So, how is Brandon doing with recruiting?

Submitted by 1M1Ucla on
So the head weasel (can't bring myself to think of him as a Wolverine) fired the head football coach three days ago. He buggered Option 1, had no Option 2, and is going to wind up taking best available 10th rounder. Having done out Rich, the head weasel is now responsible for recruiting. So, how's he grading out? Is he going to get a Top 20 class into Michigan? How many will he retain out of loyalty generated by Rich for each other? This is a really fine group of very young Wolverines who deserved better than the treatment they received from the head weasel. He is asking them for loyalty that he doesn't deserve, but will get because a great Michigan Man coached them well in looking out for each other.

What he is relying on now is loyalty from high school kids and their families after betraying them.

I heard a coach on the radio this morning criticizing the trend toward business people in AD positions because their values aren't focused on athletes and coaches, but rather on brands and influential people outside the program. I think that captures the head weasel pretty well. All show. No go.

slblue

January 8th, 2011 at 9:26 AM ^

So, here we are again, responding to a post where a "fan" calls our AD a rodent lbecause he terminated a nice man who unfortunately failed to produce enough wins to survive at Maryland let alone Michigan.  More head bashing of our leadership over timing of the move when numerous reasons supported a post-bowl game decision (e.g., he said he was going to do that - ergo, truthfullness; buyout - ergo, fiscal responsibility; and premiere coach availability - ergo, the top targets were playing bowl games). 

I am dedicated with my measly few points to reject the incessant bashing that goes on here.  I will support our Athletic Director.  Have you considered how nice that would have been three years ago when Mr. Martin hired a new coach?  Are we really that foolish as a fan base to eat our own young over, and over, and over until no one we'd care to invite is willing to join our merry little band of self important critics? 

Section 1

January 8th, 2011 at 11:40 AM ^

Are we really that foolish as a fan base to eat our own young over, and over, and over until no one we'd care to invite is willing to join our merry little band of self important critics? 

It would really have been nice, to have had everybody else "All In," for Rich Rodriguez.  And at least, even if they had valid criticisms of the Head Coach that merited airing, to at least help defend him from the truly ridiculous, scurrilous, and meritless charges.  Apart from MGoBlog, where else was that done by people in any substantial numbers?  This has been a witchhunt for a long time.  It is not just starting.

los

January 8th, 2011 at 10:08 AM ^

The OP is the reason why ANY coach will have a hard time wanting to go to Michigan: no brains, all impulse and unfounded, ignorant, personal attacks that create an aura of unnecessary negativity... just like the media. I feel good for RR. He doesn't have to deal with the psycho fans that troll our fanbase.

MGoHaters...

Logan88

January 8th, 2011 at 10:38 AM ^

I assure you that EVERY fanbase acts this way in times of uncertainty. Just go to a blog/forum/board for any relevant BCS team and you will find the same kind of sniping and in-fighting that goes on at the various UM forums. This is NOT unique to UM fans.

section39

January 8th, 2011 at 11:17 AM ^

Just look at what's been happening at Tennessee the last few years. Everyone wants to say we're turning into Notre Dame but I disagree and say we're more comparable to the Volunteers. Think about it, we both won a national championship in the late 90's, all but forced out our coaches the led us to said championship and hired someone who was not a fit at all and both faced hiring a new coach in a short time period after the latest hire. While UT faced a change with Lane Kiffin faster than we did with Rodriguez and the circumstances are different in that approach we are very similar.

 

Two once powerful programs now in turmoil.

eachtyes

January 8th, 2011 at 11:29 AM ^

Michigan has reached a new high in ineptitude and bad decision-making by firing Rodriguez. To come in and try to change a culture like RichRod did takes time. He should have gotten 6 years. I don't know how you can fire someone who is winning more games each year he is coach. Michigan deserves to get another Gary Moeller for this move. As a life-long Michigan fan, I'm disappointed to see the program relegated to mediocrity for another 3-6 years (a la ND). GRob had to go (someone had to take the hit for the defense) and Michigan needed a kicking game (inexcusable). Period. Now they need to start over completely and hope their Heismann candidate quarterback doesn't bail. Frankly, I hope RichRod gets the Stanford job and DRob goes to WVU. THAT would be poetic justice. Tradition means nothing. Tradition begins with what you do today--in the weight room, film room, practice field. Then game day will take care of itself. I can't imagine any coach wanting to come to UM now. I hope Brandon enjoys presiding over the biggest debacle in UM Football history--one of his own making. (One pissed off Michigan Man and Michigan fan)

SoCalWolverine

January 8th, 2011 at 5:20 AM ^

I'm going to concur with this statement...

 

In the event that it is not the coach you want...are you going to no longer be a "michigan man"?

also, this stuff with michigan man or not has gotten ridiculous...who cares at this point??? we want someone who will win. i for one loved RR but he didn't win and that is what he will forever be remembered for. not his good will or chaming spirit, or his way of actually coaching players.

