Michigan Past Athletic Directors

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of Michigan
1

<p>If there's an athletic director of the year award, david brandon should obviously be a front runner. The guy's been doing a great job monetizing one of the top 10 brands in college football, making all the right decisions like improving facilities, hiring brady hoke (jury still somewhat out but at least signs are positive), night games, general admissions for students etc...</p>

<p>That left me wondering if he's actually good, or if the past athletic directors were just so bad that he looks great in comparison. I just don't understand how you can not generate insane amount of revenue when you have a top 10 brand in CFB that includes arguably the most well-known rivalry, the 2nd most iconic fight song and the 2nd most iconic helmet, but yet we had years of the athletic department running in the red until the arrival of bill martin.. It just makes no sense to me.</p>

<p>Any old timers can fill me in with the history?</p>

2

<p>I just don’t understand how you can not generate an insane amount of revenue when you have a top 10 brand in CFB that includes arguably the most well-known rivalry, the most iconic fight song and the most iconic helmet.</p>

<p>Corrected for error. The key word is “arguably.”</p>

3

<p>bearcats, Bill Martin had an MBA and David Brandon was an executive (CEO of Domino’s Pizza) before taking his current post at Michigan. That explains there business-like approach to running the athletic program. Past ADs (like Yost, Crisler, Canham, Schembechler, Goss) were coaches and univesity administrators. </p>

<p>Jack Weidenbach (AD in the early 90s) had some operational experience, but nothing close to Brandon’s. Brandon’s experience with running a profitable enterprise obviously came in handy.</p>

4

<p>Don Canham was the guy. I don’t remember before him. Canham hired Bo and filled the Big House. He understood the program needed revenue to function. Times were different then. The NCAA controlled the football TV contract. There was no ESPN or cable TV networks. The Big Dance had 32 teams and only 2 teams per conference could go. It was Rose Bowl or bust. Title IX was just coming into play and the band and the cheerleading square were all male. They used to fill the Big House with high school bands.</p>

<p>Between Canham and Brandon there were a series of mediocre AD’s. I would put Bo in this category - a great coach but not much of an administrator. I would also put Bill Martin in that category - he knew nothing about sports and couldn’t find his cell phone when Pitino and Miles were calling. The others were either promoted deputies from the department or local businessmen. Hence things like the halo, Brian Ellerbe and Rich Rod.</p>

<p>Brandon combines the combination of sports guy, business guy and Michigan man.</p>

5

<p>Agreed res ipsa. Different times, different expectations. Yost, Canham and Brandon are the top 3 Michigan ADs.</p>

6

<p>General admissions is not a positive…</p>

<p>Especially if you still consider the jury out on Hoke</p>

7

<p>The jury is not out on Hoke. He has proved himself. He obviously needs to continue to produce, but that is the case with any coach. No coach can live on his past accomplishments. </p>

<p>That being said, I agree that general admissions is not a positive. I am not sure what Michigan was thinking, but they had better shape up.</p>

8

<p>“That being said, I agree that general admissions is not a positive. I am not sure what Michigan was thinking, but they had better shape up.”</p>

<p>He’s doing what every good business man would do. Take a swipe at your most inelastic/low margin customer base to appeal to your elastic/high margin customer base. It’s obviously a great decision if you think about it from a business perspective. Students are still going to buy tickets, and if they don’t, it really doesn’t matter. They don’t even profit much if any from the students anyway. They can easily offer them to the ever extending season ticket waitlist and profit more while doing that.</p>

<p>And a majority of the revenue generating alum/fan would agree that it’s a great decision. Hell a lot of us were talking about the students not showing up and them needing to make it general admissions last year. So in all, not losing any real revenue generators, but appealing to the broader elastic revenue generating customer base. I consider that a huge positive.</p>

<p>"The jury is not out on Hoke. "
Uh, he has one good season where he lucked into a BCS bowl, and then a mediocre season. Charlie Weiss did even better than that in his first 2 seasons and we know how it ends up. I am not going to pass my judgement until I see more of a track record, especially considering the lack of one in Hoke’s career.</p>

