Clemons went back home to Oregon to play for Oregon State. Unless you have inside information, I don’t think it’s fair to attribute that to “frustration, impatience, and a little bit of money.” He very well might have just wanted to be closer to home, and it’s not like Oregon State is a NIL powerhouse
Exactly. Not sure why Mars is under the impression Michigan would or should jeopardize its own interests to protect the feelings of a former employee, but then again, this is the lawyer who plagiarized a MGoBlog post in his letter to the Big Ten.
I mostly agree. The one thing Warde clearly botched was the Mel Pearson fiasco. Trying to keep him after Wilmer presented their report was indefensible -- and an embarrassing mess after the report inevitably leaked.
Aside from that, us outsiders really don't know enough to blame Warde for the things he gets blamed for -- or to absolve him. Now, blaming him for Beilein, Bakich, and Harbaugh leaving is just dumb. No coach needs Warde's permission to leave, and all three of those coaches clearly wanted to move on to new challenges and/or jobs they viewed as better.
Alabama and Washington were obviously more important. Ohio State and Penn State too. Lose either of those and you don't even make either the Big Ten Championship or the playoff. So Iowa was the 5th most important game, at best. 5th is not top 3.
I'm excessively amused at the idea of someone mixing up Fowler's crisp narration with Gus's fragmented shrieking. They're both great, but couldn't be more opposite styles.
Wear whatever you want but there's no way your outfit choice is going to piss off MSU fans at a tournament they qualified for when we just had our worst season in decades.
He doesn’t turn 23 until September, so it’s not accurate. Odd and unnecessary phrasing, a 22 year old should be held to the same level of accountability as an “almost 23 year old.”
The roster construction is completely on him. It was his choice to repeatedly go after raw, unproductive 1-and-dones and a bunch of players with admissions/ncaa eligibility issues. And it’s not like the roster is just missing one key piece. It’s pathetically uncompetitive. Admissions and the ncaa aren’t valid excuses when Rutgers and Northwestern are building better rosters than you.
Disagree, the 2023 team was not going to denied. They didn’t a pseudo-scandal to motivate themselves. There’s no possible way the distractions/drama/loss of our head coach was net-beneficial.
The NCAA is a corrupt, vindictive, and hypocritical organization.
That said, a lot of the people cheering for its abolition are about to find out that the anarchy of no rules is a lot worse than the injustice of selectively enforced rules.
You'll care less about college football because...your team is more likely to make the playoff? Okay then.
I don't think this is egregious at all. All but 2 of the top 12 teams in this year's final AP poll are in the new Big Ten/SEC. The 4th place Big Ten/SEC teams absolutely deserve priority over the runner-ups from the weaker conferences.
Eh, I think their admin did fine. Getting that new stadium is huge -- it'll be much nicer and smaller, so fewer embarrassing TV shots of an empty, dilapidated Ryan field. There were so many moving pieces with getting the project going (raising capital, getting local government approval, deciding on a site (they decided to use the same site), so it's not like the admin had total control over the timeframe.
Even if they have to play a season in Green Bay, in the long run, the new stadium is worth it for them.
Maybe stop going after NFL guys who clearly only have interest as a stepping stone. Obviously, there will be exceptions, but level of interest/commitment to the job needs to be more of a factor.
I am also not a Warde defender (I wanted him gone after the Pearson debacle) but I do find it baffling that failing to retain a coach who clearly wanted to go the NFL is the reason this blog now wants him fired.
I appreciate OP's post -- it's an interesting/unique perspective -- but I don't find it particularly persuasive. I'm curious if OP believes that the fans of whatever school he works at could accurately judge his job performance. The job duties that OP describes happen almost entirely behind the scenes. How does OP -- or any of the people calling for Warde's head -- know that Warde doesn't perform these duties well? The bottom line is that only Ono, the Regents, and the others in the administration are truly positioned to know how good or bad of an AD Warde is. And at the moment, it seems like he has their vote of confidence.
It seems like fans reflexively use Warde as their boogeyman for anything bad that happens. NCAA/Big Ten investigates us? Warde's fault. Coaches leave? Warde's fault. Recruit signs elsewhere? Warde's fault. That's fine as a coping mechanism, but it's not a serious critique of the AD's performance.
