decidedly still out on that one. Brandon made Hoke one of the highest paid coaches in football without the results on the field to justify his salary after Hoke was quoted saying he didn't care about the money and would've walked to Ann Arbor. So it's not like that's a slam dunk hire at this point either.
I'm not sure if Brian's point that any idiot would have gotten the same money since the B1G and expansion was a league issue is correct (it may be).
Cancelling the ND game was not his idea, but I generally liked the idea of the Jerryworld game (before I realized we were terrible that year). I also like the diverse scheduling, even with RU and MD.
Since we have to compete in non-revenue sports, I like that we have nice facilities and generally competitive teams and I think the athletic campus is amazing.
And that "rematch" is equivalent to Domino's marketing bullshit.
2) so when he scheduled Ap St... he didn't know that they would still be championship subdivision or whatever they call Div 2 these days... He didn't know that we had lost to them the last time that they were in A2? That we were a national laughingstock because of it all year long? That the media was going to talk about, show highlights from and generally make fun of us all over again for the months leading up to that game.. because of what happened that first time around?
Schedule part 2.... neutral site away games. Because he decided to play these games in Texas years in advance he didn't know or can't be blamed for:
The game being held in some generic NFL stadium related to nothing, thousands of miles away from the bulk of his fan base?
The band being left out until some donors stepped up to bail him out?
The price of the tickets being triple or more than the average home game or away game at another university stadium.
The travel cost being 10X or more higher for most of us season ticket holders than another home game.
Taking a very low payout (compared to the total amount that was brought in for the game) when he agreed to the matchup.
How is it we can't blame him for the schedule again?
I think DB has a pretty good track record so far. I can only think of one critique I have of him. The decision to move away from General Admission to this new "Super Fan" seating policy was reactionary. He should have made the change to GA and stuck with it.
Bottom line is, if football was experiencing the same kind of success as basketball right now, there'd be few, if any, complaints. Winning cures all.
False, I would still HATE the man.
That ain't healthy, man.
We can have one sin in our life can't we...?
But like I said further up, it's because the product on the field would perhaps be worthy of the extra dough.
Brandon's utter lack of cognizance that the product on the field is clearly not (yet) worth price hikes and a three-ring circus is the aggravating part.
I'm not sure that logic relates. Obviously we are having success in Basketball and it's not like BB is a 3rd tier sport. So the argument that if we were successful in Football we wouldn't be upset isn't relative
A very popular view here is:
A) Brandon is entirely focused on the REVENUE side - trying to maximize revenue out of the revenue sports...and then having to find ways to spend it on both nonrevenue and revenue facilities/sports.
Perhaps the reality is:
B) Brandon is entirely focused on the EXPENSE side - spending what is necessary on facilities/coaching to create his strategy and vision of where the athletic department needs to be in 5-10yrs in terms of facilities, coaching, student athlete support, and on the field performance...and then having to find ways to generate the revenue to support that vision.
Can you really distinguish between the two as the actions would look the same either way? Most here assume it is A) because they are getting affected more by the goal for more revenue which hits their wallet.
Perhaps the reality is B...then instead of complaining about him generating too much revenue, they should be arguing against his spending and his strategy and vision of improving the facilites in all of these nonrevenue sports.
Maybe...but Brandon is the one who controls the expense side of the equation as well. We are spending way more than we ever have on admin positions and he continues to bring people in for marketing when it is unknown how much marketing an institution like Michigan really needs.
I'm also getting tired of increased prices to support non revenue sports. There is a limit to how much financial support should be given to teams that can't support themselves .... epecially when facilities expenditures are astronomically high.
Brandon's problem, as many are saying, is the ego. He can clearly do the job that an AD should do (increase revenue, build up facilities, have his mom write a nice post on mgoblog), but he screws up by taking on roles that he shouldn't (and can't) do.
He is not a events guy but he even had the press follow him for his "look how I micromanage gameday" tour. We don't want the fucking Superbowl on Saturday; we want Michigan.
He is not a guy who understands events seating but he cluelessly thought he was a genius and made a giant mess out of student seating (and raised prices at the same time).
He is not a fashion designer but he makes a point of fucking with uniforms and even introduced bumblebees, without notice, just before taking the field at MSU a few years back.
He is not a music producer but he heard Jock Jamz 19 and decided that's what the kids like and put "Sweet Caroline" on loop with that shitty Journey song about "South Detroit".
He isn't an admin but he personally answers countless emails. It's nice that he would make the effort, but he has bigger fish to fry. I emailed him when the Gibbons piece broke to urge the AD's office to take quick action and his response was...clunky. You could see he wasn't prepared for what was coming in terms of alum/media reaction.
He just needs to stick to his proper job and not let his ego think he can do it all.
I think the phrase you are looking for is "for all intents and purposes"....
the phrase he was looking for is "/s"
I will reserve judgement until DB's tenure at Michigan is complete. There have been positives and negatives, but Brandon's work product is still a work in progress.
Just win
I appreciate Dave Brandon. The guy is a little tone-deaf but has done much more good than bad.
This sure is a controversial subject: Talk about a love / hate subject matter.
DB has pissed off the entire student body except for those who think that waiting in line for three hours to see a mediocre team is cool.