9

<p>bearcats, Michigan is a university. Its obligation is to serve its students and its alums. As far as football tickets go, they should be made available to all students. It is the duty of the university to ensure that all students can get tickets at an affordable price. Economic theory is great, but it should not be the first priority when pricing tickets…students should be.</p>

<p>As for Hoke, I must disagree with your analysis. He was not lucky against VTech. Michigan played well and earned the win. And our 8-5 season may be “mediocre” in terms of record, but one must factor in the fact that all of our losses were against top 10 teams and on the road. Our loss to Alabama was embarrassing, but they did win the national championship, beating 12-0 Notre Dame by the same score. Our loss to Notre Dame by 1 TD in South Bend was perfectly understandable given the nature of the rivalry and the fact that this Notre Dame team ended their season 12-1 and in the top 5. Our loss to Nebraska was bad. That cannot be denied. Nebraska was an average team in 2012-13. Denard’s injury and Devin’s lack of experience had much to do with the loss, but that is still no excuse. Our 5 point loss to 11-0, top 5 OSU in Columbus is again perfectly understandable. We led at the half, but we just couldn’t score in the second. Finally, our 5 point loss to South Carolina in the Outback Bowl was unfortunate, but again, to a team that finished in the top 10. </p>

<p>I am not saying that Hoke has had two amazing seasons, but I have no reason to doubt him at the moment. He seems to have integrity, the players react well to him, he recruits very well and he understands Michigan tradition and football. Given the major difference in style between his staff and that of his predecessor, and the type of players needed to run those vastly different styles of play (particularly on offense), I fully expected Hoke to need 3-4 seasons of recruiting his kind of players before we see Michigan return to its dominant style of play. Next year will still be a development year (given our schedule, we will still win at least 10 games), but I expect Michigan to be very strong in 2014 and 2015.</p>

10

<p>The general admission policy is a pure money grab. The clearly plan to sell more student tickets than they save seats for the students based on a projected amount of no shows and then they double sell the tickets to the general public. You can do this with general admission but you can’t if put a seat number on the ticket.</p>

<p>They will blame the no-shows on the students to cover up what they really want to do.</p>

<p>I will not comment on whether or not is fair that the student ticket has essentially become a non-transferable license while the university has set up an arrangement with StubHub to allow the general public to sell their tickets on an open market with the university getting a cut of the re-sale.</p>

11

<p>I do place some of the responsibility on Hoke for one of the two football losses that caused me the most anguish this past season. Denard Robinson just played a terrible game against Notre Dame, making some very poor decisions throwing the ball; that’s not Hoke’s fault. That was a winnable game if not for the 5 INT (4 thrown by Robinson, one by Vincent Smith on a play that was not so much a bad call by the offensive coordinator as, again, poor decision-making by Smith). </p>

<p>Where I do fault Hoke, though, is in not having Devin Gardner ready as back-up for Robinson in the Nebraska game. Instead we had to go to Russell Bellomy, who had just a disastrous game (3 of 16 passing for 38 yards, with 3 INT of which 2 led to short scoring drives for Nebraska, and the third killed a long Michigan drive at the Nebraska goal line, after which Nebraska managed to run out the clock). I count that as another winnable game that slipped out of reach because we didn’t have a quality backup QB ready, and that’s on the coaching staff. </p>

<p>I understand what they were trying to do: Gardner is such a gifted athlete that they wanted to find a way to get him in the game, and that meant moving him to WR. And because he wasn’t an experienced WR, he needed practice reps there, and so he wasn’t available to practice as back-up QB. But given the number of times DR runs with the ball, coupled with his somewhat slight build and the reckless abandon with which he does it, it was foreseeable that there was a high likelihood of his getting hurt at some point in the season. And I don’t think anyone doubted that Gardner was a better QB than Bellomy. It’s just too important a position to not have your best back-up ready at all times. Especially when you’re grooming him to be the eventual starter at that position.</p>

