Michigan played Michigan State yesterday, and in the past this has been a spur to post some Content on the Internet. I have to confess that I am ill-placed to talk about this game, however. This is because I did not watch it. The fact that it was on Peacock, which I do not have, contributed to this decision. But I was in an airport on January 7th, saw that Michigan was up ten against Penn State, put it on my phone, saw Penn State go on a 7-0 run out of halftime and said "welp, that's enough for me."

Penn State would go on to win that game by six; Michigan won one game in January. The football team won two.

At the moment I'm not particularly interested in angst about anything. I am still randomly remembering that Michigan won the national championship and going "aw, cool!" So I haven't had a whole lot to say about Harbaugh leaving, or taking Herbert with him, or concerns about this and that for 2024. That's Sherrone Moore's job. My job as a fan is to wave a little flag that says "2024 National Champs" until… uh… August? February 2025? I don't know.

One consequence of this is that I have barely paid attention to the basketball team once it was clear they were very, very bad. I'd seen enough through December to know that observing this team play was not going to be good for the whole, like, you know, vibe, man. I'm in a vibes-based economy currently.

BUT!

I think a couple things have become clear and will now state them on the internet.

[After THE JUMP: the suspsense is killing you]

Juwan Howard ain't getting out of this pit. Warde Manuel famously made a previous decision not to fire a guy that worked out fairly well, and recently provided the Vote Of Confidence to Juwan Howard. Sort of, at least?

“I have not spent one moment thinking about anything but supporting Juwan and this team,” he said. “I haven’t thought about the evaluation of the season. All that stuff comes at the end of the season. I’ve done it in my career but it is extremely rare for me to make a decision in the middle of the season. Something has really got to be off.

“I haven’t thought about it, I haven’t talked to him about it, we haven’t had that conversation. All that happens and will happen at the end of the season. My focus with Juwan and each of our teams is to support them to have success.”

Unfortunately for Michigan and Juwan Howard, these situations are not at all similar. Harbaugh inherited a Brady Hoke roster that he immediately improved. He narrowly missed a couple of wins over Ohio State before a disappointing few years with QB injuries and a COVID 2020 that was, in retrospect, not real. He was already a proven winner at Stanford and the 49ers.

Howard inherited a John Beilein roster. He went 19-12 in the COVID year (Kenpom projected them as a 6-seed, FWIW) and his one-seed the following year featured Franz Wagner (who technically committed to Howard but was recruited by Beilein and his brother), Isaiah Livers, and Eli Brooks in starting roles. Since then it's been an arrow straight down.

There are a three things that might mitigate this situation. They are Terrance Shannon, Caleb Love, and heart surgery.

I find all of these unconvincing when Michigan is 188th in defensive efficiency in year five. Tarris Reed replaced Hunter Dickinson in the starting lineup. Michigan imported two key contributors from last year's #1 and #3 teams in defensive efficiency and they are now one spot ahead of… yup… Long Beach State. I don't think you can be that bad at defense and also be a competent head coach. John Beilein, who notoriously did not coach defense never finished worse than 129, and that was his first year. His worst D other than that was 100th in 2015.

It's year five. Howard's miserable roster construction—there are two guards and one center on the roster—is all on him at this point. Yes, it is very frustrating that guys like Love, Shannon, and Papa Kante never actually arrived on campus. But it is the job of the head coach to understand the environment he is operating in.

Speaking of the environment: in the context of the #188 defense it's impossible not to think Jon Sanderson is right when he thinks Michigan's culture sucks. It has to suck. If the culture did not suck they would be 100th in defense or something.

I've been wrong about firing guys before, of course. This one feels extremely far gone. Michigan football had a 8-5, 10-3, 9-4 run where they never dropped below 12th in SP+. That is miles away from basketball being dead last in the Big Ten with a 7-14 record while playing five seniors and three sophomores.

Michigan needs to get serious about what college athletics is these days. Two years ago I said that it would be a massive failure if Hunter Dickinson could make more money playing basketball somewhere other than Michigan, and he duly returned for his junior year. Last offseason, he found out that he could make lots more money playing basketball somewhere other than Michigan.

I've generally refrained from laying Harbaugh's departure at Manuel's feet. Dickinson is all him, though. Warde Manuel's Queensbury rules approach to NIL…

"We don’t own any players. We don’t buy them, but we do provide resources for our student-athletes. They have my full support and I love NIL and what it does for our student-athletes. But I don’t want us talking about what we have to buy student-athletes and inducing student-athletes. We need to talk about what we can provide, short and long-term, for the rest of their life. For me, NIL is about teaching kids how to use who they are for the rest of their lives.

“For me, it’s not a transactional thing. It’s a life commitment between Michigan and our student-athletes. And the short term is that they get some resources provided to them. The long term is that they can make money over their lifetime because of Michigan and what we teach and experience with being a student-athlete.”

…is stunningly naive, and Hunter Dickinson in a Kansas uniform is proof positive. I imagine that the transfer issues are above Manuel's head, but if he doesn't understand the new reality that college football and basketball are professional sports then Michigan isn't going to be a major factor in basketball unless they hit on another genius like John Beilein.

This is going to get worse and worse until someone finally admits it. The attorney general of Tennessee just filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA because Tennessee got donked for some NIL violations. When they NCAA loses that case, because they always lose every case, the fig leaf that NIL can't be used for recruiting inducements will be gone and we will be in a full-on, no holds barred employment era. (I almost used the words "pay-for-play" but stopped myself because you would not use the words "pay-for-work" in a pejorative fashion.)

If Warde Manuel isn't preparing for this he should be fired. If Warde Manuel thinks this would be bad, he should be fired. It is sort of unbelievable that Michigan has a black former athlete as their athletic director and he is still saying stupid garbage that Dave Brandon would have said.

Maybe he is doing this. A lot of college administrator types spend their careers defending indefensible things and then transition as if they'd never said anything at all. Bill Hancock famously asserted that a playoff would crush college football and then was the spokesman for the literal playoff. Maybe Manuel is really prepared for what's to come behind the scenes. I doubt it, though. Manuel stumbled onto the only standout decision of his Michigan tenure by declining to act, and it seems like that's his go-to move in all things.