Happenings

Schiano turned down the Michigan job. Differing reports on whether there was an actual offer, but I think there was.

The Michigan side and Miles side have begun talking. We'll see what happens.

Come Sail Away

There's an excellent letter written by Joey over at Straight Bangin. He follows it up with a letter he received from a former player. This player said Miles was on the phone with a former teammate of his until 2:00 A.M. wondering why he hadn't been contacted by Michigan after the contract extension had been presented. Sailing. I guess some people just didn't think Miles would do well at Michigan.

"Les Miles was one of our candidates." - Bill Martin

One of the top coaches in the country, who played under Bo and coached for Bo, and we're telling him that he's one of many candidates. That's Michigan for you. We can't even pay market value for a coach let alone try and take one away with lucrative contract. I honestly thought that Bill Martin would handle this 1,000 times better than he has. It's almost funny to think about. Do you wonder why Ferentz took his name out of the running? No way were we going to give him a raise on his $2.8 million dollar contract. Both he and Miles are shaking their heads right now, wondering how the athletic department with the winningest college football program in history got to the point it is at today. It's really hard to comprehend how hiring a football coach at Michigan is harder than throwing rice a kid in pre-school but apparently it is.


Kind of a funny turn of events, no? I'm sure that most of this situation will never become public. Here's what happened as far as I know. Miles to Michigan was practically done. He'll say that he didn't receive any contact from Michigan, but the deal was in place. Talk about assistants and how much money he would have for them had already begun. Ron English's interview was basically an exit interview; that's how far along this was. Of course now he's getting a second interview, maybe to make up for the first. So what went wrong? First we'll have to assume that LSU does not get into the BCS Championship game. They did, but assume they don't because then it would play out as expected. Bill Martin asked for permission to talk to Miles after the SEC Championship game. An interview in New York was scheduled for Tuesday (fairly confident of this). Why wait until Tuesday? Well, that's part of the problem that I'll go over later. Michigan's asking for permission to talk to Miles was a gift to LSU. Martin decided to honor the outdated policy of not contacting coaches without permission. So LSU decided to play hardball and offer a lucrative extension and give Miles an ultimatum before the game. Basically, LSU bluffed, and Miles called it. Miles' agent tries to contact Michigan and continue talks regarding this development but Michigan doesn't respond. I guarantee that LSU's AD and Chancellor have taken about 5 minutes to themselves, sat down, stared at the ceiling or the wall or the bayou and wondered how it actually worked. I'm 99% sure that they honestly can't believe the way Michigan goes about doing things.

Now a sidetrack. It's not an easy thing to admit but Lloyd Carr and others in the Athletic Department had a huge hand in this ordeal. They didn't directly shoot Miles' candidacy down, but Miles knew that he could be walking into a situation where he isn't exactly wanted. Martin, wanting to appease the old guard, has to handle this situation delicately. His policy is to hammer out the contract, and then have a face-to-face interview. Michigan and LSU were operating on different sets of rules. LSU played it perfectly, unfortunately for Michigan.

So now, cut to Friday and LSU negotiating with Miles. Miles isn't exactly feeling wanted by Michigan. Does he want to walk into a situation where there are people don't want him or one where he sees a huge contract extension in front of him? He couldn't pass that up when he knew that Martin was considering him as a candidate, not the guy.

A lot of things still don't make sense. Miles has to know that LSU isn't going to fire him before the SEC Championship game if he doesn't agree to the extension. If that were to happen, he would get paid his LSU salary and the salary of his new contract with Michigan, assuming he became coach there. So what was the breakdown? I think Martin really screwed up here. Lloyd Carr unfortunately had an indirect influence in this as well, but c'mon Bill.

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Who wouldn't take Jimmy Harbaugh right now? It's hard to believe, but he's about the best we can hope for right now. He's going to be a monster for someone in 5 years. He has the flair for the big stage. He relishes it, beating Cal for the first time in 6 years and of course USC, arguably one of the top 3 teams in the country. How often has Michigan won the two biggest games on its schedule in the last 10, 20,30..... years. It's a shame he can't control what he says, and I'm sure he's regretting it right now.

So is English a candidate? I actually think he could become a good head coach. And we'll get to save $1 million USD per year. Per year. That's huge when you're making $226 million renovations. On English though, obviously the only way he would be an acceptable choice is if he retained only a few of the current staff - at the very least NOT Debord, Gittleson, or Moeller. Please god no. A good thing to support part of this is the fraction between the defense and offense coaching sides, particularly within the last year. But English getting a second interview and being a real candidate is really funny for three reasons. 1) English could become a top tier coach in 3-4 years. Top tier as in top 15. But we could have had a top 5-7 coach right now. 2) Martin said all along that he wanted someone with head coach experience. 3) And then there's the piece of information that English doesn't really respect Bill Martin and Martin knows it. This situation couldn't get any stranger.

If anything doesn't make sense, sorry. Hard to make sense of a situation like this.

He Gone?

