If Michigan refuses to adapt to the current NIL landscape, Warde Manuel needs to be fired.
The whole "Michigan will not become a transactional experience" is so ridiculous.
People can hand wave the concerns we have about recruiting all we want, but Michigan cannot sustain success by getting classes ranked 30-40, and relying on development.
I'm not a Warde fan per se, but if you think this is a Warde decision, then you're not deeply educated on how the university works.
Yeah, the university works in some holier-than-thou mindset that makes them think that Michigan is above it all, as if there aren't other good schools out there.
Yep.
Michigan cannot compete because of academicz and online classes.
/s
Two thoughts.
1. You're absolutely right.
2. Nobody here likes that so you're gonna get down voted for saying it.
So what is the point of firing Warde then? Obviously this goes well beyond him.
Football fans have to cope with the fact that football is not as important to the university as it is to them.
Money is important to the University. If the football program falters, everything else will collapse with it.
Haha? What? No.
If you don't think to some extent that a school's athletic department is, to the general public, a reflection of the institution itself, you're kidding yourself.
There's zero reason to have an athletic department if it didn't help with attracting students and supporters.
But otherwise, you're spot on. Schlissel for example was very public in his disdain for having to deal with the AD. Michigan survived.
Yeah. I mean, who wants to go to the University of Chicago? Their reputation tanked the minute they got out of football.
/s
This statement is correct, if UM wants to maintain its current athletic programs, including money losing Olympic sports. Without the football and basketball revenues, the level of support, including coaches salaries, will have to decline.
Univ of Chicago example does not apply at all because college athletics were totally different back then. I am certain, the whole university will suffer as well (e.g., contributions by donors is likely to decline at least for the first several years).
Having said that, as they say, money talks. Sooner or later, Warde and the other decision makers will decide that UM should join the club.
Football and basketball revenues aren’t going away. I don’t know where you think they are going, but they aren’t going anywhere.
They are going away. You think ticket sales will not decline? What do you think make the athletic department's budget second in the B10 after OSU? Remember the free football tickets when one purchased a bottle of coke?
Ummmm…no.
Catchafire, you hit the nail on the head. UM doesn’t want to be like “other schools”, but it thrives and expands academically off the money the football program generates. I hope, eventually, they (the powers that be) just accept the truth and don’t look to hinder the hand that feeds them!?
I honestly hope you’re joking. No doubt, the football program has some incremental network benefit on the institution’s academics, but to suggest UM “thrives and expands” from football revenue is just absurd. The university has north of a $17B endowment and is ranked in the top 25 globally. That’s not because of Bo or Harbaugh or anyone in the AD. It’s because we have preeminent scientists, scholars, researchers, etc…seriously, let’s put football in perspective and not bloviate more than we have to about the criticality of the program to the university as a whole.
Bloviate......nice.
If I'm not mistaken, the amount a money Michigan gets from research grants dwarfs anything from the athletics programs. That would why the university outside of the athletic department isn't too worried about it all.
Well, I guess it would save the department a lot of money. If we're not participating like a P5 school in NIL, then we might as well hire an up and comer HS D, and pay them 1/5th of what Warde makes. It's be a transformational experience for that HS AD as well, so bonus points for Michigan.
Agreed, there is a serious cultural difference between the academics and athletics. Which way will UM go? If the academics have their way, UM will end up being another University of Chicago. That example might be extreme but if you're unwilling to compete on a level playing field, the program will continually slip into mediocrity wondering how we get back to the glory days. Until the point is reached where the university is willing to be competitive on the athletic field then this will be the result. Are those same academics proud of UM football history? Then that is all they will have...history, the yesteryears.
Which begs the question, why is this affecting football more than any other sport?
It, perhaps, "raises the question", but certainly does not "beg the question". What are they teaching these days at UM?
Yes, but those of you (us?) who insist on using expressions as they were originally intended - and not as practiced currently by the overwhelming majority - are destined to go the way of the dodo and of the University of Michigan (if we let academics handle NIL).
It “begs the question” that people aren’t properly taught the origin of “begs the question” because it’s not used correctly.
What does the UM brain trust have to do with NIL? Where's the money cannon?
Before NIL, I always enjoyed UM fans thinking we are superior to those schools that pay players when UM literally invented paying players.
now, the school needs to pay players again (or at least arrange for players to be paid) and the high priests in the admin are pearl clutching.
