Posted in The Soapbox
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01/11 2011

Soapbox: Michigan Needs To Hire A Good Coach, Not Make A Good Hire

Posted by Ty Schalter.

(Ed Note: This post comes courtesy of Ty Schalter of Detroit Lions blog The Lions In Winter.)

Bill Martin was, figuratively, standing alone in the rain. He was staring forlornly at the heavy oaken door to Rutgers Castle, just closed in his face. The sloppy wet spatters of New Jersey rain were figuratively pummeling his wispy comb-over as he wondered where he’d turn next. He’d figuratively come six hundred miles, figurative hat in hand, to ask Rutgers’ head coach if he’d take over the winningest program in college football history. Greg Schiano declined.

Martin was in a bind. Lloyd Carr’s storybook national championship farewell didn’t make it past the first chapter. A $226 million dollar Michigan Stadium renovation was already underway. He had a hundred years of tradition, a massive fan base, and an impressive donor list all demanding that stadium house a winner. Martin had publicly blown his chances with the best (and obvious candidate): Les Miles, an SEC coach whose #2-ranked team was about to play for, and ultimately win, a BCS National Championship. Miles, per reports, was sitting by his phone waiting for Martin to call—a call that hadn’t come. Martin had allegedly been out sailing when LSU pushed a mountain of cash at Miles to convince him to stay.

Now Martin’s second choice had turned him down flat, and back in Ann Arbor the fans and media were gathering the torches and pitchforks. Martin needed to make a hire.

West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez fit that bill: a nationally respected head coach with a long track record of making football mountains out of molehill recruits. A perennial candidate for prestigious coaching gigs around the country, Rodriguez was the splashy hire Martin had to make to save his legacy—and Michigan’s national reputation.

That it did: the New York Times said Martin ended “an awkward monthlong search with the hiring of one of college football’s most respected offensive minds.” Trev Alberts, with CBS Sports at the time, said Rodriguez’s hire brought Michigan “into the 21st Century.” Alberts wasn’t the only one to use that phrase, either. Yahoo! Sports’ Matt Hinton suggested that the workout-limit violations Rodriguez and Michigan were accused of were “just another case of Rodriguez and Barwis bringing the program into the 21st Century.” Yes, even at the first signs of trouble, the national perception was Rodriguez’s hiring kept Michigan at pace with the NCAA’s elite.

New Michigan AD Dave Brandon has an entirely different challenge in front of him. Rodriguez’ hire had been met with national praise, but local skepticism—and that skepticism grew into paranoia, then resentment, then anger as Rodriguez went out of his way to upset every hundred-year-old apple cart he could find. Not only was he not a “Michigan Man,” he seemed to be actively hostile toward that legacy.

Michigan fans struggled to accept this new order on the field, too. A Michigan team that was undersized? That relied on scheme, rather than talent, to win? Whose defense was, at best, an afterthought? This was not Michigan football; it grated against everything their fans had come to equate with success.

But greater than Rodriguez’s failure to “get” Michigan, and greater than his failure to adjust his systemic approach to the Big Ten, was his failure to win. That’s the lesson that Dave Brandon must learn from the Rodriguez debacle: he cannot correct Bill Martin’s mistake by hiring Miles three years too late. He shouldn’t be trying to impress the media with a big hire, and he shouldn’t be taking the next best “Michigan Man” available. He should be trying to make a hire that will earn him national kudos in two years, not in two days.

(Ed note #2: It looks like Miles may be turning Michigan down. Here we go again or blessing in disguise?)

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Posted on January 11, 2011 at 12:42PM

 

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