Sam Webb's Article on Mays Coaching Search
Didn't see this posted anywhere but Sam has an interesting article on the coaching search. Former EMU Coach Charles Ramsey & Beilein were instrumental. Props to Manual for getting it done.
Ramsey was also an assistant for Amaker.
Sounds like Mrs. May needs a shoutout for preferring Ann Arbor.
What goes around comes around, eh Louisville?
How attractive is she though? - James Franklin
I bet she's gonna miss Boca though. Ann Arbor is nice and all, but it ain't Boca Raton.
Obviously weather wise it's not Boca but they lived in Washtenaw County for a while and very close to A2 so she likes the area enough to prefer it to other places.
The weather sucks in most places for 4 to 5 months not named California or Florida quite frankly.
The day I decided to move out here it was -50 wind chill, it happens.
if I were to rank the weather in all 50 states, Florida would be right there at the bottom. Hot, humid, rainy... just terrible. Give me Michigan 8 days a week.
I lived in Michigan majority of my life…if I never see a snowflake again I’ll be a happy man
As a 20 year Michigan resident and a Florida resident for the last 12 years, I completely agree. I do not miss Michigan weather at all. The summer months are not miserable once you get used to the heat. Also a/c is a thing and the beaches are fantastic in the heat.
The way things are going, in 5 years you probably wouldn't.
The weather sucks in most places for 4 to 5 months not named California or Florida quite frankly.
Florida in the summer is absolutely gross.
California, yeah, I'd agree - at least on the coast. Inland, it's blazing hot in the summer.
I'd take Florida off the list, it has 4-5 months around summer that are just miserable.
Hawaii, though, I think I'd like to try that year-round.
Yep, "The weather sucks in most places for 4 to 5 months not named California or Florida quite frankly." C'mon April - September!!! Can't wait for the good stuff.
She can afford to keep a condo down there and visit whenever she wants.
Eh, we've got Zingerman's
If if had millions I would live in California above anywhere else except Michigan, Colorado, or Virginia. I need fall.
England would probably top them all. Living in a castle in the Cotswolds or along the coast..l😍
I never would have thought that Warde would seem competent in a situation revolving around a head coach. From this, and other things I've read, this seems like a great hire. We may be in store for a couple of rebuilding years, but hopefully May will get us on track quickly.
Word. His decision to keep Harbaugh instead of firing him after the Covid year, as so many wanted him to do, is just another example of his incompetence involving head coaches. And hiring Naurato and Sherrone Moore — two more idiotic decisions.
The guy just can't make good decisions involving head coaches for the life of him!
I'm not a "Warde Manuel is bad at everything" guy, but this defense of doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Retaining Jim Harbaugh was a good decision, and well executed. Whether or not this was done out of laziness (as some claim) or genuine analysis, the public will never know. But it's indisputable that this turned out to be a great decision and a well-executed process, so kudos for that.
Brandon Naurato was hired as the only viable candidate at an extremely bad time in the year purely because Manuel had neither fired nor signed Pearson to a new contract for many months after receiving the results of an investigation that found fireable offenses. In this case, Manuel had two competing interests: ethics and winning/stability, and he accomplished neither. We can say with near certainty that the Pearson scandal was handled extremely poorly, and UM hockey ended up with what appears to be a very good coach in spite of Manuel, not because of him. I'd also say the jury's still out on Naurato, too, because he's only been HC for 2 years in a sport with a lot of recruiting momentum. At this point in Juwan Howard's tenure, we were extolling him as potentially better than Beilein.
Sherrone Moore was an incredibly obvious candidate. It would have been a shocking upset if the guy currently on staff who'd interim-coached 4 games that year wasn't hired as the HC in a year with no particularly impressive outside candidates available at the time. He also hasn't coached a single game as full-time HC yet (Harbaugh was still the HC during the week when he was suspended). While Moore seems like a good decision, let's not congratulate Manuel too much for hiring the obvious in-house candidate.
Dusty May, by all accounts, seems to be a great outside hire as the result of a well-executed plan. Manuel should absolutely be given credit for this.
So of the cases you cited, we have 2 well-executed plans with good results, 1 hire so obvious my wife could have made it, and 1 obvious hire that turned out well in spite of the terrible mismanagement that led to it. While it's not the track record of utter ineptitude some make it out to be, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Manuel as a top-tier AD, either.
