The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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M BY JOHN BORTON don became as unstoppable as the of- fenses he expects Brady Hoke's team to fashion. The new AD ushered in a tidal wave of change, including: • Guiding Michigan through an NCAA investigation and subsequent punishment (its first ever in football) for infractions largely based on ex- cessive pre-practice stretching under the Rich Rodriguez regime. see mode. He acknowledged his new arrival status, even as the boss over an extremely high-profile athletic department, and cautioned that he needed to assess everything before making significant moves. Once he began taking action, Bran- ichigan director of ath- letics David Brandon ar- rived on the job in 2010 in a reserved, wait-and- public forums that he takes a dim view of resistance to change. He sensed too much of it surrounding Michigan's athletic programs, after scrutinizing the results of a "culture study" he commissioned after taking the AD job. He insisted in a speech to the Wol- verine Caucus — U-M alums work- ing in state government — that life on State Street in Ann Arbor needed a nudge toward the future. "We were stuck in, 'This is the way we do things at Michigan,'" Brandon offered. "If we didn't like the way things were going, we would just sing the fight song. "If it looked like Texas was grow- Brandon made it clear in several cluding the newly created positions of chief marketing officer, chief talent officer and chief information officer. Hoke stands out as the highest-pro- file head coaching hire, but he cer- tainly hasn't been the only change in that area. Over the past year, U-M has re- placed baseball coach Rich Maloney with Erik Bakich from the Univer- sity of Maryland, women's basket- ball coach Kevin Borseth with Kim Barnes Arico from St. John's and men's soccer coach Steve Burns with Chaka Daley from Providence. In addition, Michigan is seeking MAJOR MAKEOVER Huge Changes … And Isn't Finished ing faster than us, if Ohio State kept beating us, if Florida was zooming past us, we'd just sing the fight song. David Brandon Oversees • Replacing Rodriguez with Hoke, the former Michigan assistant coach. • Installation of permanent light- ing at Michigan Stadium, followed by last year's night game versus Notre Dame, the first evening affair in the history of the stadium. • Unveiling alternate uniforms in And the reality is, we just didn't want to change." The new boss became an agent of that showdown against the Irish, a changeup repeated at Michigan State later in the season. • Becoming heavily involved in the final stages of the roughly $100-mil- lion Crisler Center project, as well as a Yost Field House overhaul and the installation of $18 million worth of video boards at Michigan Stadium, Crisler and Yost. • Bringing men's and women's la- crosse from club to varsity status, giving U-M 27 varsity sports. • Hiring head coaches for several other sports, and overseeing more than a 30 percent turnover in overall athletic department personnel since his arrival. In addition to hiring head coaches, Brandon has also filled newly created positions in the athletics department such as chief market- ing officer and chief information officer. PHOTO BY PER KJELDSEN significant change. He noted some 85 from the original 275-member athletic department he inherited are no longer affiliated with Michigan. Those departures involved a number of reasons. "When a new leader comes in and creates a new agenda — you see this in coaching all the time — it's proba- bly going to create change," Brandon said. "It certainly did here. We had a number of retirements, a number of voluntary terminations where people moved on to other opportunities. We had some performance-related issues as well. "We went through a period of significant change in structure and staffing. We did a lot of recruiting. Today, we're in a really good place. We have some really high-energy, tal- ented people — people who are com- ing to work every day and working hard, committed to making this the leaders-and-best athletic department that we all want it to be." The athletic department now fea- tures more than 300 employees, in- Brandon's intention, he explains, involves taking some chances to be- come more contemporary and rel- evant. Michigan's hugely successful plunge into night football marks just one of the ways that emphasis played out. an energy around innovation, and be willing to take a few risks, even if there were people out there that were always going to try to shoot you down," Brandon said. "We were going to keep moving. We wouldn't always get it right, but hopefully we would create some new opportuni- ties and new energy. We were look- ing for some new things our fans, our supporters and, most importantly, our student-athletes and coaches, would really enjoy and be motivated around." According to Dave Ablauf, Michi- "The whole concept was to create a replacement for retired women's swimming coach Jim Richardson. Even with that level of turnover, coaching changes barely scratch the surface of the transition on State Street. gan's associate athletic director for media and public relations, Brandon has taken a very powerful lead in charting a course for the department. "Dave has a sense of purpose and direction for where he wants to see Michigan athletics," Ablauf said. "It boils down to an overall direction, AUGUST 2012 THE WOLVERINE 53