Unverified Voracity Steps On Another Rake
Mooch'd. Shemy Schembechler came, and then he went. Warde Manuel:
"Effective this afternoon, Shemy Schembechler has resigned his position with Michigan Football. We are aware of some comments and likes on social media that have caused concern and pain for individuals in our community. Michigan Athletics is fully committed to a place where our coaches, staff and student-athletes feel welcome and where we fully support the University's and Athletic Department's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion."
Schembechler got booted for his twitter account, which had dozens and dozens of likes on posts ranging between debatably racist and obviously racist. The ESPN story linked about asserts that "a source with knowledge of the situation told ESPN that Schembechler went through a thorough background check during the hiring process," which uh no he did not. When your background check misses publicly available information it was not thorough. Or even a "check," really.
Add it to the "What The Hell Is Warde Manuel Doing?" files. This is currently an athletic department that's winning the most important game on the schedule and doing very little else right. At this point the number of unforced PR errors that the department is stumbling into like so many rakes in front of Sideshow Bob is, dare I say it, Brandonesque. Articles are rolling in with titles like "Michigan leadership continues to embarrass itself" from places like The Athletic—not exactly the RCMB.
Shemy released a statement repudiating his hundreds of endorsements of racist right wing tweets, for what little that's worth.
[After the JUMP: anonymous quotes article woo]
ALSO IN WHOOPSIES BY GUYS IN SUITS. Kevin Warren negotiated a big old TV deal just before he went back to the NFL, but there are various… uh… issues outstanding:
Nearly three months before the season kicks off and those TV deals begin, the Big Ten does not have completed longform contracts, which include the fine print details. Instead, Petitti is engaged in significant "horse trading," according to multiple sources, to get the NBC primetime deal finished and figure out what the network calls "outstanding issues" in order to uphold as much value as possible.
Those issues include a total of 65 million dollars the Big Ten has to pay FOX because they have sold inventory that was previously FOX's to NBC, and "tens of millions of dollars of value" for the NBC primetime deal because Big Ten schools do not want to play in primetime in November for obvious reasons. Here is a section of the story:
"NBC was surprised, and I was surprised," said Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel. "We had not discussed, and I had not discussed with anyone in the league to change the tolerances we had agreed upon years ago."
Within the industry, though, there was an expectation that, considering the scope of the deal, all schools would play in prime time.
"The fault here is with the administrators on campus," said another industry source. "How did the presidents, chancellors and athletic directors not know this? The universities all signed off on the deal."
I side with the industry source here, at least as far as where the fault lies. Warde Manuel should have more information that I do about this but apparently has less because he did not read Adam Rittenberg's piece from nine months ago when the deal was "completed". Here is the bit on the NBC portion of the deal:
NBC will carry Big Ten games in prime time, which will be branded "Big Ten Saturday Night."
Since they did not brand it "Big Ten Saturday Night Except In November" it is a reasonable assumption that NBC intended to air prime time games for the whole season.
But I am on Manuel's side because I do not want to sit in 10 degree weather to watch Michgian play Indiana when I could sit in 20 degree weather to do the same.
Ooh, anonymous high school coaches. The Athletic surveys eight different high school coaches in Big Ten country about various things. One question about "if you had a son picking a Big Ten college where would you want him to go" gets this response from Coach 6, based in Nebraska:
Coach 6: If I had to pick one, I would pick Iowa. But if he was a quarterback, his ass ain’t going to Iowa.
Seven of the eight responded to a question about which schools are "working your area the hardest" and Michigan is mentioned first or second by five; the only guys who do not mention M are based in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Various assistants are endorsed as well:
Coach 1: … They’ve had some turnover, but the tight ends coach (Grant Newsome) has been there a couple years now, he’s done a good job. … Coach 4: Coach Clink (Michigan defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale) has been super impressive. The time he’s spent at our school, even with the kids that may not be on his level, has been really good…. Coach 5: Coach Clinkscale and (wide receivers coach Ron) Bellamy (from Michigan). I know the kids really love both. They stand out.