Angelique S. Chengelis with the inside story.

Les Miles will not be Michigan's next head coach, LSU's athletic director Skip Bertman confirmed to The News Saturday afternoon.

Miles has agreed to a lucrative, multi-year extension with LSU. Miles told his players today, before this afternoon's Southeastern Conference championship game in Atlanta against Tennessee, that he is remaining their head coach.

LSU has called a 1:45 news conference today at the Georgia Dome to announce the extension.

Miles, a former Michigan player and assistant coach, was considered the "front-runner," according to Michigan sources, to succeed Lloyd Carr, who retired Nov. 19 after 13 seasons as head coach.

On Wednesday, Michigan athletic director Bill Martin requested and was granted permission by LSU to talk to Miles after the SEC title game. Martin, sources said, never reached out to Miles' agent, George Bass, or Miles. Martin was expected to contact Miles on Sunday.

"The truth is he's going to stay at LSU," Bertman said by telephone. "We have an agreement, but we don't have a written, signed document. But we have an agreement so that Les could talk to his team today, which he did."

Bertman said the contract essentially was ironed out Friday, but they chose not to negotiate over the weekend because of today's SEC title game.

John Wangler, former Michigan quarterback and close friend of Miles, clearly was shocked by the news.

Wangler had been public in his support of Miles, saying he believed his friend would be the next head coach of the Wolverines.

"I'm very disappointed," Wangler said. "But I'll support whoever the next guy is. I love Michigan."

Bertman told The News Wednesday night he was prepared to make Miles a lucrative offer to remain with the Tigers. Miles is finishing his third season at LSU.

"I don't understand why people won't believe me -- the guy has said he didn't want to go to Michigan," Bertman said. "He told the Chancellor, the president, the board members. He said he wanted to stay at LSU. He had permission to talk to Michigan, but he didn't really want to go to Michigan. I know it's a blow to Michigan, but this is a nice place here.

"The guy was never going to Michigan, evidently. He never even spoke to anybody from Michigan. We're very excited. The players are excited."

ESPN reported Saturday morning that Michigan would announce Miles as its head coach next week, but Michigan sources said this morning that LSU had applied significant pressure on Miles to sign a lucrative deal before today's Southeastern Conference title game in Atlanta.

Michigan Wins

I think the Illinois fan at the end of this video got into a fight about a minute later.

FBDIII

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius

Russell Crowe, also known as Gladiator, also known as Jim Braddock, also known as John Nash, flew to Ann Arbor Saturday to feast on leprechauns. In the movies, he cuts off heads. In real life, he throws phones at people. Only badasses do that type of stuff. And that badass is now a Michigan fan and drinking buddy of one Lloyd Carr. Watch him with Carr after the game here.

Jimmy Clausen never had a chance. All he could think about was that one time when he and his friends got in their speedos and watched Crowe in The Beautiful Mind. Or maybe it's just because the Notre Dame football team can't actually play football. Charlie says that his team is going back to training camp and starting over. I don't think that will work. The only hope they have now is if the Wolverines teach them how to play the game of football for the second time. I guess once wasn't enough, because that Irish offense is one of the worst that you will ever see. You may never see another that bad. The Michigan defense though deserves credit for what it did. It attacked all game long on 1st, 2nd, and, 3rd downs, sacking the emu more times than I could count. It was always around the ball, and the players actually looked fast. How good is the defense? Well, it's not losing-to-Oregon-by-32 bad or getting-gashed-by-App. State bad. It's also not shutting-out-a-team good. This defense will look good against teams that don't spread it out with a running quarterback. The defensive line will be able to handle the running games of most teams left on the schedule. A potential stumbling point could come in Illinois, assuming Juice Williams doesn't suffer an injury before that meeting. We will see Brandon Graham become a All-Big Ten player, and Taylor will bounce back to previous form. Will Johnson will go unnoticed but will be just as good as Taylor this year. Jamison and will have a good season.

On offense, we won't be able to run on 1st down 90% of the time against good defenses. Other than Hart, we don't have an idea of what we'll see in the next couple games. I'm guessing Henne won't play against PSU but it's not a certainty. Mallett will have to face a good defense, but how good is it? Comparing Penn State and Michigan, Notre Dame gave up more yards to Michigan and Notre Dame gained more yards Penn State. Don't read too much into this though. The numbers were lopsided in the favor of Penn State and Michigan in both games. The only constant: Notre Dame bad.

I think we can expect to see a similar defensive game plan against Penn State as we saw against Notre Dame. Maybe not as many blitzes, due in part to the potential for Penn State to run screens to Derrick Williams and Deon Butler. They also have some big targets in Quarless and Golden. Scott will get the bulk of the carries, with Kinlaw being a change of pace back. If Penn State runs out of a spread formation more than not, they could have more success against our run defense. If not, we should be able to limit them to less than 100 yards. X-factor = A.J. Wallace returning kicks. With most kickoffs being returned now, this could prove to be a pivotal part of the game.

38-0

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.