Like it or not, the truth is the AD is not some all-powerful figure with unilateral control over the football program. There are other actors, both internally at the University and externally at the NCAA/Big Ten/NFL, who make decisions that affect Michigan football. Warde can't force coaches to stay, and he can't prevent the coach who left from trying to bring more with him. He can't make NCAA/Big Ten investigations disappear, as our pathetic little lawsuit should have made clear.
Like I said, I want Warde gone for completely separate reasons, but even if he leaves, I suspect most people here will hate the next guy just as much unless they stop viewing the AD as someone who "allows" bad things to happen.
I don't think any amount of winning or losing will ever lessen my obsession. I watched or attended every game of this past season and I watched every game in the Dark Days.
Winning the national championship might dampen the (hypothetical) pain of (potentially) having a subpar season next year, but it certainly doesn't dampen my interest.
Screwing over your handpicked successor -- who will be facing immense pressure to win quickly to prove he's ready for a blueblood HC job -- is a hell of a decision.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted to oblivion. Most visits do not end in commitments, OP should have provided a source or even just a rationale for why this guy is on commit watch.
You can't. It either goes the suspended coach or to the interim coach. Not both. The school chooses. We gave the non-conference wins to the assistants and the Penn State-Ohio State stretch to Harbaugh.
And no offense to OP, but this has already been discussed multiple times:
The irony is that there are plenty of very legitimate criticisms of Warde. His handling of the Mel Pearson scandal. His bizarre loyalty to Juwan Howard. His frequent mismanagement of non-revenue sports (see, e.g., the volleyball fiasco).
But "letting" Harbaugh leave (as if he needed Warde's permission) and refusing to emulate the TAMU/Miami NIL strategy are among the more half-baked critiques.
This seems to be an indication that Michigan's NIL is not where it needs to be.
Yeah no, we had a coaching change/staff shakeup. Our NIL approach didn't change. This is the kid who was committed to NIL Powerhouse Boise State until they fired their coach and then he decommitted. Him trending Oregon has nothing to do with NIL.
None of us do. But we know Harbaugh desperately wants to win a Super Bowl and that he can't win one in Ann Arbor no matter who is the AD. And we know he told Hackett when he was hired that he wanted to return to the NFL eventually.
Smart money was always on him going back to the NFL at some point.
It's an opinion column, just because you disagree with it doesn't mean the author "has a complete lack of knowledge" and "knows nothing" about contract negotiations. We can disagree respectfully without being so pejorative to the student writers at the Daily.
No one should sign a contract where you can be terminated without pay and your livelihood put on hold for things that are completely out of your control.
That's a fair take, but the exact same can be said for the Michigan admin. They are bound to act in the best interest of the University, not Jim and not the fans. They simply cannot sign a contract that forces them to pay up to $100 million to Harbaugh if the NCAA decides to use the institutional control clause to slap Harbaugh with a show-cause.
A three person independent panel is the perfect solution.
Based on what's been reported, the arbitration panel is a separate issue from the immunity issue. The immunity clause is about what Harbaugh can be terminated for for-cause; the arbitration panel is about who would terminate Jim for-cause. The arbitration panel doesn't alleviate the unreasonableness of the immunity demand.
And usually, if the NCAA did this and Jim then had to leave anyway, the way these contracts usually work is that if Jim is owed 5 years of income, those earnings are negotiated to be offset by any future coaching earnings. And unlike Jimbo, Jim is not just going to sit on a couch somewhere and watch football.
There has been no reporting to indicate whether the contract would be structured like this, but even assuming that it is, this still exposes the University to an unacceptable level of risk. There cannot be any world in which the University possibly has to pay Jim his full contract if the NCAA gives him a show cause. Reliance on NFL teams to offer Jim other opportunities -- and on Jim to take those opportunities -- is not acceptable.
I think Harbaugh's team knows the University will never agree to immunity. Demanding it is just a stalling technique to allow Harbaugh to evaluate his NFL options.
1) Being $44 million over the cap means they need cut, trade, restructure contracts, and otherwise retool the roster to get under the cap. It doesn't actually mean you're spending $44 million that no one else is. In fact, the cap itself is a mechanism of accounting that doesn't neatly correspond with the actual cashflow. Here's a decent article explaining it.
