Re: 2014-2015 College Football Thread: A New Era Begins..
No, they ****ed up the search. Apparently the prior AD was out on his sailboat when one of the major candidates was trying to contact him (Les Miles, maybe?). You're in the middle of the coaching search and you think it's a good idea to go sailing. Think about that for a moment.
Here's what's really odd here (here as in Ann Arbor)- we were recently at an event that had a ton of big donors (holy cow- did we feel out of place). Along that was Martin. He was very well looked upon there. Even though, he screwed the pooch getting a coach that had massive ties and wanted to be here, all of these big donors loved him. Many of them also love Brandon.
For the big whigs, Martin and Brandon changed the focus to more of a money centric model- what most saw was focusing on advertising, and squeezing the most out of the ticket payers. What you don't see are the opportunities for those with money- instead of wating for good seats at events, they found ways to buy their way in. Both FB and BB asked for licenses- which was done at other places, but the result of it was it forced many long time ticket holders to both move and even drop getting tickes. Next- rennovations at the Big House, Crisler, and Yost- ALL of them pretended to make things neat and more fan centric- but the big change were the boxes. Now you can just pay money and sit in a premium spot, have food delivered to you, etc. From taking years to move around the stadium, now you could buy your way into the seats.
So the high end donors really liked Martin and Brandon.
That money first theme has been hanging over the University for some time- and if all teams were really successful, it would be ignored. But it more seems to be a source of the problem where the people running the show took their eye off the point. My wife actually put it well this morning- the money should be the icing on the cake. In our case, the money WAS the cake. This isn't a for profit program, and there are no shareholders to make happy- you have to make students, alumni, and fans happy.
Not everything Dave has done has been bad- heck a TON of things he's done has been really good. The new AD really needs to take a close look at the money tone and the good/bad part- there's no need for a massive overhall. Scale it back so that the focus isn't so much on money. The department can still opreate in the black- it's just that the focus needs to be off the paper green things and more on the green fields (or blue for the field hockey), the brown wood floor, the bright white ice, and the blue water.