October 26th, 2014 at 7:47 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 7:53 PM ^
Plus people are not as passionate about bball as they are football. Brandon by a large margin.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:04 PM ^
Not sure what you mean here. We hardly received any sanctions in the fall of 1997. Goss fired Fisher anyway. He hired Ellerbe to "clean things up" - and the violations continued under Ellerbe's watch for another two seasons.
It wasn't until 2003 (three years after Goss's firing) that the NCAA really dropped the hammer.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:12 PM ^
The particulars blend into a nice smoothie of suck in my mind.
October 26th, 2014 at 7:53 PM ^
Brandon....he's the AD in the worst stretch of Michigan football ever. Football drives the athletic department. I think we can agree this feels worse than any moment with Rich Rod.
October 26th, 2014 at 7:57 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:06 PM ^
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
October 26th, 2014 at 9:29 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 10:17 PM ^
You think we're winning 7 games? 5 wins would be a miracle...
October 27th, 2014 at 3:02 AM ^
October 27th, 2014 at 10:24 AM ^
And his third year, we continously shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers in plus territory for the first three quarters. Plus, these OSU teams are not as good as what Tressel was trotting out there.
All I know is Sparty never spanked us like this when RR was here. We always had a chance in those games.
October 27th, 2014 at 11:13 AM ^
October 27th, 2014 at 12:01 PM ^
Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I think that if the Gibbons of 2011 was that accurate in 2010, we may have beaten Sparty that year and beat no worse than a touchdown down at halftime of the OSU game. I mean we were passing up makeable field goals because of our kicking situation.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:15 PM ^
At the end of the game, I felt absolutely terrible, but we were going to a bowl game at least and the team was getting better. This, the guys are getting worse, the whole athletic department is up in the air, there is just a feeling of uncertainty that this program has never seen before. We don't know who we can get, we don't know if this program can get back to what we think it should be any time soon. Right now feels pretty bad....
October 26th, 2014 at 8:15 PM ^
I feel like the problems cast a far more negative light on the university. Part of that--absolutely--is having bungled twice. Also, the malfeasance had a quaintly fratricidal quality duiring the RR debacle; this time it features a true neoliberal bogeyman, such a reflexive believer in his own evil ideology that he'll happily screw his own Michigan faithful to enact it. The ugly goes much deeper now.
Aside: Had repeatedly heard about Brandon's "if it ain't broke break it" mantra in practice at Domino's and in his work acquiring companies, but only saw it affirmed yesterday--in John Bacon's piece--that he talked such sh*t to M AD employees as well.
October 26th, 2014 at 7:55 PM ^
Domers deserved it. Everything else, though? Yeah, Brandon because finances can be fixed by being competent and fundraising your ass off. This is going to be harder and longer to fix.
October 26th, 2014 at 9:51 PM ^
the chicken dance was funny and a perfect ending fo rthe night ... oh and fuck notre dame anyway.
However - Brandon has essentially kissed the asses of every sport at UofM with new facilities and backing of the coaches. At the same time he has taken action to steal money from every person attending a fooball game in Ann Arbor. Doesn't matter you you are ... student, alumni, season ticket holders, former players, etc - he raised the cost of everyone going to a game - and never gave a shit about it. The fact that he's already cut the student ticket prices next year is essentially the cat covering up the shit with kitty litter. He needs to be gone!
Go Blue!
October 26th, 2014 at 7:55 PM ^
I bet you there were a lot of Michigan fans back then who couldn't pick Tom Goss out of a lineup. He wasn't a public figure nearly of the variety Dave Brandon has made himself. A lot of his decisions and gaffes were made behind closed doors or by others in the department. He didn't foster the kind of toxic environment DB has, and was actually a pretty likeable guy.
The comparison really doesn't work.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:03 PM ^
I have to be honest, if I were standing next to tom goss, I would have no idea who he is. . .
October 26th, 2014 at 8:08 PM ^
He used to walk around fairly unnoticed in the Blue Lot before games, even though he's a fairly big guy. I bumped into him a few times and was surprised the AD was just walking around the tailgates visiting people.
Balance that against DB's marketing intern-driven golf cart and general holier-than-thou attitude...
October 26th, 2014 at 8:08 PM ^
"Jinkies, it's the ghost of Gustave Ferbert!!"
October 26th, 2014 at 8:10 PM ^
Indeed. Even today, I have to google his picture to remember what he looked like.
The only thing I really remember about him was the halo drama and then participating in the email campaigns to get it taken down.
In regards to Ellerbe, he kind of pulled a Brady Hoke in having a good first season. The basketball team had quailty wins over #1 Duke, Syracuse, Indiana, MSU, and ended up 25-7. I don't think it was until the following year when the sh*t hit the fan about the Martin saga and by then, the interim lable had already been removed.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:32 PM ^
This is why I don't want to fire Hoke until after OSU. The next three games are winnable, and I don't want an interim guy suckering us into hiring him permanently, as happened with Ellerbe.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:40 PM ^
1. What's winnable about Ohio State?
2. Oh, those pesky interim guys, suckering us into hiring them permanently...
October 26th, 2014 at 9:17 PM ^
The next three games are Indiana, at Northwestern (basically a neutral-site game with our Chicago fanbase) and Maryland. OSU is the fourth.
As for us having a Lloyd on staff, putting aside my strong suspicion that we don't have one, I don't even know if a Lloyd Carr circa 1995 could have turned this around either. He inherited a strong program and kept it going, which is admirable, but not the same as having to revive a fallen program.