2) Spanos is cheap in ways that are entirely separate from player contracts. He is loathe to pay coaches high contracts (Staley only made $4 million a year). Maybe the money doesn't matter to Harbaugh, but it will surely matter for his ability to attract assistants. Will Spanos be willing to pay millions for Ben Herbert? History says no. That doesn't even get into the other costs (scouting, facilities, etc.) that cheap owners are far more likely to skimp on than player contracts.
I'm unaware of a single instance in which he had an offer.
It's pretty common knowledge that he was not offered the Vikings job and most Michigan insiders (including Bacon) have said he would have taken if it was offered. The Broncos flirtation last year was murkier, but he met with them even after he announced his return, so I don't really buy the narrative that he turned them down.
Regardless, my point is that the Chargers job is not the job you'd go for if you were waiting for the ideal opening. Spanos is a notoriously cheap owner, they are projected be $44 million over the salary cap next year (not good, 2nd worst salary cap situation in the NFL), and despite being in salary cap hell, they have numerous urgent personnel needs. And yet, Harbaugh seems very interested in the job.
A bad team with a bad roster and a bad ownership will not woo him to leave Michigan.
I guess we'll see, but the Chargers aren't exactly a model of good ownership and their roster has plenty of holes with a terrible salary cap situation.
Like everyone here, I hope Harbaugh returns. But he clearly has undying interest in the NFL, and at age 60 and after a couple cycles of fruitless interviewing, I suspect he'll be tempted to take any job that is offered to him.
I understood parts of it, but I genuinely have no idea what some of the fragments mean
Were Sherrone to be JH's handpicked successor -- and it seems pretty clear that he is
Yes, he is.
wouldn't the Ravens/Michigan/Chargers (or Eagles?) partnership keep the Michigan NFL DC internship open anyway?
Huh? The Chargers and the Eagles aren't part of this partnership. And what would the Ravens to Michigan pipeline have to do with "keeping the Michigan DC position open anyway" if Sheronne succeeds Harbaugh? It technically isn't even open now, even though we mostly expect Minter to go to the NFL
I can't imagine the Harbaugh's (and Minter) wouldn't take care of Sherrone on this front if he was Jim's handpicked successor.
Again, what does "taking care of Sherrone on this front" mean? Do you mean Minter would stay or that a new Ravens coach would step in as DC?
And if that's the case, wouldn't Sherrone's game day HC wins over PSU and OSU, his relationship with the current players on the roster, and his ability to connect with high school and portal players make him every bit as strong (if not stronger) of a candidate than Minter?
Yeah. That's why Sherrone is the frontrunner for the job. Minter is only being considered by segments of the Michigan blogosphere.
I legitimately don't understand your second paragraph. Anyways, Sherrone vs. Minter is only a debate on the clickbait corners of the Internet. If Harbaugh leaves, Sherrone will succeed him.
Michigan will not, and should not, sign a contract that financially paralyzes them in the unlikely event the NCAA severely punishes Harbaugh. Draconian punishment seems improbable in light of Baker's recent comments, and even if the NCAA were to opt for a heavy hand, I expect the University would pursue legal action. They did, after all, already sue the Big Ten. But if worst comes to worst, the University has to be able to move on. Especially if this contract is worth upwards of $100 million, as has been reported.
Every collegiate coach's contract -- including Harbaugh's current contract -- includes for-cause termination on the basis of NCAA violations. Immunity is not a reasonable demand; to the contrary, it is a deeply unserious one. If Harbaugh wants another run at the NFL, I'll root for him and be grateful for what he's accomplished at Michigan. But it is long past time to stop pretending that the holdup is Michigan's fault. The ball is in Harbaugh's court, and it has been for quite some time. He clearly has lingering NFL dreams, and if he leaves, it's because he wanted to leave, as simple as that.
Recent Comments
Clemons went back home to Oregon to play for Oregon State. Unless you have inside information, I don’t think it’s fair to attribute that to “frustration, impatience, and a little bit of money.” He very well might have just wanted to be closer to home, and it’s not like Oregon State is a NIL powerhouse
While wrong, none of that is defamation.
he looks fine, this is not thread worthy
Exactly. Not sure why Mars is under the impression Michigan would or should jeopardize its own interests to protect the feelings of a former employee, but then again, this is the lawyer who plagiarized a MGoBlog post in his letter to the Big Ten.
