BLUE

...the joy and despair of being a Wolverines fan.

December 9, 2007

THE FOURTH STOOGE

There are two main camps debating – warring – about the Michigan coaching search. The biggest contingent is very well known: the ravenously angry fans who feel that the Miles hire was botched and that Michigan has become the laughingstock of the college football as other potential candidates scramble to remove themselves from consideration. There is a smaller contingent of measured, reasonable Michigan fans who counsel patience and argue that one cannot draw judgments about Bill Martin’s efforts until we see the final result.

There is a critical flaw in the second line of reasoning: In order to believe that Bill Martin has not been incompetent and/or duplicitous so far in his efforts, one must accept that there is a master plan in the works, some clever, covert strategy that is designed to secure a worthy candidate. Yet, the Schiano debacle firmly establishes that this is not true.

What do we know about the Schiano attempted hire? First, that he was the fourth candidate interviewed after English, Debord and Hoke (a phone interview). Second, he was informally offered the job after an interview that did not include a visit to Ann Arbor. Third, and most importantly, the offer to Schiano wiped out in one stroke the notion that Martin had been seriously speaking to other candidates – stealth superstar hires – all the while the Miles fiasco was unfolding. Indeed, this was his one potentially saving grace: that he was frying bigger fish than Miles and had no need to intelligently pursue the LSU coach.

The Schiano offer proved that the Miles hire was botched and his actions in and around last weekend were truly incompetent and not a cover for a smarter plan. That his efforts to date – beyond perhaps some crank calls to Urban Meyer or Bob Stoops – have been to interview his two unqualified coordinators, talk on the phone to a MAC coach who is 14 games under .500 and, out of desperation, throw an offer at the first candidate with a pulse – a candidate who never stepped within 600 miles of Ann Arbor.

There can be nothing clever in these events, no matter what the thrashing behind the scenes. Occam’s Razor demands that the obvious be acknowledged: Bill Martin, despite a year to plan, did absolutely nothing and is now fumbling away these critical weeks after Lloyd’s premature resignation to the amusement of the national media and Big Ten haters alike.

If Bill Martin manages to get a coach that doesn’t disgust and embarrass fans of the University of Michigan, it will be sheer unadulterated blind luck. Anyone who argues otherwise must explain away the desperate Schiano offer that refutes the idea of hidden plan of diabolical genius. In reality, Bill Martin is the fourth Stooge.

And, in this spirit, I offer my open letter to Bill Martin. Nothing as divinely written as this one, but it has its own spirit.

Dear Mr. Martin:

Why should you listen to one individual such as me? As a devoted follower of Michigan, I count among my circle of friends dozens of Michigan fans who have followed your "efforts" in the current coaching search.  Therefore, this e-mail does not represent n=1, but more like n=30, which also serves as a satisfying sample size for those of us who like statistics. Logic would suggest that if you collected 30 Michigan fans in a room and surveyed them, you could draw useful conclusions about all sorts of issues, from football coaches to global warming to presidential candidates.

What is remarkable about this virtual town hall of Michigan Wolverine fanatics is the universal and intense unhappiness with your efforts to replace Lloyd Carr. I am sure you appreciate that the term "intense unhappiness" is in fact a euphemism for boatloads and boatloads of raging profanity that would make a 15th century pirate squeamish. LOL. Indeed, if I had a quarter for every curse word directed at this search, well, let's just say that I would be dictating this letter to my personal assistant from my ocean villa in Roquebrune Cap Martin.

But I very much want this e-mail to be professional, because you are a professional and, quite frankly, so am I. It is incumbent upon me, then, to convey the utter horror and unanimous anger directed at whomever is leading the search - which I assume to be you - without resorting to vicious, profane language. This is a challenge, though, because I am I am coming to believe that only such crude forms of expression can describe thinking that places an unsuccessful Iowa coach with no legitimate (i.e. non-crony) ties to Michigan above a stunningly successful LSU coach who played and coached for Bo. And perhaps such gutter language is the only appropriate descriptive tool to express my concern over a desperate offer to a marginal Rutgers coach, an offer that exposes a sad truth: you haven’t been working on anything clever behind the scenes, as all four of your supporters have been arguing.

This is the most important thing you will do as an Athletic Director. You have had a year to plan, knowing as you did that Lloyd wanted to retire. You had a chip shot candidate that would have made former players, moneyed alumni and little fans like myself pleased. Yet, you failed to time Lloyd’s resignation properly, failed to coordinate your efforts with the Miles’s camp and failed to have a coherent plan of action to follow up those two failures. That’s a lot of failure, there, Bill!

You have one option left: swallow your pride and connect with the Miles camp. Your stumbling may cost you an extra million or two, but that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of alumni dollars that hang in the balance. And Les Miles would still come if your grovel enough.

Sincerely,

Meeechigan Dan

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