<p>Once he got a chance at QB, Gardner played pretty well. Right out of the gate against Minnesota he was 12-of-18 passing for 238 yards and 2 TD, plus a rushing TD. Granted, that’s against Minnesota, not Nebraska, but I still say if Gardner had been ready in the Nebraska game, we might have seen a different outcome. Remember, the score was 7-3 in Nebraska’s favor but Michigan was moving the ball fairly effectively (they had 146 yards of total offense before DR went down late in the second quarter, and ended the game with 188), dominating time of possession (important against a grind-it-out team like Nebraska), and had the ball first-and-goal from the Nebraska 8 and appeared to be poised to take the lead when DRob went down. An ineffective run by Bellomy and 2 incomplete passes later, Michigan ended up settling for a field goal. After that it was 3-and-out, INT, 3-and-out, 3-and-out, FG (on a drive aided by 45 yards in Nebraska penalties), INT, INT. Ballgame.</p>

<p>Overall, though, I think Hoke’s doing an excellent job, and I’m looking forward to seeing Gardner take the reins as starting QB come September.</p>

12

<p>For all we know, Bellomy was tearing it up in practice.</p>

<p>You can place most of your blame towards Borges, in my opinion. Over the last few years it seems like questionable play calling has continually hurt us. From starting off here not utilizing Denard the right way to the OSU game where it was apparently a good idea to do our weakest thing (inside running) against OSU’s best thing (interior DLine) the entire 2nd half, even though the gameplan was working the first half</p>

13

<p>Alexandre: "The jury is not out on Hoke. "
Lets revisit this. One overachieving season, one underachieving season, and now an underwhelming first 5 games, and a ridiculously badly managed 6th game. Jury’s absolutely still out on hoke.</p>

<p>Remember, Jabba the Weis went to a BCS bowl his first year, did decent his second year too.</p>

14

<p>bearcats, the jury is not out yet. We had unusual trouble with our kicking game (Hoke was not responsible for that). This was supposed to be a close one (even with Lewan) and ended as such. Playing without Lewan for most of the game did not help our young and struggling OL and running game. Like most, I expected a 9-3 season this year, give or take. At this stage of the season, I knew we could well be 4-2 or 5-1. Let us see how things progress. I am still sticking to my initial 9-3 season. We are a good two years away from being a contender.</p>

15

<p>No. The jury has been out the whole time. That’s why you dont conclude the jury’s not out when your coach overachieved for one season and did mediocre the next. Notre Dame did that with Weis and that was a 40 million mistake.</p>

<p>This was not supposed to be a close one. Indiana of all teams beat Penn State by multiple TDs. But that’s beside the point. The coaching mistakes and mismangements by the coaches in this game was glaring. Not calling timeout on two crucial delay of games? Are you kidding me? That’s brady hoke’s only job on game day since he doesnt have headsets on anyway.</p>

<p>Gain 10 yards of field position to punt the ball away instead of giving your ace kicker (he was still ace kicker at that point, all the misses came after) the chance to kick a manageable 50 yard field goal (would have been shorter without the delay of game) to go up by two scores?
Then all throughout overtime we kept playing “center the ball for gibbons”, which normally is fine because Gardner is not brainy and interception-prone. But on third and inches, instead of sneaking gardner up the middle, they had him run backwards, back to the middle so gibbons would have an easier kick? </p>

<p>Brady played not to lose since the 4th quarter, and lost the game doing so.</p>

<p>This one is 100% on Brady Hoke.</p>

16

<p>Alex, you’re delusional with regards to Hoke and the staff on this game. The way they botched the end of regulation is really a coaching choke job for the ages. And then just continuing to play like chicken littles in OT and not going for the first downs…unforgivable. Really the only thing on Gibbons was the kick he missed in 3OT. The rest lies squarely on the shoulders of Hoke. I’m not saying fire him or anyone else on the staff right now, but the grace period is officially up. No more excuses. This game was the most excruciating in a long time and he could have avoided it on numerous occasions tonight.</p>