Yeah well it’s not affecting BC
That's wild. Does it even seat anyone?
The Big Ten team means history suggests they'll lose in the championship game. I believe it's 7 straight losses for Big Ten teams in the final?
I mostly agree. The one thing Warde clearly botched was the Mel Pearson fiasco. Trying to keep him after Wilmer presented their report was indefensible -- and an embarrassing mess after the report inevitably leaked.
Aside from that, us outsiders really don't know enough to blame Warde for the things he gets blamed for -- or to absolve him. Now, blaming him for Beilein, Bakich, and Harbaugh leaving is just dumb. No coach needs Warde's permission to leave, and all three of those coaches clearly wanted to move on to new challenges and/or jobs they viewed as better.
It’s the internet, we have to argue about something dumb.
Alabama and Washington were obviously more important. Ohio State and Penn State too. Lose either of those and you don't even make either the Big Ten Championship or the playoff. So Iowa was the 5th most important game, at best. 5th is not top 3.
Calling Iowa one of the three most important games of the season is certainly a take
I'm excessively amused at the idea of someone mixing up Fowler's crisp narration with Gus's fragmented shrieking. They're both great, but couldn't be more opposite styles.
Wear whatever you want but there's no way your outfit choice is going to piss off MSU fans at a tournament they qualified for when we just had our worst season in decades.
He doesn’t turn 23 until September, so it’s not accurate. Odd and unnecessary phrasing, a 22 year old should be held to the same level of accountability as an “almost 23 year old.”
Santa sued Petitti, Schlissel would have never. We didn’t win but fighting it helped with public opinion
If Warde is even considering retaining Howard, then Warde must go. Lethargy is no substitute for leadership.
The roster construction is completely on him. It was his choice to repeatedly go after raw, unproductive 1-and-dones and a bunch of players with admissions/ncaa eligibility issues. And it’s not like the roster is just missing one key piece. It’s pathetically uncompetitive. Admissions and the ncaa aren’t valid excuses when Rutgers and Northwestern are building better rosters than you.
Not a single person in these Twitter threads comes off well
Disagree, the 2023 team was not going to denied. They didn’t a pseudo-scandal to motivate themselves. There’s no possible way the distractions/drama/loss of our head coach was net-beneficial.
The NCAA is a corrupt, vindictive, and hypocritical organization.
That said, a lot of the people cheering for its abolition are about to find out that the anarchy of no rules is a lot worse than the injustice of selectively enforced rules.
You'll care less about college football because...your team is more likely to make the playoff? Okay then.
I don't think this is egregious at all. All but 2 of the top 12 teams in this year's final AP poll are in the new Big Ten/SEC. The 4th place Big Ten/SEC teams absolutely deserve priority over the runner-ups from the weaker conferences.
Yeah definitely not a playbook. Looks like some handwritten notes about S&C.
Eh, I think their admin did fine. Getting that new stadium is huge -- it'll be much nicer and smaller, so fewer embarrassing TV shots of an empty, dilapidated Ryan field. There were so many moving pieces with getting the project going (raising capital, getting local government approval, deciding on a site (they decided to use the same site), so it's not like the admin had total control over the timeframe.
Even if they have to play a season in Green Bay, in the long run, the new stadium is worth it for them.
Iowa’s schedule is weak, but they play OSU in Columbus. They’re not going undefeated.
Maybe stop going after NFL guys who clearly only have interest as a stepping stone. Obviously, there will be exceptions, but level of interest/commitment to the job needs to be more of a factor.
Why would an incoming recruit be a good source on whether Warde could have retained Herbert?
Can we please stop pretending that Warde/admin didn't try to keep Harbaugh? They did, and he chose to leave. This board has gone insane.
Fair point. “Colleagues” would be more appropriate than “peers”
Like it or not, it seems his peers think highly of him.
I am also not a Warde defender (I wanted him gone after the Pearson debacle) but I do find it baffling that failing to retain a coach who clearly wanted to go the NFL is the reason this blog now wants him fired.