Most downplay the impact of NIL on the kids that are getting recruited, saying that unless you're at the very top end it's not making a whole lot of difference. Michigan is not mentioned at all when the question is which teams have been the "most aggressive in promoting NIL," but Michigan State is, sooooo…
Welp. One can be frustrated at the fact that Michigan lands two first rounders on The Ringer's most recent NBA mock draft—Kobe Bufkin at #13 and Jett Howard at #23—and has nothing but an NIT appearance to show for it, or one can survey this year's team and see no potential NBA first-rounders and be happy about that. Yeah.
Cheer up, Michigan State! You may have yoked your football program to a completely untested head coach who parlayed the lucky find of a Heisman-worthy running back in the portal into a billion year unbreakable contract. You may have just lost your starting quarterback and best offensive player to the portal. Your recruiting class may have just lost one of its four commits and now stands at one CB ranked #400th and two nondescript interior OL. But y'all are dodgeball national champs. So you've got that going for you.
Hockey scheduled sleuthed. Connor Earegood used the powers of FOIA to find out who Michigan had signed contracts with next year for nonconference games. The answers:
According to records accessed by The Michigan Daily through the Freedom of Information Act, Michigan has signed contracts to face four teams — home against Providence and Lindenwood and away at Massachusetts and St. Cloud State — during its non-conference season. Similar to last season, all of those non-conference games come in the first half of the season.
Lindenwood went 5-22-1 last year and probably doesn't project much better in its second season as a D1 program. SCSU was #6 in Pairwise last year; Providence and UMass were 24 and 29, respectively. Both of the latter two programs could be projected to bounce back; UMass made the 2022 tourney and Providence was vaguely on the bubble.
Etc.: Naz Hillmon's first WNBA offseason was spent in the studio. Blake Corum is PFF's highest-graded returning college player by a whopping five points. Tray Jackson on his decision to transfer to Michigan. This tweet was sent to me. Sure, I'll read an article about the Kalel Mullings jump pass.
I've defended Warde, but this really is a bad look for him and the AD department. Goes to show Shemmy wasn't vetted at all. On Harbaugh, as a coach and always busy, I think they somewhat live in a bubble and are oblivious to alot of things people like us are, so Harbaugh gets a very small pass.
a very small pass...first, because of the hagiography of hiring someone's kid because reasons.
but also because shemy (by the way, my GOD that nickname annoys me) is not unknown to jim harbaugh. he had to have some inkling, no matter how busy or bubble-residing he is.
I can kinda give Harbaugh a very small pass here. While Shemy is provably dumb enough to still go by Shemy (yeah I can't get past that either) in his mid-forties, he's likely not dumb enough to be blatantly racist in front of most people including Harbaugh who may not be perfect but at least doesn't countenance overt racism and who likely has many Black friends and probably doesn't spend too much time twitter stalking (even in this one time he probably should have.)
Given that Shemy was just working as an NFL scout, I can understand if Harbaugh assumed there was nothing like this to tarnish his name. But certainly, someone in the athletic department should have checked up on it.
Yeah, I will agree with this but I will give Harbaugh more of a break--he's not an online guy and he might genuinely not have known what was up with the guy. Glenn Junior (I will call him that rather than "Shemy") was born in like '68 or '69. Harbaugh was born in '64. They lived in the same neighborhood in the early/mid '70s. Their dads worked together. They probably went to the same school.
This probably just started as Harbaugh being asked for help by a childhood friend who had fallen on hard times. Harbaugh didn't do a background check, and he might have hired Glenn Junior "no questions asked." Hopefully a lesson learned for Harbaugh, definitely a lesson learned by Manuel.
This also isn't the first time Harbaugh hired a longtime friend without them having any real qualification for the job they were given--I'm thinking about Jim Minick here.
Did they go to the same school? I know Harbaugh went to Pattengil before it was a 3-5 school and then Tappan before he moved to California. Schembechler's house was on Devonshire and I think would have fed into Angell. Other than Michigan football events, I don't know how they would have even known each other. I can't imagine they were friends. 4-5 years is a big difference at that age.
Hmm, maybe you are right about the schools. Yes, Glenn Junior would have gone to Angell. I will stand by my main point that this was the case of Harbaugh being too quick to help out someone who if not a friend was at least a family friend.