17

<p>I think the “jury is still out on Hoke” … it is officially still out on after yesterday. Penn State is really a mediocre team.</p>

<p>How many times did Toussaint simply run into the Penn State line for 0 to 2 yards. If that same play didn’t work for the entire game, why try it during the OTs. This is a coaching issue.</p>

<p>Still turnover problems during the game. Was it two interceptions, and a fumble following a sack? Not to mention an instance were a nicely played 3rd and 1 turned into a 16 and 1 because of an unsportsmanlike conduct call. Some of these mistakes are coaching.</p>

<p>Perhaps Hoke will do better in the next two seasons because of recruiting. I agree he got lucky during his first season and the sugar bowl. I think after Akron, Connecticut and this Penn State game, he has 2 seasons to turn this around. </p>

<p>If Hoke can’t beat Ohio State at home two years from now, he is likely out.</p>

18

<p>The way we’ve been recruiting. He’s got at least 2 more years</p>

19

<p>^Lane Kiffin says hello. </p>

<p>Brady Hoke is basically a likable version of Lane Kiffin, great recruiter, ok CEO-type who hires top assistants (Monte Kiffin has a even better resume than Greg Mattison), and horrible game day coach. Both have done nothing of significance in their whole career, are career sub-.500 coach who got jobs they otherwise wouldn’t even sniff because of connections.</p>

<p>At this point of Brady Hoke’s career (2 seasons and 6 games in), both have the exact same record. Lane Kiffin went 8-5, 10-2 (not bowl eligible) and 5-1 up to the exact same point, while having to face the headwind of sanctions. He was fired in less than a year from that point, despite the way they’ve been recruiting.</p>

20

<p>I don’t buy the Lane Kiffen comparison. Kiffen has been pretty much run out of town on a rail at every stop in his coaching career, and it’s not all about W-L records. There are constant questions about his veracity and personal integrity. He’s a snake-oil salesman who always gets caught out. That’s not Brady Hoke.</p>

<p>That said, I am disappointed in Hoke and his coaching staff after the Penn State loss. They came in with a terrible game plan, and their inability or stubborn refusal to change it with the game on the line did them in. This loss is on the coaches much more than on the players. Devin Gardner had another 3-turnover game, but apart from those costly mistakes he threw the ball well enough, and ran brilliantly enough, to win. But Hoke & co. were determined to play old-fashioned smash-mouth football and run the ball between the tackles. It should have been apparent after the first 4 or 5 failed inside running plays that this wasn’t going to work. Penn State’s defense has limited talent, but the one thing they can do is stack the box, fill the gaps, and stop the inside run. They’re big enough, physical enough, and well coached enough to do that. And yet the entire game, Michigan pounded away at that failed plan of attack and came up short. That put Gardner in the position of needing to throw in obvious third-and-long passing situations, or to scramble on broken plays. There was little effort to spread the defense vertically with an early-down passing game, or to stretch the defense laterally with outside runs, reverses, screens, or QB bootlegs. If successful, those things might have opened up the run game. Instead, Michigan’s offense came across as stale and predictable, and Penn State’s defense capitalized.</p>

<p>In the second half, with its back against the wall, Michigan finally opened it up, let Gardner air it out on a few throws, and let him run the read option, an offense the upperclass leadership on this team is comfortable with. And Michigan surged to a 10-point lead. At that point, Hoke & co. again went into their shell and tried to pound the ball inside. That strategy failed in regulation, and it failed repeatedly in OT. </p>

<p>IMO, this loss falls squarely on the coaching staff. Hopefully they’ll learn from it. This isn’t 1970, Brady Hoke isn’t Bo Schembechler, and Hoke’s O-line doesn’t have the kind of physical, conditioning, and skill advantage over every opponent that Schembechler’s did. This is on the whole a very young team with a lot of green talent. It’s going to take a helluva coaching effort to make them winners in the near term. On Saturday, the coaching staff failed a big test.</p>