The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/575020
THE BUSINESS OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS to get the brand back. If you were 17 years old, the last time Michigan had dominance, you were nine. What are the chances that, at nine years old, they were convinced to come to Michigan? Zero. "The last seven years, there is a gap. He had to make all of that up. Getting out there with all the young kids who didn't know him and have no money to travel here, it was just a phenomenal idea. "Ten camps in nine days … they never went to bed. We had to fly them on private planes. They could never have made it. "That did an amazing thing to light the fire about our brand. He took a lot of grief, because it was so counter-cultural. Then it hit me one night. I thought how many of the older coaches are just frustrated they didn't think of it? "I could tell you 30 things he has done since he's been here that are fun- damental to his competing strategy and ahead of everyone else. He re- minds me of what [Apple co-founder] Steve Jobs did in his business. "Steve was the kind of guy where people would cock their head and say, 'I know him and think he is odd, offbeat.' And he was kicking their butt the whole way. "Now, where they're different is, Bo was a lineman, and Jim's a quar- terback. I think that mentality shapes you. Bo knew the toughness of the offensive line, and he built his team around that. "Jim is tough, but he is the kind of guy that knows, no matter what the score is, I'm going to find a way to win — the way a quarterback would think about it. I've learned football from Jim's angle the way I knew it from Bo's. It is different, and I love what I'm learning about it. "And, there's his dad [former U-M assistant coach Jack Harbaugh]. His dad was a defensive backfield coach, and he's learned from his dad some- thing about defense. Both of them have such a healthy respect for that. "The last thing I'd say is about re- cruiting. Bo, physically, would dread recruiting, but he loved doing it. It wore him out, but he loved doing it. Jim loves doing it, too, and that's an advantage." The Wolverine: What are you do- ing with football scheduling at this point? Hackett: "Now we have nine con- ference games out of the 12, and the Big Ten has just worked it so that we'll open most of our seasons in the future with a conference game. "The reasoning is, it's such a prime market moment, and we're giving it up to other people. We want to keep it for ourselves. "We've got this problem with night games. Night games are viewed more on television than noon games and there is a desire to have more of a viewership. "Ann Arbor's advantage with day games is it can handle 115,000 people. However, can it handle all of those people at night? It taxes the system. "This year, we'll have three night games. We played one at Utah. And