 

can we just please pump the brakes???

 

seriously...would harbaugh have necessarily made us good? absolutely not.

 

the idea here is no longer about a michigan man...but rather winning in a key situation.

Lets face it. We want to win. Any coach who does so will be loved...any who doesn't won't be...

 

Edit: way too drunk and almost 30 to care about this...yet somehow I do.

Derek

January 8th, 2011 at 4:35 AM ^

If you have to parenthetically explain your super-witty-and-ironic sarcasm at the start of your post, then you're doing it wrong.

ken725

January 8th, 2011 at 4:49 AM ^

It seems like we might need a further lock down.  If it means that this kind of crap doesn't see the light of day on the board, I will happily go back to the way it was after bowl loss and RR firing.  Me not being able to post is a less of an issue than this kind of crap cluttering the board.

Willie Heston

January 8th, 2011 at 4:56 AM ^

I was pissed a HC wasnt announced when RR was fired.   I thought it asinine.  Outrageous. UNACCEPTABLE.

But then I thought about it some while taking down the Xmas ligths and concluded that every HC we might want to target was playing in a bowl game after Jan 1 and likely wouldnt take our call at that time anyway (Harbaugh, Patterson, Miles).

I do think DB miscalculated--but I also think he is now making up for it at warp speed to save his rep.  

 

Does anyone else remember when we were all told that Bill Martin was doing us a favor by working for a $1.  I Think Dave B. cares a lot about how he is remembered ( in spite of being of being mostly a corporate, "sell 'em drinks and stuff" kind of guy--which he definitely IS). I truly believe he doesnt want to screw this up.

Derek

January 8th, 2011 at 5:35 AM ^

But what about the high-profile assistants like Muschamp that we missed out on? It seems clear that DB was going to fire Rodriguez all along, so waiting as long as he did lost our chance to land one of those guys.

Isaac Newton

January 8th, 2011 at 7:28 AM ^

Did you listen to the RR firing press conference?  Where in that did you get the impression that " It seems clear that DB was going to fire Rodriguez all along?"  Or do you just not believe him?  And why would you not believe him when he actually seems to have done what he said he would do all along?

Communist Football

January 8th, 2011 at 7:54 AM ^

Firing RR came down to the "drama" surrounding the program, which is the dumbest reason imaginable to fire a talented, high-end coach after three years, ESPECIALLY if you don't have a replacement lined up. Our 2011 class has been frozen in amber, and what high-end coach will come to a program where they fire you after 2.3 recruiting classes?

Logan88

January 8th, 2011 at 10:48 AM ^

Ron Zook got fired from his position as the HC at Florida after three seasons. His record during those three seasons: 23-14.

While Florida was a slightly better program than UM at the time Zook took over for Spurrier than when RR took over for Carr, the difference was not that great. RR underperformed spectacularly and is still regarded by a lot of his zealots as a genius while Zook posted a much better record and many of those same RR fans regard Zook as a joke.

Btw, Florida seemed to recover pretty nicely after "screwing over" Zook, didn't they?

Derek

January 8th, 2011 at 11:20 AM ^

Zook had never been a head coach before being hired as the Florida HC, and has been a joke at his only post-Florida HC job. We all know the success Rodriguez had as an HC before being hired at Michigan. Please, though, disregard the man's supporters as blind zealots.

umich_fan1

January 8th, 2011 at 11:31 AM ^

You mention one reason for RR being fired.

RR was fired for multiple reasons- defense and special teams regression, lack of wins vs. quality opponents, getting routed in big games, lack of wins vs. "rivals", questionable choices for assistant coaches based on RR's friendship, lack of fundamentals on defense, inability to adapt to roster when he arrived, the 3-3-5, and then asking GERG to run it w/ no prior experience. That's just some of them.

I don't get all the talk about keeping him for a 4th year. I blame a lot of amnesia around here. Does anyone remember the 2nd half of the 2010 season, or the seasons prior? Give me Hoke, Miles, whomever. RR did nothing to deserve a 4th year. He's a talented coach, but he dropped the ball here.

Say we kept him, and he has another 7 win year. We lose to about the same teams, in the same fashion. 1 year from now, we would be in the exact same position we are now. Scrambling for the same coaches, recruiting class waffling. This is painful, yes. Patience.

Section 1

January 8th, 2011 at 12:10 PM ^

But not so much patience, in the middle of Rich Rodriguez's contract.  With just two recruiting classes seeing the field.  (And guys from one recruiting class in 2010 seeing the field before they were ready, because they were the best we had.)

And you have my completely insincere congratulations, on parroting one of the innumberable idiocies of Michael Rosenberg:

...questionable choices for assistant coaches based on RR's friendship...

