Peace Between The Wars
[Eric Upchurch]
Jim Hackett talked to the Daily yesterday, and the words that he said were as encouraging as possible for a fan who likes his college football to be as distinct as possible from the pro experience:
The topic of conversation soon shifted to the student experience at Michigan Stadium and the tendency of many students to leave games well before they end. Hackett believes the issue will most easily be resolved by the improvement of the on-field product.
“I don’t want to sound sarcastic,” Hackett said. “What I don’t want is more entertainment that’s not football. I think that works in the pros, but we’re in college. I believe college shouldn’t be like the pros. It shouldn’t cost like the pros.”
Hackett specifically noted that he didn’t want the games to feel “corporate,” a complaint that was commonly voiced by Michigan fans during Brandon’s tenure.
I am still a little hesitant to open the ol' heart to the new AD because I remember the brief, stretchgate-inspired Brandon honeymoon that we all had a few years back… but I'm hopeful that Hackett takes the project of making Michigan Michigan seriously, and am more so every time he is quoted.
We're even seeing some specific steps discussed not only amongst the fanbase but with the guys in charge. After a student complained about the piped-in music, Hackett replied thusly:
Hackett asked the new coach what he thought of piped-in music during warmups. Harbaugh was firm in his answer.
“I don’t care. We don’t need it,” Harbaugh said.
Hackett agreed with Harbaugh, noting that in the past, the loud music has almost discouraged him from sitting through the team’s warmups when he has visited Michigan Stadium. As a result of the preferences of the coach, athletic director and many fans, the Athletic Department is in conversations with the band to have it play more during games.
I did not dream of a day when Michigan would look at the music during warmups as an issue to be addressed, let alone the actual in-game experience. I don't even mind the warmups music that much. I did treasure the quiet buzz of anticipation 45 minutes before the game, though, and if that comes back the stadium will be a step closer to what it used to be.
That thing it used to be was merely itself. The band, the lack of advertising, the silences in between the shouting. The natural up and down of a crowd was an important part of my formative experiences as a sports fan, and I still wince at the idea that doing something for the entertainment of the people in attendance actually, you know, entertains them. Too often piped-in music turns fan participation off instead of on. It's a convenient way to cover the fact that you have a lack of atmosphere. I prefer an athletic department that asks the hard questions about how to create one out of the materials they've been given. If MLS can do it—hell, if Detroit City can do it—there's no reason Michigan can't.
Here's hoping Hackett's the man to do it.
Oh also
We talked about this some on WTKA today: it sounds like when the Adidas contract comes up in a year, Michigan is seriously considering a switch even if that move costs them some money.
“In my first months here, the question of which brand we wear is a big one,” Hackett said during the fireside chat. “We’ve organized — this is a secret — a project team to look at the question of, there’s really three players: Adidas, Under Armour and Nike.”
"Was" a secret if you're talking about it in a fireside chat with students. Adidas or UA will offer the most money; Nike offers the gear it seems like most of the athletes prefer… and it opens doors in recruiting, especially basketball. Like it or not, that is fact.
The mere fact that there's something other than a number in a spreadsheet being considered here is an excellent development. I don't understand people who care a ton about the style of an athletic clothing supplier, but there are evidently legions of them.
Personally, I would prefer Under Armour, which tends to create (or maintain) signature looks for the schools they have. Adidas and Nike both love to suit people up in things that say "this team is part of Adidas or Nike"; UA is better about working for the team, the team, the team.
Okay yes Maryland's flag uniforms are kind of a disaster, but it's not like they've got anything iconic to hang their hat on. Meanwhile I love what they've done with Northwestern and they've left Auburn's classic look virtually untouched. But UA is a distant third when it comes to recognition and door-opening.
It's a tough decision.
So wouldn't going Nike be best for basketball too? I'm assuming most AAU teams are sponsored by Nike as well?
Has a good stronghold on basketball, but I would still wager Nike is the top player in AAU. Yes, Nike is really the only play here.
Yeah. According to Brian on the radio this AM, Rick Pitino has actually gone on the record and said UL's recruiting has been hurt since they switched to Adidas.