October 26th, 2014 at 9:22 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:01 PM ^
Brandon is more infamous. The genius marketing guy who makes every non-story into a week long embarrassment.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:02 PM ^
The Boers/The British/The Boxers/Enver Pasha/Hitler/Mussolini/Stalin/Tojo/Saddam-Uday-Qusay - how is it possible to choose in terms of infamy?
Different category Goss v. Brandon but there is no need to rank them.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:04 PM ^
rather than saying who was the bigger failure. . .
October 26th, 2014 at 8:22 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:04 PM ^
Appreciate the spirit of the question, but it's all moot. Goss is deservedly gone--yes, Ellerbe. And he was the first to experiment with the Stadium at the margins, and it was a failure.
I think as a fanbase we can tolerate a small number of encroachments upon sacred turf, so long as it they're reversable if they don't work, and don't affect what is fundamentally important to us. So Goss got his three or four strikes.
Brandon is on Strike 6.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:13 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:14 PM ^
with regards to the athletic department, nothing comes anywhere near the importance of putting out a serviceable football team. if you don't do that, you are automatically lower than someone who did.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:14 PM ^
Don't really understand why people are so against Legends Jerseys. It's not in the same category as macaroni noodles, cokes, stupid uniforms, price gouging etc. I think it would be cool to do it for one game every season then put them away and everyone wins.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:18 PM ^
the legacy jersey thing for me was he took jerseys out of retirement for no other reason than a money grab. He could sell jerseys to people knowing that no one had them. Plus they came with a patch. ..
October 26th, 2014 at 8:35 PM ^
There is a legitimate reason for the legends jerseys. We've had a lot more than five guys worthy of having their jerseys honored, but couldn't afford to take any more jerseys out of circulation with 115 players and only 94 numbers available. The legends jerseys allowed us to honor Desmond Howard and we can honor others as well, like Woodson.
What I would change about them is make the patch smaller, and just give them out to freshmen - don't make a big deal about them "earning" the the jersey.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:48 PM ^
it was indeed a legitimate reason. Perhaps I'm a little too jaded by Brandon's intentions to believe there was any other reason to put those jerseys back into circulation other than to make more money. . .In the college game you can have multiple players with the same number. Just as long as they aren't on the field at the time. . .
October 26th, 2014 at 8:45 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 9:16 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 10:02 PM ^
C'mon - Devin is wearing Tom Harmon's number .... WHY?
Sorry but DG isn't going to make the top 10 QB's in MY LIFETIME, much less of all time. Yeah remembering the past is great - do it for 1 home game with all related pomp and circumstance. EVERY player at Michigan deserves the opportunity to make his own mark in his own way ... that's true with Funchess too because the #1 will never ever be retired - the #1 is symbolic by itself. If someone's number is retired it was done so because that person was so unforgetable that the number was to remain with their name forever ... so honoring that person for 1 game is acceptable - but when you then put the number back onto the field for every game - you've stolen that number's identity from one of Michigan's greatest players. and again WHY?
Go Blue!
October 26th, 2014 at 10:20 PM ^
It's likely that no future player wearing #98 will be as good as Harmon, but that's why there's that patch on the uniform.
The legends jerseys accomplish multiple things:
-They allow us to use all 99 numbers for our 115-man roster
-They allow us to honor other legends besides the seven who were honored decades ago
-They actually keep those players' names in the public recognition. Many fans didn't even know we'd retired numbers before. Tom Harmon's name has been mentioned far more these past two years in the media than in the decade before.
I don't know if Brandon was the guy behind this or someone else, but it was a good move.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:25 PM ^
I think Goss should have renovated our facilities in his era. We had a morgue at Crisler, crappy restrooms/no handrails/not enough portals etc. at the football stadium, crappy concourses and wooden seats at Yost, crappy indoor football facility, outdated Schembechler Hall, no bball practice building, crappy baseball stadium, crappy track stadium, and outdated volleyball/wrestling gymnastics building. We also payed nothing for coordinators or bball coaches. I'll give Martin credit for fixing these things and I guess Brandon. At that same time Ohio State renovated their football stadium, built Value City Arena etc.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:37 PM ^
Goss couldn't renovate anything because (due to his financial mismanagement) we were in the red.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:42 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:43 PM ^
October 26th, 2014 at 8:53 PM ^
He got taken to the cleaners on the 1998 stadium renovation/scoreboard installation deal (the one that expanded to 107,501 and put in the first jumbotrons) - we used a different company than the one most other schools used and it cost far more money than expected. We also signed some bad radio/internet deals that gave us below-market revenue, and managed to offend Nike into dropping our contract so that we actually had to pay them for apparel. (Bill Martin managed to patch things up with Nike and sign a new deal.)
October 26th, 2014 at 8:44 PM ^
Uh... It's almost like the trifect of Bo, Weidenbach, and Roberson never happened!
The AD was in the red by the time Goss took over for a number of reasons. A large part of that was fixing the botched Canham Natatorium, which was beset with a variety of problems that made immediately renovating it a necessity. Canham apparently wanted a palace to his commitment to non-revenue sports (he was a track coach, after all), but the architects didn't foresee a glass roof would create a greenhouse effect that caused algae to grow in the pool. It was a disaster.
Goss was bad and all, but let's not pretend the Athletic Department was functional since Canham.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:51 PM ^
Oh, there's plenty of blame to be shared. Everyone from Weidenbach to Goss had zero fiscal sense and Brandon has carried that torch. Martin was the one guy in there who had the finances figured out, but then he was asleep at the wheel in other areas (like being ready to replace Lloyd).
That said, Goss was awful at contract negotiations (see above).
October 26th, 2014 at 8:25 PM ^
Can they just both by losers? It's like picking which Real Housewives of X that is stuck playing on the TV's at the gym; all of them suck.