Well, Scott Schafer wasn't a close RR friend, and he sure as hell wasn't treated like a close friend.  Greg Robinson wasn't a friend, although I shall be first in line to agree that his defenses have been a wreck.  Jeff Casteel WAS a RR friend, but we couldn't get him.  We'd have been much better off, I'd argue, if we had had Casteel here all along, at a cost of one million dollars a year.   We needed one more important RR "friend," not fewer of them.  And it will be one hell of an irony if we spend 10 or 20 million on a new head coaching contract, after penny-pinching our way through the Rodriguez era of assistant coaches.

jmarsh22

January 8th, 2011 at 8:27 AM ^

It seems that DB was telling the truth when he said after the OSU game that he would conduct a review after the bowl game and make a decision at that point. I was hoping he was lying. I thought that was said to get the media off his back. I believed he had made the decision to fire RR and would use the break before the bowl game to do a search and vet candidates. I thought he realized that after the last fiasco of a coaching search, it would be vitally important to have a plan in place to announce the new head coach shortly after the firing of RR.

I guess I was wrong. And  DB can claim the moral high ground, saying he has been honest through this process. But he should have realized that after what happened 3 years ago, it would be a serious error to wait until January to begin the head coach search. Did he really think the bowl game would change his decision? He is contributing to the growing perception of the athletic department as an inept laughingstock. I don't know if its ego, naivete, or just not doing his homework, but he has displayed a serious lack of judgement in this process.

ommeethatsees

January 8th, 2011 at 10:03 AM ^

Well spoken.  I thought Brandon had been doing an amazing job right up to this doozer.  I hope we can recover without realizing too much of a setback to the program but I don't see how. 

I feel like standing on the curb looking out at the car crash which is the Michigan football program these days and sing the State Farm jingle.  Maybe Harbaugh will decide he doesn't really need all those millions after all, starts longing for Ann Arbor over the cosmopolitan trendiness of San Francisco, realizes he has a QB with the last name of Smith rather than Luck and decides to reneg on his contract and become Michigan's next head coach.

Like a good neighbor State Farm is there!

UMichinCA

January 8th, 2011 at 11:20 AM ^

Completely disagree!!

I imagine I would be in a different line of work if I knew so much about how to run an athletic department, or a major, highly visible, multi-million dollar organization.

So, where are you the AD?

I thought so.

Have faith that DB, while maybe not having ALL the answers immediately at hand (who does?), probably knows better than you or I what he's doing and how to do it.

Derek

January 8th, 2011 at 8:30 AM ^

It seems to me that taking him at his word makes him naïvely honest and incompetent rather than just incompetent. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Now, it seems clear to me that Brandon wasn't going to make the decision about bringing back Rich Rod on the basis of one bowl game. Would a solid win against a decent SEC team really erase the fact that we were woefully unprepared to play Wisconsin or OSU? The relevant facts about Rich Rod's performance over the last three years were on the table before the Gator Bowl. If Brandon found those facts sufficiently damning after the bowl game, then surely he did before it as well.

To clarify: I was a Rich Rod supporter who thought that we should give him another year to at least have his first full recruiting class become upper-classmen. The awful showing at the bowl game shook my confidence in that belief, but it didn't change my mind. I still thought we may as well give the guy another year considering that we had already missed out on the coaching shopping spree. Now we're in the one completely unenviable position. Fire him after OSU, and we hire one of the big-name coaches on the market. Fire him after next season, and we get top dibs (no Florida or Miami on the market for a coach) on next year's crop. Fire him two days ago, and we're left with Brady Hoke or Les Miles. I know, I know: we'll see what DB has up his sleeve. But this is embarrassing and awful for the brand that he wants to promote.*

For the record, I didn't listen to the press conference. I read the transcript. Maybe something was lost in transcription.

* I think that's the third time I've made that last comment about the brand, so I'll stop after this one. It's just incredibly ironic that he talked about building the brand all season as he deflected questions about Rodriguez only to tarnish it by firing RR without having an obviously superior replacement lined up.

UMichinCA

January 8th, 2011 at 11:37 AM ^

It's just incredibly ironic that he talked about building the brand all season as he deflected questions about Rodriguez only to tarnish it by firing RR without having an obviously superior replacement lined up.

Disagree.

Liken it to a marriage gone sour.  I mean REALLY sour.  So sour that there is a toxic environment in the department and in the community surrounding your program, because I believe that is probably at least in part the case.  I don't believe it was that bad before the bowl game because a lot of folks really thought we could put the pieces back together and compete given time to prepare for a single opponent and a little time for our youth to mature a little, etc.  Once we layed the giant egg in Jacksonville, the mood and environment just got toxic.  Even on this board, you could tell a lot of people lost faith.