I agree with your main point - too many things are about what your name is rather than what you've done as an individual.
Though I will qualify it by saying I blame the athletic department more - just as I blame the athletic department and not admissions for the Love foulup. I don't expect Harbaugh to go through Twitter accounts before submitting a hire notice. And I don't expect the athletic department to allow a hiring announcement before running the basic checks, which these days definitely includes more than a quick look at Twitter.
Most of the kids from Angell elementary go to Tappan for middle school*. Although with the age difference, it's unlikely they would have overlapped.
(*The exceptions may be the kids from Hikone and the North Campus student housing, who were at Angell, despite it not being the closest school.)
But, it's not inconceivable that the Harbaugh and Schembecler families socialized together.
I agree with most of what you're saying except "definitely a less learned by Manuel." I'm pretty doubtful Warde is learning anything. He's screwed up a LOT of stuff.
Yeah, I agree. Harbaugh has a major blind spot where the Schembechler family is concerned. I don't love that but it is what it is, and not a fireable [ed:phrasing] offense, as it were.
It's therefore Warde's job to manage that. I know he isn't on great terms with Harbaugh because of how badly the latter basically emasculated him during the latest NFL kerfuffle but again.... literally your damn job to not generate embarrassing off-field headlines for the University, you discount Kingpin body double
Given that we're talking about an open endorsement of Jim Crow, I'm not sure "hanging offense" is the term you want to go with there.
fair point, am editing.
Thats literally not his job, lol.
Damn, y'all are so clueless when it comes to ADs and their job responsibilities.
Enough of this, I'll start a thread and explain.
I agree. I doubt that Harbaugh has any involvement with background checks or scours Twitter on a regular basis.
I miss Harbaugh tweets....
Harbaugh should still know who HE is hiring in HIS program.
That's not on Warde, it's between Harbaugh, his sport administrator, and HR.
Nepo babies, man. There was no reason to hire this guy aside from his name: the NFL teams he worked for were bad at scouting. The hiring was a middle finger to the Michigan men abused under his dad's watch.
1,000% OldSchoolWolverine. The interwebs found that Shemmy was a racist in less than a day. It takes a day to decide, "Hey I'll look up this guy and see what he's about." People figured out who he was in about 10 minutes. Warde did zero vetting. I'm not a knee jerk "fire this guy" type, but between this, the hockey culture stuff, our admissions garbage and NIL failings, Warde really needs to come up with some wins. Otherwise the first 3 loss football season Warde gets canned.
1000% my ass.
Michigan just tied it's record for most championships in a year. A record that I believe was set, LAST YEAR. Michigan Athletics is one of the strongest departments in the country right now.
Warde isn't going anywhere. The sheep need to learn the job of an AD before chiming in on his or her employment status.
Oh. Hi Warde.
The AD job at Michigan is 70% football, 15% basketball, 7.5% hockey and 7.5% everything else.
We've been bitching about how unfair it is that Clemson, Bama, Georgia, OSU, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, etc. have been paying players illegally for decades and if you could pay players the Michigan money cannon would blow them all out of the water. Guess what? Cannons are legal now. Where's our effing cannon? We should have our choice of prospects. Caleb Love thought he did well enough at NC that he could transfer to Michigan. I can't imagine a scenario where he doesn't get in. The whole credits not transferring doesn't hold water. All of these guys go to summer school and many of the major in general studies. Seriously WTF? Unless he showed up and couldn't read how does he not get in? Despite their scandals UNC is a good school.
As a sitting athletic administrator, this is the kind of bullshit that drives me nuts.
You all blame Warde, like he's the one who hired the guy. I guarantee he had absolutely NOTHING to do with this hire. Zero. Warde doesn't review resumes or sit in on searches that aren't head coaches or staff members who report to him. I don't work at Michigan, but NO AD would do this. I've probably hired over 25 people into college athletics, how many times do you all think the AD had anything to do with one of my searches?
TWICE.
Why? Because I was chair of committees to hire a new head coach. Never once has an AD been part of a search for someone who reported to me. NEVER.