To me that's a problem in need of correcting. Seriously?!? Basketball is that owned by those companies? What about the other sports? Of course, I have no idea how you fix that. But damn.
fromt their last 3 years of basketball I think he may be overstating things a little bit.
"That brand will promise them things if they go to one of 'their schools' ".
How is this not an NCAA violation (by the "student athlete")?
My understanding was that moreso than promising gifts, the brand-- Nike-- says "if you go to an Adidas school, we're going to pull our funding of your AAU team," or "cut the funding," which pulls on loyalties and also means the AAU coaches have an incentive to steer their kids toward Nike schools as well. It puts a lot of pressure on a kid, unfairly. That said, though odious, it's a pretty effective strategy.
5* center Diamond Stone's AAU team was sponsored by Under Armour, therefore he picked an Under Armour school in Maryland over Wisconsin, which had been recruiting him for the longest time.
isn't a diamond a stone...?
It's definitely an AAU thing.
You know how AAU teams play in Vegas one weekend, then Orlando the next, then Dallas the next? Well, those trips cost a lot of money. Many D1 prospects do not come from families that can afford the uniforms, let alone the cost of jet-setting around the country. So, high-level AAU teams have sponsors. Those sponsors pay for the trips, unis, and even AAU coaches.
Oftentimes, those coaches are father figures to guys on the team (sometimes referred to as "Uncles"). As such, they have a ton of influence with the kids.
So, imagine that you're 16 and that Nike pays your "Uncle's" salary. Would you really want to piss off the brand when they're bankrolling your Uncle, your team, and, in a way, you? Probably not.
Further, they're probably make promises to you all along about giving you a bigger signing bonus and/or contract when you make it big in the NBA, so you've got even more incentive to stick with them.
Summary: It's a super dirty game and many of the top players play it.
UA has a nice product but they have little brand recognition in basketball at all. If you think it's hard to recruit to an Adidas school, recruiting a top tier basketball recruits to UA will be very difficult. Nike might come a little stronger as they have seen zero Michigan revenue lately.
Adidas is also struggling in the US and I wonder if this contract is getting too expensive for them. They recently decided not to rebid on their NBA Jersey contract.
If Adidas put half the effort they did into their casual/football/basketball gear like they do with their soccer gear, then they wouldn't be having issues.
Adidas soccer jerseys are great compared to their other sports gear.
is their golf stuff, apparel primarily. They can make nice stuff. I don't understand the reason for their struggles in basketball and football, and how consistently horrible their alternate designs are in both sports.
The cowbell Go Blue, the chanting Go Blue across the stadium, other ways people get noise going, those tend to be discouraged by piped-in music. The stadium experience wasn't broken in the early 2000s. It wasn't stone-age, and I like the bigger video boards we have now, but to me music at college football games should be the band when you have a great band the way a Michigan or Ohio State does. Pipe in stuff when the band isn't able to play because they're heading down to the field for halftime, or have finished the halftime show and are getting back to their seats, etc.
Some of the piped-in music can be fun (like Norfleet's Atomic Dog routine). Use it for fun stuff like that and I think everyone is cool with it. Use it all the time and it becomes another generic football experience.
FIlling every possible moment with piped in music doesn't allow for band and crowd to develop their own routines. I still bore my kids with, "When I was at Michigan, the sophmores would..." stuff. Even if it doesn't become "TRADITION!", it's ours for that period in time, and unique. If I want to hear bad 20 year old metal, I'll fire up Pandora.
A good AD can alleviate alot of the uniformz issues by just saying no. If you want traditional uniforms you can have traditional uniforms, it doesn't matter who your apparel contract is with. That being said I'm convinced Hackett wants Nike but can't pull the trigger because Nike hasn't offered and Michigan doesn't have the leverage in negotiationg with Nike as it does with Adidas. Which leads me to belive the real question at hand is how low is Hackett willing to go for Nike.
And Hackett's quote about the "secret project team" is clearly him begging for a Nike or UA offer before the current deal with Adidas falls of the table July 31st. If he doesn't have a deal inked before July 31st he is going to look like an idiot because no way does Adidas give him the same deal after shopping around for another offer.
They worked well for the coaching search...
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I did treasure the quiet buzz of anticipation 45 minutes before the game ...