Now, if you are in a toxic marriage such as described above, you don't wait until you have someone else "lined up" to get a divorce, do you?  No.  You get yourself out of the toxicity, take a breath, THEN you start figuring out who you are going to marry next...with the idea that you are going to be with the next person for a loooong time.

Section 1

January 8th, 2011 at 12:01 PM ^

on 2nd and 3rd marriages?

This idea of "toxic environment" is what I find so mindlessly insulting.  If there was a "toxic environment," I'd like to know what was the source of the infection, to mix our metaphors.  What, exactly, was "toxic"?  Why? 

I'm not at all ready to let go of the notion that some parts of the Michigan community were disloyal to Rodriguez.  If Rodriguez was fired, I want his detractors gone, too.

El Jeffe

January 8th, 2011 at 12:07 PM ^

I don't normally say this to a respectful post, but

LOLWUT

Now, if you are in a toxic marriage such as described above, you don't wait until you have someone else "lined up" to get a divorce, do you?  No.  You get yourself out of the toxicity, take a breath, THEN you start figuring out who you are going to marry next...with the idea that you are going to be with the next person for a loooong time.

That analogy only works if you don't have to get married right away, like less than a week after you kick your ex to the curb. If you do, would you

  1. Think ahead a little about who the next Mr. or Mrs. Right that, as you say, you will be with for a long time, might be? Or
  2. Wait until all the other divorce(e)s have taken their pick and then hurriedly get married to whoever is left?

We need a coach right fucking away, both for the next recruiting class, but also to, you know, coach and stuff. I'm sorry, but

UMichinCA

January 8th, 2011 at 4:06 PM ^

Glad you have the two feet in front of your face figured out, and you nailed it indeed.

Think long term.  Think BIG picture.  It was NOT working with RR.  It was obvious that regardless of who coaches Michigan in 2011, it was NOT going to get any better with RR.

So, yes the only hope was to bring in SOMEBODY different.  It really doesn't matter who, but if they can put this highly volatile fan base at ease, even just a little bit, maybe they can get things on track.  That somebody better have a longer vision than just NSD 2011.  I'm absolutely positive DB does.

If idiot fans who think they know better than DB or BM or RR or LC would just STFU and let those people do their jobs, they might see that good things are possible, but that will never happen, though because everyone in the UM fan base is a better, smarter AD than DB because, heck, they've watched Michigan football for years.  Of course they know better./s

foreverbluemaize

January 8th, 2011 at 9:05 AM ^

I really think the fact that DB didn't have anyone lined up just proves that DB meant what he said. If RR would have delivered even a descent game (say one or 2 score loss) I think RR would have kept his job. To be honest when RR was fired I expected to see a press confrence that evening or the next morning at the latest anounncing the new HC. To me the fact that that didn't happpen proves that DB was planning on giving him a 4th year.

ken725

January 8th, 2011 at 9:46 AM ^

This is all retrospective:

Regardless of DB's plans on giving RR his 4th year, his time line screwed everything up.  If he was planning on giving him one more year he should have said so soon after the Osu game.  Instead he had the team, staff and recruits all in limbo.  

If he was planning on firing RR, he should have done it after the osu game.  The mods over at Rivals said that in December, Harbaugh was really interested in the job.  We could have had JH before he became a candidate for every coaching vacancy.  

Section 1

January 8th, 2011 at 12:05 PM ^

I'm sorry, but you sound like one of the numbnuts on sportstalk radio.  If only the Gator Bowl game had been a closer outcome...

Last I recall, people were debating the importance of the Gator Bowl, such that the pundits were wondering if we should bother to play Devin Gardner at all in the event of an injury to Denard Robinson, blowing a redshirt year that may be four years in the future.

Maize and Blue…

January 8th, 2011 at 5:55 AM ^

The problem is the eats he was selling as CEO at Dominoes sucked.  Hopefully he doesn't turn M athletics into the same type of product.

One thing that boggles my mind about DB is his vote of confidence in JB who has been here a year longer  than RR.  JB has a ton of talent in his backyard, but either doesn't or can't recruit it sans CB.  JB's team is young and has potential just like RR's did.  JB's team hasn't performed well in the Big 10 and has had it handed to them in both games in which they have played good conference competition this year.  Both started with a pretty bare cupboard taking over programs that graduated lots of talent, but JB had the advantage because in BB Freshman regularly are big timers because strength isn't anywhere near the factor it is in football.  The stories are striking similar and I'm confident the football team would have improved next year and made another bowl making RR more successful than JB.

TreyJ

January 8th, 2011 at 8:18 AM ^

I am not defending his decision in this matter as I completely disagree with everything that has transpired in the past month.
<br>
<br>However, as one who considers themselves a conusier of pizza, I feel that the new recipe at Domino's which I believ Brandon was part of is much better. Still not at a Hungry Howies level but as far as the national chains I prefer it over Pizza Hut and that garbage Illitch throws out!