#2. If Jim Harbaugh wants to hire someone, Jim Harbaugh is hiring that person. Period.
Warde Manual doesn't make hires for UM Football except the head coach (and even that is heavily influenced by the board).
So we are going to give Jim a "small pass," but blame Warde? That is such bullshit.
Harbaugh hires every non-intern level person in his program. He has help, but there is no way this ISN'T on him.
I bet Warde found out Shemy was coming back to Michigan a day before we did. That's how Football works.
You think Greg Byrne is vetting Saban hires? LOL, yeah right. But that's not his job either.
This is on Harbaugh and HR, PERIOD.
Dude, relax, hit too close to home? I can smell the bile you’re paddling in over the interwebs
Dude, relax, hit too close to home? I can smell the bile you’re paddling in over the interwebs
I don't think anybody is suggesting Manuel should have done the background check himself. But an athletic department should have hiring policies in place to ensure that somebody does it and that those policies are followed. That didn't happen and so the responsibility falls on the head guy.
At the same time I am not sure what the correct level of disappointment is here. All things considered, the guy's racist tweets were discovered and he was promptly removed within a couple days of being hired. So it's embarrassing and makes UM athletics look sloppy, but that's about the extent of the damage. It would have been far worse if he'd been on staff long enough to continue that conduct while at M.
I agree with you that Warde shouldn't be the one vetting potential hires, certainly not at this level. (If he is, he is wasting his time). But shouldn't they have some procedures in place, even as simple as this question on the HR paperwork: "Do you have a public social media? What is it?" Then some intern or low level person gets to go through and see if there's anything embarrassing within. That way, if the person lies, and stuff comes out, you have a super easy out.
This way, we look stupid. Again.
Was he making racist tweets, or was he liking racist tweets? It seems like it'd be a pretty big PIA for Harbaugh himself or Warde himself to be reviewing all the tweets a candidate liked.
Skimming through what they posted maybe, sure. But even then, I can't see either of those guys reading everything. And most definitely not to the degree of scrutiny someone out there who hates everything Schembechler would do.
But that is not to say it shouldn't be done. Certainly it should. This seems like a job someone in HR should be doing along with background checks, reference checks, resume verification, education claims verification, etc. The last time I was in the hiring process was 2017, so admit this could be a dated way to do things, but I left all that up to HR.
Dave Brandon was an one of one all time shitty athletic director because of his actions.
Warde Manuel is probably a slightly less shitty athletic director because of his inactions. There's literally no universe where I would prefer to have Dave Branding back, but goddamn if Warde isn't making an admirable (non)effort to make me rethink my stance.
It’s past the point of where I wonder what Warde actually does. There’s more examples than I can count where his PR, proactive actions in certain areas, and just blatant inaction are not up to par. Between the blatant ways he’s made our AD look bad or lack of action to make our AD look less bad, he’s gotta go at this point
The athletic department is winning a lot of games and specifically in the sport that matters most (football) so I doubt he gets the can given the accomplishments that his teams have achieved (success despite his lack of support).
But his ass is grass as soon as things go slightly awry. The basketball team is going to be an embarrassing disaster and he will just have to hope Harbaugh keeps the football team consistently good.
i know i'm a broken record on this, but the rake-stepping moment was his hiring. i don't want anyone named 'schembechler' anywhere near this university.
(also, side note - the naz hillmon link appears to take you back to the initial post)
Bo was an amazing football coach despite his bowl record. I'm willfully ignorant about the Dr. abuse stuff, but it sounds like he let a known pervert to go on molesting people both as a coach and as AD. I'm going to act like a PSU fan and confirmation bias my feelings on Bo.
However, Shemmy sounds like a nepo-baby and a racist. Let's not let him (further) tarnish Bo's legacy. I don't want to have to re-assess my feelings.
As soon as I saw it was a Schembechler I knew we were in trouble. Did I expect this trouble, no, but didn't think it would help us any.
I was with you, but will admit I was surprised when you lead with the last name schembechler instead of Manuel…
Seriously, Warde must go. He's asleep and not doing his job.
