Jim Hackett is no "interim" AD...

First off, WOOOHOOO, and job well done.  But on the other hand...how hard was it to identify the only and number one viable candidate for the job, who may or may not have already been thinking about coming here when his NFL contract wasn't extended last summer.

This is a moment of Euphoria and all praise Jim Hackett.  But this is just one (albeit the most important one) aspect of the job.  If you could go back in time a couple months and think about the laundry list of everything wrong with Dave Brandon and what an "Ideal" AD would be like, how many of those items has Hacket shown, SO FAR?

That said, getting the money, the boosters, and handling it in a classy way are all commendable, and I'd be pretty happy if he were hired permanently. BUT, let us let things cool down a bit instead of making an emotional decision.

We've seen interim coaches lose the interim tag while basking in the glory of a bowl win, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't.  If Hackett realy is the guy, and he meets all the criteria (which I think he may just be) great!  But if he's not suitable for some as yet unseen reason, lets not give him the job when we're not thinking critically. 

So to summarize: HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! HARBAUGH! 

There's still a TON of work ahead of him, so his legacy as yet to be seen. But he is off to a fantastic start.

He did say he would be reviewing things "in a year" so he obviously intends to stick around.

I just checked, and the only Jim Hackett is a baseball player from 1902. For James Hackett, it's a ship builder from the 1700s.

The man was CEO of a major corporation for a long time, and now (more importantly) is the Michigan AD who successfully pulled off the coaching coup of the new century.

I don't have a Wikipedia log-in, but I'm sure someone on mgoblog does. Someone create this man a page -- he deserves to be recognized on Wikipedia.

I understand everyone's enthusiasm and it is the nature of blogs/boards to hype things. On the internet things are described using a reverse bell shape distribution. In nature and most of the real world, the extremes are rare, and big fat bulge is in the moderate/median/average middle. In the cyber world, everything seems to be the greatest ever or the worst ever.

Jim Hackett has clearly done a good job - he identified the leading candidate best suited for the job and was able to land that person without a lot of fuss, publicity and rancor. So he does deserve our appreciation. But a lot of why he comes off so well is because his predecessor had created an difficult relationship with the fans and students.

...identify the most logical candidate (which is not a trivial matter), Hackett also conducted the proceedings from start to finish with a lot of class.