And a whole lotta members of this blog are - as usual - hand wringing over shit they know essentially nothing about. Newsflash...the school doesn't pay any NIL money. And isn't supposed to arrange NIL deals. Why is that so difficult to understand?
Agreed MgrowOld
Unwelcomed factual information, biased thinking becomes ideological denialism.
So we should stop with the 'Leaders and Best' mantra? Wouldn't upping the ante in NIL spending to get the best talent kinda support the holier-than-thou camp?
I find it deeply strange how Michigan (or major factions associated with the institution, at least) insists on acting as if they're the only genuinely good school that also has competitive revenue sports. As if there's no such thing as Stanford, Duke, not to mention multiple other B1G institutions... Absolutely baffling to me
Stanford football had collapsed.
Duke is a one-trick pony (two if you count lacrosse). Stanford, while good at olympic sports that most people don’t care about has historically been somewhere between awful to mediocre in football and never any good at basketball. There aren’t many schools who match UM’s combination of athletics and academics (maybe Texas is a possible exception?) and to pretend otherwise is beyond stupid
So you’re simultaneously saying that we should fire Warde if we’re not going to play ball and that it’s something way above Warde’s head that is preventing us from playing ball…
In regards to Transformational vs. Transactional. For a program that has consistently developed a statistically significant number of their players and put them in the NFL . . . Transformational actually makes a ton of sense when taking into account the recent and total history of the Michigan football program. Michigan has done a great job of transforming 18 year old high school kids into NFL draft talent. Significantly better than most programs. You can't really argue that.
But I am sure we can argue all day how one person conceptualizes the word transformational as opposed to transactional and/or why that is good/bad for NIL. At the end of the day, it is just a short simple quote.
There are going to be a ton of wealthy NIL failures, and a ton of really wealthy players who develop their craft. Football is almost primarily a game for Juniors and Seniors anyways, which, again, is a transformational process by definition. I wouldn't obsess about that quote too much.
I'm posting to propose a friendly wager to any chicken littles out there..if Michigan fails to sign a top 15 class in January I will pay one of you fuckers $20. If interested post your burner Venmo here and it's on. I got 5(x4) on it. If you lose I'll request the money through Venmo dm. Throw it down here or stfu.
Thinking made us win one championship in the last 16 years? Lol
None of them took the bet. Chickens.
While I agree Michigan isn't on the same level as other schools in terms of NIL, I'd be curious how all of these massive NIL deals pan out. Didn't Quin Ewers sign a million-dollar NIL deal with some company to go to Ohio State? While a million is pocket change for these large schools/donors, the ROI on that deal had to be a net negative. If Rashada is in fact on some nearly 10 million dollar deal and Miami doesn't even sniff the playoff rankings when he is there, that's going to be a bad investment. Yeah it might create some buzz early on but if he isn't starting by year 2, and even starting some games in his first year, why would they give him that much to go there. I do wonder how these deals work, as in does he have to stay at Miami for 4 years, or is it all upfront.
Have you considered that maybe he's getting his marching orders from the President or the regents?
Aren't they currently between Presidents?
What difference does that make? The insistutional culture was in place well before Schlissel and will remain in place long after he is forgotten. As for athletics driving $ to the school, this is Michigan, fergodsake. The endowment as of 12-31-21 was $17 billion. Frankly, the last thing the University needs is more money.
I remember when athletics were as equally important to the university as academics were.
Yeah that’s never been the case but go off.
I think ThadMatta was /s
Or at least I hope he was.
Well there are people arguing that very thing in this post so if he is /s, he needed to add the /s
Do cars fly in your fantasy world?
Presidents aren’t in control of the big decisions like NIL, really. The Board that hires them is who decides in the acceptable path a university President takes.
Agreed. Seth said something similar about firing Warde on the round table and I think there's almost no chance this is a decision getting made at the AD level. Michigan's overall athletic success was incredible the last academic year. Firing the AD for decisions made over his head seems silly.
We had the same issue when the B1G canceled football during Covid. Everyone went after Warren but the reality of the situation is that the school presidents make/made those decisions and Warren is the poor sap that has to go make the announcement and be the punching bag to fans/media.
People want someone to be angry with and it tends to be the PR guy that has no say in decisions of that particular magnitude.
Well, Toby, you're HR.