AD Versus Local Media and Perception

that michigan has taken a hit to their 'name brand'. people/media have been talking trash and theres no one thats been countering them

I agree with many of the points you've raised, but I think the supposed hit that we've taken on a national scale is being a bit over exaggerated.  Granted, some bad or embarrassing stories come out in the national media -- it's a part of being an elite university with a storied football program.  But I do not think that these stories affect the vast majority of peoples' views on how they think of the program as a whole.

We are still the all-time winningest program in the history of college football.  People don't just simply forget that.  You look at other Big Ten campuses, and the Michigan game is STILL the game everyone looks forward to most (perhaps excluding OSU), even after a few sub-par seasons.  I go to grad school at another Big Ten school and I'm a M alum, and I know it's the case here.  The respect for Michigan is still there.  People still expect us to be back at the top, and I think Rich Rod has this program on that path.

Saying all of that, I do love the moves that we are making to improve PR, as it is essential in this day in age.

The Michigan brand is not deteriorated. I think it may be going in the wrong direction in terms of football, but these things can change fast. The media never reports all the facts. That is just how it is. Most people don't know that the NCAA Violations came about because a reporter and alum from the Free Press that didn't like RR wrote a story without much merit. You can expect all that to be reported by the national media. The flashy, controversial stories are reported in flashy, controversial ways. RR was really shady the way he left WVU, how he denied he was leaving, shredded stuff, notified the team. He wasn't a "Michigan Man," he already had that against him when he came, but all that stuff certainly didn't help. I actually think DB will let RR go after the bowl game because I don't think DB projects that the Michigan Brand will be back on a positive upswing until he is gone, as much as it pains me to say it.

The fact that there are factions in the program. If alumni and former players would rally around RR the press wouldn't have a leg to stand on!

That reads like step one in terms of getting together a better functioning and more coherent marketing and pr strategy....

Here's why M hasn't received good press over the past 3 years:

1) The team hasn't been good over the past 3 years. It's hard to get good press when you're not good. 

2) The NCAA hit the team with sanctions and probation.

Worst M team in history. First NCAA violations in history. Winless against OSU and MSU. Not to mention Boren and Dorsey (and Groban). Messy, messy.

How do you "get ahead of the narrative" here? By getting the press to acknowledge that, in truth, the team was consistently impressive, cleared of all charges, thisclose to beating OSU? Strategy might work. In Burma.

The main problem is not bad reporting. The main problem is bad news. 

Enough with the Palin Logic.

 

 

 

 

Also, yes, the media has been pretty hard on RR. But you make it sound as if the papers have been endlessly carpet-bombing the team and coach? You forget the literally hundreds of "friendly" articles they published about the team, on a running basis:

"Richrod is All-In!"

"This Could Be The Year Michigan Returns To Glory."

"Wolverines Look Faster, Sharper."

It's mostly a sea of puff. The positive articles vastly outnumber the negative ones.

So stop whining.

From "Major NCAA violations" to "Lack of Family Values"  to "Thugs" to "Embarassing Bust Speeches," the MIchigan brand has taken a hit,nationally.

As these are the main incidents you mention, let's look at them one-by-one.

Major NCAA Violations: Since Brandon showed up, our response has been fine. We admitted a certain degree of carelessness and stated that the Freep investigation was essentially crap. Every media outlet, except the Freep, reported that the NCAA investigation showed that violations were technically considered major but were rather tacky and not worthy of significant sanctions. A few actually noted that the Freep investigation turned out to be inaccurate, but, understandably, most outlets chose not take shots at their fellow journalists. And, of course, the Freep declared victory and moved on because doing anything else would be to admit that they sold their integrity for the financial impact of publishing such a big story.

Lack of Family Values: This popped up when Boren left. The coaches and AD officials never took any major shots at Boren because doing so would have looked really bad. A number of players stated that Rodriguez does promote family values. There was no real way for this to be a PR win, but the story appears to have had a negligible impact on the program.

Thugs: The Feagin story could not possibly do anything good for the football team's PR. But Rodriguez's response of kicking Feagin off the team worked fine. It is annoying that the Freep never really called out MSU for similar and, indeed, worse antics committed before the Rather Hall incident, but there's nothing we can do about that. Calling out another program for their legal troubles never looks good, especially when you're dealing with legal issues yourself. At any rate, this also appears to have had a negligible impact on our program.

Embarrassing Bust Speech: This is also inconsequential. It merely was a chance for our rivals to laugh at us. Media outlets would still be writing articles about Rodriguez's job security no matter what happened with his speech.

The Michigan brand has taken a hit because we have gone 15-21 over the past 3 years, been dominated by our two biggest rivals, and haven't beaten a strong team. There's no way to spin this into favorable coverage. We could have gotten more of a pass if the Freep writers liked Rodriguez as much as Dantonio, but they didn't and there's not much we could have done about that. Except for winning more games, that is, but I doubt even that would keep away the Freep practice investigation, which was by far the most damaging thing you mentioned.

I like the use of the term "narrative" in your post.  It appears to me that a fundamental preoccupation of many media outlets is not investigation (or at least not investigation qua investigation), but instead crafting narratives (and only investigation for purposes of advancing the narrative [see freep and alleged practice time nonsense]). 

I wonder whether defense, i.e., reacting to these narratives in an attempt to set the facts straight, is the right approach.  Perhaps it's better to fight narrative with narrative, in other words, ignore the media narrative and instead craft your own (action instead of reaction)?

StephenRKass makes a great point about M's approach ("we are M, we do things the right way," etc...).  This approach was, itself, an implicit narrative, and a powerful one at that.  I'm not so sure that this approach could not still work.  But it will require some strong leadership and decision making from DB, and he will have to ensure that whoever is M's coach going forward (I don't mean to comment on this topic) has the support they need (I also don't mean to comment on this topic either).