I appreciate OP's post -- it's an interesting/unique perspective -- but I don't find it particularly persuasive. I'm curious if OP believes that the fans of whatever school he works at could accurately judge his job performance. The job duties that OP describes happen almost entirely behind the scenes. How does OP -- or any of the people calling for Warde's head -- know that Warde doesn't perform these duties well? The bottom line is that only Ono, the Regents, and the others in the administration are truly positioned to know how good or bad of an AD Warde is. And at the moment, it seems like he has their vote of confidence.
It seems like fans reflexively use Warde as their boogeyman for anything bad that happens. NCAA/Big Ten investigates us? Warde's fault. Coaches leave? Warde's fault. Recruit signs elsewhere? Warde's fault. That's fine as a coping mechanism, but it's not a serious critique of the AD's performance.
Like it or not, the truth is the AD is not some all-powerful figure with unilateral control over the football program. There are other actors, both internally at the University and externally at the NCAA/Big Ten/NFL, who make decisions that affect Michigan football. Warde can't force coaches to stay, and he can't prevent the coach who left from trying to bring more with him. He can't make NCAA/Big Ten investigations disappear, as our pathetic little lawsuit should have made clear.
Like I said, I want Warde gone for completely separate reasons, but even if he leaves, I suspect most people here will hate the next guy just as much unless they stop viewing the AD as someone who "allows" bad things to happen.
I don't think any amount of winning or losing will ever lessen my obsession. I watched or attended every game of this past season and I watched every game in the Dark Days.
Winning the national championship might dampen the (hypothetical) pain of (potentially) having a subpar season next year, but it certainly doesn't dampen my interest.
Screwing over your handpicked successor -- who will be facing immense pressure to win quickly to prove he's ready for a blueblood HC job -- is a hell of a decision.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted to oblivion. Most visits do not end in commitments, OP should have provided a source or even just a rationale for why this guy is on commit watch.
You can't. It either goes the suspended coach or to the interim coach. Not both. The school chooses. We gave the non-conference wins to the assistants and the Penn State-Ohio State stretch to Harbaugh.
And no offense to OP, but this has already been discussed multiple times:
https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/jim-harbaugh%27s-win-loss-record-being-credited-michigan-results-during-three-game-big-ten
https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/harbaugh-may-get-official-credit-school%27s-1000th-win-even-if-suspended
The irony is that there are plenty of very legitimate criticisms of Warde. His handling of the Mel Pearson scandal. His bizarre loyalty to Juwan Howard. His frequent mismanagement of non-revenue sports (see, e.g., the volleyball fiasco).
But "letting" Harbaugh leave (as if he needed Warde's permission) and refusing to emulate the TAMU/Miami NIL strategy are among the more half-baked critiques.
Yeah no, we had a coaching change/staff shakeup. Our NIL approach didn't change. This is the kid who was committed to NIL Powerhouse Boise State until they fired their coach and then he decommitted. Him trending Oregon has nothing to do with NIL.
I don't see the harm in having multiple options for coaches and fans to choose from. They both look good.
Michigan also won the national title the year after Crisler left...
None of us do. But we know Harbaugh desperately wants to win a Super Bowl and that he can't win one in Ann Arbor no matter who is the AD. And we know he told Hackett when he was hired that he wanted to return to the NFL eventually.
Smart money was always on him going back to the NFL at some point.
It's an opinion column, just because you disagree with it doesn't mean the author "has a complete lack of knowledge" and "knows nothing" about contract negotiations. We can disagree respectfully without being so pejorative to the student writers at the Daily.
That's a fair take, but the exact same can be said for the Michigan admin. They are bound to act in the best interest of the University, not Jim and not the fans. They simply cannot sign a contract that forces them to pay up to $100 million to Harbaugh if the NCAA decides to use the institutional control clause to slap Harbaugh with a show-cause.
Based on what's been reported, the arbitration panel is a separate issue from the immunity issue. The immunity clause is about what Harbaugh can be terminated for for-cause; the arbitration panel is about who would terminate Jim for-cause. The arbitration panel doesn't alleviate the unreasonableness of the immunity demand.