Ah ... I remember that well. It's been over two decades since I've been in the stadium, but I do recall getting there early, and feeling the energy build as kickoff approached.
I do not like loud piped in music. Diamondback Stadium in Phoenix has that for baseball and it was loud to the point of painful. That was four years ago and I've not been back since.
It totally put me back in the stands for a bit, listening to the crowd murmer start to build, while I could hear the planes overhead.
When my dad and I had seats 4 rows from the field in the middle of the end zone where UM would warm up, we'd usually get the to game about 45-60 minutes a head of time. The stadium wouldn't be very full at all. We loved watching the team warm up, listen to the players and coaches talking and yelling, hear the pads pop in the hitting the drills, etc. As the stadium would gradually fill up, you could feel the buzz and anticipation building.
I get that people think the flag-uni thing is tacky (and they are right), but it reminds me very much of criticisms of Oregon's uniforms. The bottom line is that it gets attention and it establishes identity. Good or bad you notice it and remember. I'm a big fan of it, even if it clashes and is kind of ugly. The more college programs that have unique identities the better.
If I wanted everyone to be the same, I'd watch the NFL.
From the Maryland perspective, I would again point to Oregon. Most people over 40 will hate it, most people under 20 will like it, and the big group in between will be an evolving mix. Eventually they'll win the day over a comparable program that does the same thing everybody else does (e.g., Rutgers). They won't beat out the classics, but they weren't going to do that anyway.
You're probably right about your age breakdown. I'm 41 and I think Uniformz look silly.
I'm fine if they win over the day, as you say, so long as ours is one of the classics that remains constant and wins.
In the end, I think it's the product on the field that imbues the coolness to the uniform. I don't see a recruit going to Maryland over MSU due to better uni's.
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I mean sure, the weather (or lack of it) is different, but the game-experience looks more or less the same to me. (Must admit I haven't been to an NFL game in any of these stadiums.) But if Tampa is a superbowl contender next year and it's a Sunny day in Seattle are you going to be able to tell the difference beyond some chintzy Pirate props in one endzone? The songs blared and beers consumed will all be the same more or less (maybe more IPA and less Coors in Seattle, but we're getting into details.)
Winning is obviously more important than style, and no one (who is sane) would argue otherwise, but they both matter. Having good style doesn't decrease the chance of winning, it aids it (through recruiting.)
I see what you're saying. I thought you meant uni's not experience.
I've not been to an NFL game in more than a decade, so I can't say now. But at least awhile ago I'd wager there was a major difference between Soldier field, The Silverdome/FordField, and Lambeau.
Now, when its domed stadiums I think it gets more generic. But at the same time its not like when I went one week to the Big House and went the next to NW, I was knocked on my butt due to the major differences in the game day experience.
Haven't been there, but it seems like the best case the NFL can make for a unique experience.
It also seems true that if you do have an identity, UA could be a good choice to help you keep it that way. See Auburn and ND.
I'm more in the Nike camp, but UA seems just as valid a pick. Adidas, not so much.
I've seen Brian use it multiple times here when talking about fan experience and atmoshpere at live events. I've never been to an MLS game or really watched closely on TV. I'm wondering if the fact that soccer has no built in breaks in action lends itself to a more clean and uninterupted fan experience?
Any insight from you good people would be helpful.
Thing one- MLS, like all pro soccer, doesnt' have breaks, so there is by necessity a cleaner, simpler fan experience.
Thing two- To counter this, MLS has taken the lead from Euro leagues and has "supporters sections" that are more similiar to a college student section than anything in other US pro sports. They are cheaper seat where almost anything goes- lots of singing, standing, drinking, waving flags (and smoke bombs!), chanting, cutting trees with chainsaws*, whatever you want. This, rather than pumped-in music or kiss cams, gives the games atmosphere.
*Srsly.
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"'I don't want to sound sarcastic,' Hackett said." If Brandon had lived by that rule, he would've never opened his mouth.
Under Armour makes great clothing. The shoes are suspect.
The funny thing about our $8m deal from Adidas is that half of that is gear. Well, if the gear is just ok (or poor quality as Vince Smith described it), then that doesn't really mean much. "Hey, here's $4m worth of subpar shoes and warmups!"
