On The Fifty

"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 Martin decided to honor the outdated policy of not contacting coaches without permission.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.