Negotiations have begun with Juwan Howard

I would guess that it's the latter. Given the enthusiastic tweet by Howard's wife, seems like something that has them confident it'll get done, probably have an agreed to salary, but still working out things like the buyout and other terms.   

Michigan doesn’t publicly offer jobs to people if they aren’t certain they’ll accept. 

Yeah, my guess is the latter because neither party wants this to go south.  Warde because he wants a coach and Howard because it would look pretty bad if he messed up an opportunity to coach at a major college program where he has deep connections.

This feels like one of those tweets where a guy puts in scare words to get more attention.  The only relevant information is the first sentence.

Almost certainly the latter.  The days of the handshake agreements with coaching hires is long over.  There are many terms to reach agreement on - salary being the biggest - but many other important ones as well.  Michigan is likely to have all kinds of incentive clauses for certain achievements like making the NCAA tournament, graduation rates, etc., as an example.  Then there's the requirments, pay, etc. for assistant coaches.  The list goes on.  It doesn't get done in a few hours.

ehr.....its "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'"

signed,

-That Guy

Unsure, and terrified at some of the names being floated.  I think people just want to know for sure that it isn’t someone who brings no excitement with him.

Harbaugh was a foregone conclusion from pretty much day 1

I don't think we saw it that way at the time.  There were lots of "He'll never leave the pros" articles and sound bites in circulation.  And of course Oakland was still in play.

It wasn't until about three weeks in (around Christmas) that it clearly seemed like it was happening.

Will Jon Horford join the staff?

Because he didn't publicly get on the case of B1G with the spot that we don't speak of

I was giving this some thought and it deserves a better post by someone more intelligent than me. But it seems like Warde has been unremarkable during his tenure so far.  There has been some legitimate concern that he didn't do enough to keep Beilein earlier this month when he reportedly knew about the Cavs offer. There wasn't a dance with one of the big names - not that any of us really expected one - but it seems disappointing to not even get any interest from a single upper-tier coach. At the end, it probably doesn't matter.

Posters have also grumbled about the football scheduling (eg not advocating for the series with ND to restart at home or not scheduling a tune-up before heading to S Bend to play under the lights).

Otherwise, he hasn't done anything that we can point to as a smashing success, for what all that's worth. But sometimes that gig is about making the trains run on time and Warde has generally kept things afloat. I suppose if he's able to close this negotiation with Juwan, we could call it a positive accomplishment. Many others (hey, Maizen) will not.

The Rhonda Faehn situation was a bit of a fiasco. But outside of that, he's been largely untested as an AD until now (in terms of major hires/decisions).

The other guy.  You know, that dude who's been uber successful everywhere he coaches but has always secretly dreamed of being the head coach for Michigan basketball.  The guy who will assure us of a never-ending series of B1G championships and tournament victories all the while running a program that makes Beilein look like Sean Miller it's so squeeky clean.  A basic cross between the Golden State Warriors and the New England Patriots.

That guy.