Think this might be the link about Naz. If not, its still a good read.
https://www.ballysports.com/national/news/naz-hillmon-gained-valuable-insight-as-college-basketball-analyst
Some people are in charge of things for no reason
Re: NBA draft lottery picks.
You could also make the case for Dickinson as well but he returned to play KU. Not sure what his draft grade would’ve been but I’m sure he would’ve gotten snatched up.
So that’s three NBA-caliber players and really nothing to show for it… Not sure who takes the L for that one?
Dickinson is not an NBA prospect. Good college player though.
I start watching the NBA when their playoffs start. I saw several end of the bench type guys (Cody Zeller) that I’m sure HD could replace as a rookie, minimum salary, UDFA type. I’d rather pay HD $953k than some 10 year vet $2.72M.
Zeller's actually been shockingly effective when he's on the floor. Zach Lowe ran the numbers and Zeller/Kyle Lowery pick and rolls in the playoffs (there have been around 50) had an overall result of 1.8 points per possession, which is enormously successful, and really just mind boggling, given the experience of watching Cody Zeller play basketball.
And, as unathletic as Zeller appears, he's significantly more athletic than Hunter. When zeller went pro, he had the highest vertical of any player over 6'9 in a decade, and had the fastest sprint time among big men at the NBA combine. Hunter had the slowest straight line sprint and lane agility score when he went through the combine. He's just too slow footed and unathletic to play NBA defense (and doesn't bring any remarkably unusual skill that might outweigh his defensive issues).
I appreciate you bringing the data. But I just can't let go of my feeling that Hunter is really good at basketball and will surprise a lot of people in the NBA. He's really tall, can shoot from inside and out, passes well, and plays good enough D IMO. He was so important to Michigan that he had to play very conservatively on D so there wouldn't be any possibility of fouling out. But maybe you're right. I'm almost always wrong with these gut feelings when it comes to the NBA.
I don't know the NBA that well, but Hunter seems like a guy who can ride the bench for like 2 decades. Seems almost every team has some more traditional big stashed away and can play until he's 40. Very few people even in the NBA have his size. If he doesn't make it in the NBA, he'll still do just fine playing international ball.
The NBA really doesn't roster guys like Hunter any more. Maybe two decades ago, he would have had a role for a guy who could come in and bang in the post, but there's rarely a back to the basket post touch by centers in NBA games anymore (when there is, it's when teams try to guard someone like Jokic or Embiid with a smaller player).
It's hard to find a comp for Hunter (post players who don't provide rim and can't switch) even deep on an NBA bench. The bench bigs are generally guys who can come in an provide either rebounding energy or floor spacing. Hunter's never going to be that. And his offensive game isn't threatening enough that it would force teams to adjust.
I don't think Dickinson gets picked. Maybe a free agent deal with the G League... His offense is one bounce from the basket - he can't shoot 3's well enough to stay outside, and isn't fast enough to get there in the NBA. He can't play defense against anyone with NBA agility (he's slower than I am) and he doesn't conjure fear of block shots. He really doesn't offer the NBA anything they want in a modern player.
But he's a GREAT college player. I hope he earns a comfortable retirement from Kansas...
I've never seen Dickinson in a mock draft. (Really, I haven't.) The NBA knows what he's about and they're collectively passing on him.
He was being mocked in the mid-2nd round after his first year. Who knows if that would have stuck, once NBA teams considered his very limited agility, but if he wanted to go to the NBA, one and done was probably his best bet (and he's probably making more money by staying in college than he would have going pro).
Hey now, Brian - this long time poster, supporter and reader of this site helped found the MSU dodgeball team. I know, I know, not many MSU attendees in these parts. I live a complicated life. But also Michigan didn't have a dodgeball team back then, so what did you expect me to do, go to school for academics?
Considering the new voice of Michigan football, and longtime voice of other Michigan sports is an MSU alum, you have plenty of company. It's pretty great that the other Spartan voices at 97.1 are irked at the fact that the one guy from that station heard nationwide is a Spartan alum, but Wolverine at heart.
LOL, I find it awesome that OSU are champions of Bollywood Fusion Dance. That fits the narrative of “going pro in something other than sports”.
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