We know nothing about Moore yet as a full time HC. Also there was no "second in line if not Moore" with the timing. It's like saying congrats you drafted Cade Cunningham first overall - well that was the consensus and obvious.
If it works out in 3-4 years then yes congrats. If not, it's a bad hire. None of us know.
Are we sure Jim Stapleton is on board with this hire?
Warde - "If you want the job it is yours."
Beilein - "Not if my life depended on it."
"Beilein was understandably non-committal about the possibility."
Yeah, odd use of non-committal to mean “said no.”
Sources say Manuel connected with Beilein early last week to determine whether rumors of his interest in returning to the sideline were true.
I wonder if this means Manuel follows Bacon on twitter.
It might also mean Santa does.
Balas was one who stated Santa played a significant role in how this unfolded as well. Whether that was in relation to getting Beilein more involved, NIL, or something else he didn't say.
Balas hahahahaha. Guy has been wrong on so much in last 4 months
I'm not always a fan of his style and the "I know something but can't tell you yet" posts, but I don't feel like he just throws things against the wall.
I don't think you can take his reporting as gospel, but it's a reasonable source of insider information.
Unfortunately, "reasonable source of insider information" is kind of an oxymoron. Personally I trust Sam Webb and John U. Bacon because they don't report any "news" unless it's confirmed by multiple sources, aka the way proper journalism used to work.
All of the others, in my opinion, have sources and are right sometimes but are also wrong a lot of the time and when they first offer up their news it's impossible to tell how credible it is.
That means they are operating on a one source clickbait model of sorts and putting their betterment ahead of the veracity of what they say. No thanks.
*voracity
Great (unpaywalled) read--thanks OP! It's really nice to read a description of how proactive Warde was in this instance--and how he made great use of trusted confidants in the process. I'm sold on Dusty May--Go Blue!
Manual is Automatic?
Manuel.
Agree on the congrats so Warde. This is how rational job searches are supposed to go. Have a plan, lean on trusted and competent advisors. Then act decisively when the top candidate is identified.
Manuel isn't beyond criticism for other things—no AD is—but you'd have to be pretty churlish to think he didn't do exactly what we'd all ideally want to see an AD do in this situation.
With big assists from Ramsey and Beilein, of course—it's tremendously valuable to have a network of trusted confidants.
Props to Warde for not only having that trusted (dare I say vast) network, but also using it when it mattered. There's a strain of bad leadership where people think they need to do it all themselves to prove they're in charge. Knowing when to lean on trusted experts is a good quality.
Chicanerous. And deplorable.
Full agree. Jury is still out for Manuel for me overall, but looks like he did a good job hiring May.
I guess my only question would be if the few grand slam names like Greg McDermott were considered or contacted since worse case is they say no. But the more I think about it besides someone like that May is my number one choice of the other names mentioned.
The kicker with say McDermott is he's still in the tourney and at best you're talking to his agent. Other than a 'Thanks but no thanks', you're probably getting a 'let's talk after the season'.
So do you roll the dice on a 'maybe' or go with May while knowing that if you don't grab May asap there's a good chance he's Louisville's coach.
LOL Warde is playing Wordle while his detractors are playing hangman.
Good job, AD! Go Blue!
This is a good hire, at face value, and I'm happy to see it. But lets not start jerking each other off yet. It's not like he beat Kentucky, Kansas, or Duke for a Coach. He beat Louisville. I'm more impressed by Sherrone pulling Alford from OSU.
Ok Bud, just keep moving the bar.
Let's refrain from anal orgies and child sacrifices, at least until Warde hires a successful softball coach.
Not sure if you've noticed, but those three programs aren't exactly lighting the world on fire these days.
Who is aside Uconn right now? Consistency is difficult in the modern era of everyone is a free agent. Maybe Gonzanga as 2nd.
Someone needs to Photoshop Harvey Keitel into Murderwolf.
Start? What have we been doing this entire time?
Sounds like Ramsey certainly was key here, helping to not only alert Manuel to May as a candidate, but also by speaking to May regularly during this process.
I was curious what Ramsey is doing now - his Wikipedia page doesn't say anything beyond his EMU tenure (which ended in 2011). Apparently he's now at the HS level, coaching Ypsilanti, or at least was as of 2020. I wonder if we offer him a role in some capacity.
I wish Beilein could stay involved somehow. Maybe a small scouting gig or something.