But's let's face it, if the football team goes 11 - 1 this year and wins a major bowl game, then a lot of the pissed off folks become happy with DB. However, I don't think he ever wins back the upperclass students who lost their priority seats.
Their are also a lot of old timer local alumni who are not on DB's bus.
I'm not sure this thread was necessary, and I do get some of what I perceive as legitimate complaints about Brandon, especially the pricing some people out of being able to afford season tickets, but there are also quite a few accusations thrown about that Brandon either had little or no control of or are impossibl to substantiate one way or the other. Yes, Michigan's home schedule sucks this year. Did Dave Brandon really have control over the Michigan State game being an away game two years in a row? Also, Brandon's supposed huge ego. How is that even measured? It gets trotted out over and over again as though it's an uassailable fact by his detractors, but I'm not sure we could even go about measuring such a thing. Couldn't the same thing be claimed about nearly every prominent person?
Finally, even in this thread Brandon gets criticized by two different people for opposite actions: for responding to emails, and for not responding to emails. It seems just as easy to assign both of those actions to positive attributes as negative.
When you hold yourself out as the master of all things, then you must accept responsibility for things that go poorly. If we're to believe Brandon's earlier comments about his input on OSU scheduling, then we have to assume he would also have such input as to MSU scheduling. He can't take the good without the bad.
As to email...I run a "small" business and respond to email very quickly. DB runs the AD and responds even faster (which is crazy). With the Gibbons thing (which is when I emailed), he responded instantly, but his response seemed to highlight how much he underestimated the problem. He even sent a second email when they had clearly entered damage control mode. So, I appreciate that he'd take the time to respond to a regular alum like me, but would prefer that he have the foresight to see the entirety of issues and properly address them. Someone else can be delegated the role of answering emails (and can do so with his script).
"I create the future."
Cogent.
I don't really care about any of this but to say he took a 5 win/year team to 11 wins is more than a little misleading. RR won 3-5-7 (to be fair you mention that elsewhere) and Hoke took RR's would-be 4th year team to 11. That was a good thing but see it for what it was.
but how does having 4 children and 7 grandchildren make you in any way "exceptional?" (unless you live in China)?
I've got a pair of two year olds, and raising 4(on any timetable) successfully seems pretty exceptional to me.
There are over 7 billion people on the planet. This suggests having children and raising them into adulthood isn't rocket science. Pull the nails out of your palms and climb off the cross for a while.
was working to move the date of The Game back to October. It was bad enough that he opposed leaving Ohio State and Michigan in the same division, but to go against the most important Michigan tradition for potential revenue in a Michigan / OSU rematch in the BTT game? Nearly as crazy as McGary's one-year suspension.
That started the notion of the huge disconnect between Dave Brandon and the fans, and everything since has only added to that notion.
he's got at least one fan.
If this thread didn't have more upvotes than everything else on the front page(Diaries and Board Posts) combined.
It also has more downvotes than everything else on the front page. It should be easy to figure out why: this thread covers an issue people feel strongly about one way or the other. Thus, the upvotes and downvotes illustrate people that agree or disagree with the premise of the thread.
Why are there more upvotes? Tough to tell. May mean more people like Dave Brandon than don't, and it may mean people are less likely to downvote a controversial post (given they have to invest a point to do so).
raspberries.
Brandon's impact on the student section for hoops shouldn't be undervalued, in my opinion. After the game in East Lansing, he had said he was jealous of the Izzone. When we played in Ann Arbor, there were 6 sections of students in the upper deck. Wishing for a better home-court advantage while putting 75% of the students in the nosebleeds is more than a little irritating.
Well, he kicked longtime hoops season ticket holders out of their lower bowl seats in favor of deep pockets who started to care when the team got good. Nobody expected him to give seats to the students, right?
He donated more than 4 Million dollars to build Mott Children's hospital, and contributed to the Michigan Stadium renovation fund before he even took the office
He took a 3 Million Dollar pay cut
From a job he was assigned by Bain and where he was always a bad fit for a corporate culture that to be fair would have been a bad fit for most people. He wasn't long for that job though. Remember they had to change the entire pizza right after he left. His tenure as Domino's CEO, if it was proof of anything, it was that CEOs get paid WAY too much money to be spectacularly mediocre at their jobs, and that his short-term policies of cheapening the food while raising prices and Wow factors were not sustainable for that company, and certainly not a good model for Michigan.
to take over an athletic department that was hemorhaging credibility like a stuck pig. He was tasked with cleaning up his predecessor's disastrous 3,5,7 win football hire and a basketball team that after finally breaking into the tournament seemed to be sinking back into mediocrity at 15-17.
Brandon provided strong leadership and a stronger backhand through one of the darker(albeit ridiculous) chapters in Michigan football history.
He hired a coach who immediately breathed life into a program on the ropes. That coach took a 5 win/yr team to an 11-2 record and a BCS bowl win.
He hired Beilein's assistants.
He hired Greg Mattison
And Nussmeier
He oversaw the rebuilding of Crisler Arena
I think it is a fair assumption that Brandon has done more for Michigan athletics and the world at large than 99% of us on the board, a fact that can get lost in petty vendettas and very real differences of opinion.
In this man's opinion, Brandon has made very real sacrifices and deserves a great deal more respect than he gets on this board.