Things Fall Apart

The slow drumbeat of the coaching search process had been announcing Les Miles as the next coach of the Michigan Wolverines for the past week. It was an open secret. LSU fans were preparing themselves to lose their defensive coordinator and their head coach. It reached a crescendo on Saturday morning when Kirk Herbstreit announced it on ESPN. Then all hell broke loose.

What happened? Where did things go wrong? I think Michael Rosenberg in today's Free Press has it right, and Brian's take is as good as his work usually is. It doesn't make sense to claim that Miles was never interested in Michigan. Everything he said up until Saturday had been a carefully crafted non-statement. He never said he didn't want the Michigan job, but he couldn't say that he did.

The press conference on Saturday is hard to read. I don't know how he usually addresses the press, but this one was full of bluster and anger, the sort Lloyd Carr usually reserves for the refs. It makes me think this was a snap judgment and an emotional decision from Miles. Something pissed him off and made him jump.

There's the talk out there about Martin and Michigan asking Miles to dance to their song and go through the interview process, there's the story of LSU presenting Miles with an ultimatum to commit to them or be fired on the spot, and there's the fact of the dumptruck full of money they backed up to his house. I don't know. All season we've watched Miles go for it on 4th down, ratcheting up his risk for the promise of a much bigger reward. Michigan's desire for Miles to go through a real interview process may have seemed demeaning to a man of his ego and accomplishments, but I don't think it's enough to make him snap like he did, not with his ultimate prize out there. Overnight his public statement went from "I haven't given it any thought" to "Oh, hell no."

The only thing that changed was the ESPN story. Within a few hours of Herbstreit shooting his mouth off, Miles had suddenly agreed to an extension with LSU and was calling a press conference. I think it points to a big, emotional reaction. Maybe Les heard the story and tried to get in touch with the athletic department, but Bill Martin was taking in a matinee of the hilarious comedy Hitman and turned his cell phone off. Maybe he just assumed Desmond leaked it to Herbie. Everything sounds like this was a snap decision from Les to spurn Michigan and go where he knows he's wanted.

With the dust settling, Michigan still has three days to beg Miles to take the job. That's not going to happen. Bill Martin placed a token phone call on Sunday and Miles's agent said he isn't interested. By now, though, Miles has to know that he's never going to wear Bo's windbreaker, barring some seismic shift in Michigan's athletic department (and it would take an apocalyptic run for that to occur). And while he may be financially more secure, the only winner here is LSU.

Meanwhile, Mitch Albom needs to shut up*. His piece this morning is petulant and reeks of the arrogance Michigan fans are always accused of carrying. Yeah, good riddance to a guy who is unquestionably one of the best candidates Michigan had available to it, even if he wasn't universally anointed by the athletic department. Whose team is playing for a national championship, Mitch?

*I didn't even bother reading Drew Sharp, but I'm confident that he also needs to shut up.

Pick Six: Hitting For Contact

Full credit for several of these must be given to mgo.licio.us, just as valuable to the Michigan fan as MGoBlog is.

1. Softball bows out. We would've seen more of the three-game series against Baylor if the CSTV app didn't collapse into buffering every 15 seconds, but maybe we're glad we didn't. Lorilyn Wilson and Nikki Nemitz got rocked 9-0 in the opening game, Wilson taking the start and the loss. The Wolverines clawed out a 3-0 win Saturday to stay alive, but went down 4-0 in the rubber match. Baylor's top pitcher is a beast, not allowing an earned run for the series, and 1B Ashley Monceaux had 5 RBI, more than Michigan as a team.

2. Michigan gets at-large bid to NCAA baseball tourney. A season that began with a great deal of promise (and a Big Ten regular season title) fell apart down the stretch and into the Big Ten tournament. Getting swept out of the tournament when you're the #1 and hosting, well, it's a little embarrassing. That left the boys just shy of the magic number of 40 wins, but they still managed to get a #2 seed. But not all #2 seeds are created equal. Truth is that they're essentially the #32 seed nationally, playing in Nashville against the #33 seed in Memphis (which, you know, wouldn't have a small home crowd advantage), and even if they win, they then face national #1 seed Vanderbilt. We guess we're saying that if you're a Michigan baseball fan, don't build your weekend around breathless updates from Vandy. All of that said, Michigan is building something nice here, and with the facilities upgrades on schedule to be completed for next season thanks to the generosity of the Wilpon family, this could be, hopefully, the beginning of a return to baseball glory for Michigan.

3. Kelly Baraka is gainfully employed with the Kalamazoo Xplosion of the Continental Indoor Football League (Mascot: Xplodey the Coyote. No, seriously). We're glad for Baraka that he's no longer literally working at McDonald's, like he was last year. The Xplosion play their last home game of the regular season this Saturday, 7:00PM at Wings Stadium. Fear not if you can't make it; the Xplosion's 8-1 record guarantees them at least one home playoff game (HT: MSC).

4. Brian's Big Ten Network fisking is a must-read about something that, in the abstract, isn't a bad idea, but is lurching into existence in as disastrous a manner as possible, fueled by the hubris Jim Delaney's been dripping everywhere.

5. Crisler could get minor updates for 2007-08 season. We could not be more excited. The reality is that Michigan was not going to quickly get a new basketball arena built quickly, or is there even, necessarily, the money or desire to do so. However, there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with Crisler Arena that could not be seriously improved with some TLC. The lighting thing is huge. Crisler Arena has always looked poorly lit on television and it's a dark and shadowy place when you go there to watch a game. We're not saying it has to be Florida bright in there, but bringing in some experts to make the changes needed to make Crisler look better on television could be a small but important step to improving recruiting. The sound system upgrades are just an additional need. We just hope it doesn't mean that additional speakers mean additional calls for NOISE! NOISE! LOUD NOISES! The band is there for a reason.

6. Braylon Edwards pledging $1 million to fund scholarships. We realize that this is kind of old news, but we just wanted to take a moment to salute Braylon Edwards, one of our favorite Michigan players ever, for making a major financial commitment to improving the educational opportunities for deserving students. We realize that many athletes do good work like this and stories of them are put out there, but in an era where so many NFL players are being help up in the media as exemplars of bad behavior, it's nice to see stories like this. We're hopeful that this kind of thing can make a real difference in the lives of these young people.