There's a Business Insider (I know) article about how badly Adidas is tanking due to abadonment of urban run dmc type gear. Company is focused on Europe and futball.
with an Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind. What a great guy to have leading our athletic department.
PS I think we need an "Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind" MGoBlog t-shirt.
If the Harbaughs are smart, they've already trademarked it.
What Hackett says is a good sign. I'm glad he is listening to players, alumni, and the current student body.
I will say, however, that atmosphere is a tricky thing. There's no doubt that the monetization, the following of the NFL entertainment model, is not what I want. But what makes atmosphere "right" isn't something that can be quickly manufactured. There are many things that go into that stew.
Piping in lots of loud rawk music is not part of the atmosphere I want. Having endless advertisements streaming over the jumbotron or whatever it is called would be incredibly annoying. As would banner ads flicking on and off.
I will say, however, that I just don't get the passion about Nike vs. Adidas. I've had good gear and crappy gear from both. I wouldn't sell out just for money, but I would demand quality, from whoever has the uniform contract.
My dislike of Adidas comes mainly from the bad quality of their uniforms that resulted in numerous torn jersies for the basketball team, and some of the horrendous ideas they've had for unis, especially in basketball (this year's cummerbund/fanny pack, the Zubaz-esque ones, the ones where the uni number is a yellow that doesn't show up on TV, etc)
they lost me that season that our basketball uniforms literally disintegrated off of our players and the team had to go back to using uniforms from the previous year because the quality was so horifically bad. I've never seen unifoms of that poor quality, even on a high school team. Complete and utter junk, not worth $5 a piece.
Combine that with their "we can't possibly design anything nice, so we'll just make things as ugly as possible to get attention that way" approach to design, and I just have no use for Adidas anymore.
Apparently it was a fireside chat.
How did we lose WJR? We aren't even on WWJ from what I can tell my last trip downstate. I'd like it if our AD could undo that. Nothing worse than visiting one's Mom and family, and when I go to flip on the game hearing 'Touchdown MSU!!!'
Uh....Michigan has been off WJR for about a decade now.
WWJ 950 is where they're at.
in Northern Michigan since '00, so I really hadn't kept track. It was jarring.
Is that in the late 1990s (or whenever this switch happened), MSU offered WJR money to broadcast their football & basketball games, and Michigan refused to pay to have their sports broadcast on the radio: they wanted WJR to pay them, and WJR could make their money back by selling advertising.
WJR picked MSU.
That's enlightening. Sucks, but still enlightening.
WWJ isn't bad. At least its 50K watts. But for whatever reason WJR always seemed to come in better for me in and around Brighton/Clarkston.
(1) MSU, in the mid '90s, was going through a phase of feeling particularly inferior. Both the football and the basketball teams were getting nowhere near the attention that Michigan was getting. They had to do something in Southeast Michigan to get the media to pay attention to them, and that something turned out to be "paying a radio station for publicity."
(2) Michigan saw that nobody was going to care about terrestrial radio broadcasts of football games ever again. Every game was on TV, making radio pretty much irrelevant.
MSU tried to make some mileage out of WJR switching to them, and they got WJR to act in a somewhat hostile manner toward Michigan (the way the newspapers do now as well). Good for them, but in the end, Michigan saved its money and they were also right: nobody cares about the radio broadcasts any more.
Sorry; I was being flippant rather than seriously asserting that actually nobody cares.
What I meant to say was simply "Michigan recognized that they were justified in placing less importance on the radio contract because, with the change in the television landscape over the past decades, fewer people would be following the team over the radio." No offense was intended, and please accept my apology if any was taken.
The WJR switcheroo wasn't in the '90s. It was around 2005 or so.
"UA is a distant third when it comes to recognition and door-opening."
Here's a thought: We don't need UA's help with recognition. Michigan already has among the most, if not the most, recognized looks among colleges.
What we need is to have that recognition preserved, not have some corporate jackass turning it into something the next generation of students won't recognize. Under Armour has more to gain by not messing with Michigan's look, whereas Adidas and Nike are more likely to make ego-driven decisions and expect us to swallow whatever BS they throw at us.
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