There has been no reporting to indicate whether the contract would be structured like this, but even assuming that it is, this still exposes the University to an unacceptable level of risk. There cannot be any world in which the University possibly has to pay Jim his full contract if the NCAA gives him a show cause. Reliance on NFL teams to offer Jim other opportunities -- and on Jim to take those opportunities -- is not acceptable.
I think Harbaugh's team knows the University will never agree to immunity. Demanding it is just a stalling technique to allow Harbaugh to evaluate his NFL options.
1) Being $44 million over the cap means they need cut, trade, restructure contracts, and otherwise retool the roster to get under the cap. It doesn't actually mean you're spending $44 million that no one else is. In fact, the cap itself is a mechanism of accounting that doesn't neatly correspond with the actual cashflow. Here's a decent article explaining it.
2) Spanos is cheap in ways that are entirely separate from player contracts. He is loathe to pay coaches high contracts (Staley only made $4 million a year). Maybe the money doesn't matter to Harbaugh, but it will surely matter for his ability to attract assistants. Will Spanos be willing to pay millions for Ben Herbert? History says no. That doesn't even get into the other costs (scouting, facilities, etc.) that cheap owners are far more likely to skimp on than player contracts.
I'm unaware of a single instance in which he had an offer.
It's pretty common knowledge that he was not offered the Vikings job and most Michigan insiders (including Bacon) have said he would have taken if it was offered. The Broncos flirtation last year was murkier, but he met with them even after he announced his return, so I don't really buy the narrative that he turned them down.
Regardless, my point is that the Chargers job is not the job you'd go for if you were waiting for the ideal opening. Spanos is a notoriously cheap owner, they are projected be $44 million over the salary cap next year (not good, 2nd worst salary cap situation in the NFL), and despite being in salary cap hell, they have numerous urgent personnel needs. And yet, Harbaugh seems very interested in the job.
I guess we'll see, but the Chargers aren't exactly a model of good ownership and their roster has plenty of holes with a terrible salary cap situation.
Like everyone here, I hope Harbaugh returns. But he clearly has undying interest in the NFL, and at age 60 and after a couple cycles of fruitless interviewing, I suspect he'll be tempted to take any job that is offered to him.
Well let's hope it's not a transfer because I'm not sure if there'd be a worse position at which to lose a player.
Purging their few remaining quality journalists, I see. I assume Thamel is getting a lifetime extension.
I understood parts of it, but I genuinely have no idea what some of the fragments mean
Yes, he is.
Huh? The Chargers and the Eagles aren't part of this partnership. And what would the Ravens to Michigan pipeline have to do with "keeping the Michigan DC position open anyway" if Sheronne succeeds Harbaugh? It technically isn't even open now, even though we mostly expect Minter to go to the NFL
Again, what does "taking care of Sherrone on this front" mean? Do you mean Minter would stay or that a new Ravens coach would step in as DC?
Yeah. That's why Sherrone is the frontrunner for the job. Minter is only being considered by segments of the Michigan blogosphere.
I legitimately don't understand your second paragraph. Anyways, Sherrone vs. Minter is only a debate on the clickbait corners of the Internet. If Harbaugh leaves, Sherrone will succeed him.
There is not a single athletics department in the country that can casually set $100 million on fire. It's not monopoly money.
Michigan will not, and should not, sign a contract that financially paralyzes them in the unlikely event the NCAA severely punishes Harbaugh. Draconian punishment seems improbable in light of Baker's recent comments, and even if the NCAA were to opt for a heavy hand, I expect the University would pursue legal action. They did, after all, already sue the Big Ten. But if worst comes to worst, the University has to be able to move on. Especially if this contract is worth upwards of $100 million, as has been reported.
Every collegiate coach's contract -- including Harbaugh's current contract -- includes for-cause termination on the basis of NCAA violations. Immunity is not a reasonable demand; to the contrary, it is a deeply unserious one. If Harbaugh wants another run at the NFL, I'll root for him and be grateful for what he's accomplished at Michigan. But it is long past time to stop pretending that the holdup is Michigan's fault. The ball is in Harbaugh's court, and it has been for quite some time. He clearly has lingering NFL dreams, and if he leaves, it's because he wanted to leave, as simple as that.
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