Mooch'd. Shemy Schembechler came, and then he went. Warde Manuel:

"Effective this afternoon, Shemy Schembechler has resigned his position with Michigan Football. We are aware of some comments and likes on social media that have caused concern and pain for individuals in our community. Michigan Athletics is fully committed to a place where our coaches, staff and student-athletes feel welcome and where we fully support the University's and Athletic Department's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion."

Schembechler got booted for his twitter account, which had dozens and dozens of likes on posts ranging between debatably racist and obviously racist. The ESPN story linked about asserts that "a source with knowledge of the situation told ESPN that Schembechler went through a thorough background check during the hiring process," which uh no he did not. When your background check misses publicly available information it was not thorough. Or even a "check," really.

Add it to the "What The Hell Is Warde Manuel Doing?" files. This is currently an athletic department that's winning the most important game on the schedule and doing very little else right. At this point the number of unforced PR errors that the department is stumbling into like so many rakes in front of Sideshow Bob is, dare I say it, Brandonesque. Articles are rolling in with titles like "Michigan leadership continues to embarrass itself" from places like The Athletic—not exactly the RCMB.

Shemy released a statement repudiating his hundreds of endorsements of racist right wing tweets, for what little that's worth.

[After the JUMP: anonymous quotes article woo]

ALSO IN WHOOPSIES BY GUYS IN SUITS. Kevin Warren negotiated a big old TV deal just before he went back to the NFL, but there are various… uh… issues outstanding:

Nearly three months before the season kicks off and those TV deals begin, the Big Ten does not have completed longform contracts, which include the fine print details. Instead, Petitti is engaged in significant "horse trading," according to multiple sources, to get the NBC primetime deal finished and figure out what the network calls "outstanding issues" in order to uphold as much value as possible.

Those issues include a total of 65 million dollars the Big Ten has to pay FOX because they have sold inventory that was previously FOX's to NBC, and "tens of millions of dollars of value" for the NBC primetime deal because Big Ten schools do not want to play in primetime in November for obvious reasons. Here is a section of the story:

"NBC was surprised, and I was surprised," said Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel. "We had not discussed, and I had not discussed with anyone in the league to change the tolerances we had agreed upon years ago."

Within the industry, though, there was an expectation that, considering the scope of the deal, all schools would play in prime time.

"The fault here is with the administrators on campus," said another industry source. "How did the presidents, chancellors and athletic directors not know this? The universities all signed off on the deal."

I side with the industry source here, at least as far as where the fault lies. Warde Manuel should have more information that I do about this but apparently has less because he did not read Adam Rittenberg's piece from nine months ago when the deal was "completed". Here is the bit on the NBC portion of the deal:

NBC will carry Big Ten games in prime time, which will be branded "Big Ten Saturday Night."

Since they did not brand it "Big Ten Saturday Night Except In November" it is a reasonable assumption that NBC intended to air prime time games for the whole season.

But I am on Manuel's side because I do not want to sit in 10 degree weather to watch Michgian play Indiana when I could sit in 20 degree weather to do the same.

Ooh, anonymous high school coaches. The Athletic surveys eight different high school coaches in Big Ten country about various things. One question about "if you had a son picking a Big Ten college where would you want him to go" gets this response from Coach 6, based in Nebraska:

Coach 6: If I had to pick one, I would pick Iowa. But if he was a quarterback, his ass ain’t going to Iowa.

Seven of the eight responded to a question about which schools are "working your area the hardest" and Michigan is mentioned first or second by five; the only guys who do not mention M are based in Nebraska and Wisconsin. Various assistants are endorsed as well:

Coach 1: … They’ve had some turnover, but the tight ends coach (Grant Newsome) has been there a couple years now, he’s done a good job. … Coach 4: Coach Clink (Michigan defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale) has been super impressive. The time he’s spent at our school, even with the kids that may not be on his level, has been really good…. Coach 5: Coach Clinkscale and (wide receivers coach Ron) Bellamy (from Michigan). I know the kids really love both. They stand out.

Most downplay the impact of NIL on the kids that are getting recruited, saying that unless you're at the very top end it's not making a whole lot of difference. Michigan is not mentioned at all when the question is which teams have been the "most aggressive in promoting NIL," but Michigan State is, sooooo…

Welp. One can be frustrated at the fact that Michigan lands two first rounders on The Ringer's most recent NBA mock draft—Kobe Bufkin at #13 and Jett Howard at #23—and has nothing but an NIT appearance to show for it, or one can survey this year's team and see no potential NBA first-rounders and be happy about that. Yeah.

Cheer up, Michigan State! You may have yoked your football program to a completely untested head coach who parlayed the lucky find of a Heisman-worthy running back in the portal into a billion year unbreakable contract. You may have just lost your starting quarterback and best offensive player to the portal. Your recruiting class may have just lost one of its four commits and now stands at one CB ranked #400th and two nondescript interior OL. But y'all are dodgeball national champs. So you've got that going for you.

Hockey scheduled sleuthed. Connor Earegood used the powers of FOIA to find out who Michigan had signed contracts with next year for nonconference games. The answers:

According to records accessed by The Michigan Daily through the Freedom of Information Act, Michigan has signed contracts to face four teams — home against Providence and Lindenwood and away at Massachusetts and St. Cloud State — during its non-conference season. Similar to last season, all of those non-conference games come in the first half of the season.

Lindenwood went 5-22-1 last year and probably doesn't project much better in its second season as a D1 program. SCSU was #6 in Pairwise last year; Providence and UMass were 24 and 29, respectively. Both of the latter two programs could be projected to bounce back; UMass made the 2022 tourney and Providence was vaguely on the bubble.

Etc.: Naz Hillmon's first WNBA offseason was spent in the studio. Blake Corum is PFF's highest-graded returning college player by a whopping five points. Tray Jackson on his decision to transfer to Michigan. This tweet was sent to me. Sure, I'll read an article about the Kalel Mullings jump pass.