Wolverine Wednesday: Memo To David Brandon

January 5, 2011

To: David Brandon, Director of Athletics - University of Michigan
From: Big House Bob
Subject: Head Coach of Michigan's Football Program

David, I first would like to congratulate you at taking the AD role at the University of Michigan.  Not too many people would leave a CEO role and a multi million dollar salary to become the AD at his alum mater.  I personally believe you a perfect fit for this role.

With that said, I need to openly question your decision process on the head coaching position in Michigan's football program.   I understand your process and the decision you are trying to make.  I also had a lot of confidence that you had a plan on whether you were going to keep current coach Rich Rodriguez or relieve him of his duties.

Many have wondered why wait until after the bowl game?  Your response was you wanted to judge his performance on the entire body work from the season.  Which makes sense, but it also doesn't.  You can't judge the football head coach like Michigan's golf coach.  The month between the OSU game and the Bowl game is when many head coaches get hired and fired.  I understand keeping the staff together for the bowl game but it was assumed you had a plan and that you were sticking by it. 

The plan could have been a number of things.  1) You could be keeping RR and making him rework his defensive coaches  2) You could be planning to fire RR and have a Jim Harbaugh type locked up to replace him.  What the plan couldn't be is really trying to make a decision the first week in January and then go fishing for a new coach.  You can't fish in January in Ann Arbor!  Your big fish won't be there.

Fast forward to yesterday.  You sit down with RR and before you get your second cup of coffee during the meeting, Fox 2 in Detroit runs with the story that you have fired him.  That of course was not your mistake but now instead of you owning a decision on the future of the football program, you sir now own a circus.

So Dave you are now damn if you do and damned if you don't.  If you keep RR your going to be second guessed all day.  If you bring in Brady Hoke, you will have gone from a good well known coach to a un-proven head coach with his only ties to U of M is that is was the D-line coach for 7 years.  You sir have one way to get out of this mess and his name is Jim Harbaugh, anything less is a huge failure.  Which would be the second huge failure regarding this decision from the Michigan Athletic Director in 3 years.

Les Miles should not be an option either for a number of reasons (including cutting scholarship true freshmen as the move into their dorm room, zero time management skills, eating grass, the list goes on and on).

So now what?  Your meeting today with RR and I hope and pray you have solution to fix this mess.  If you don't, it's only going to get worse and this Circus will need Big Top Tent.  So please be careful and good luck on making the right decision. The one thing you can count on is that everyone won't be happy with your decision. (unless you convince Jon Gruden to come to Ann Arbor to coach!).