Nyckoles Harbor's Athletic Director is ... Brian Ellerbe
Not sure this has been pointed out on the board, but five-star freak Nyckoles Harbor's athletic director at Archbishop Carroll High School in D.C. is none other than Brian Ellerbe. YTBE.
And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly is interesting.
Ellerbe has been the A.D. at A.C. for the past three years, and if you look at his LinkedIn page, his career path has to be unlike any former Power Five basketball or football coach ever.
Since leaving Michigan in 2001, he's had 10 different jobs, including several stops in the corporate world as a benefits director, procurement director and more. He's owned his own consulting firm. He's been an assistant basketball coach at three schools (DePaul, George Washington and Morgan State). And now he's a high school athletic director. Not the usual career path for someone who was once the head basketball coach at the University of Michigan.
In any case, let's hope there are no hard feelings and that he's taking lots of time every day to tell Nyckoles Harbor what a fantastic university this is.
If he helps in getting Harbor here, that would be the first good thing he’s done for UM. The guy just had no business getting the head coach job.
Dutcher should've been made interim coach. Promoting Ellerbe over Dutcher was just one of Tom Goss' awful decisions as AD, but dude might have had a chance if Goss was half way competent. For anyone who wants to complain about Warde, Tom Goss is in athletic administrator purgatory waving "hi" to all of us.
- Fired Steve Fisher and promoted Brian Ellerbe over Dutcher, despite being new to the program.
- Cratered the hoops program.
- Ran up record deficits in the athletic department.
- Fired a number of faithful support staff to give former athletes jobs.
- He was also the brains behind this...
Ah, the Halo. How could I have forgotten thee?
It was much better forgotten. Now I have to wait another 20 years to forget it again...
I remember 1997 —- there’s just no way Dutcher was getting the head coach position. No chance. Way too much risk in promoting a guy where dirt may come out (Dutcher had been there prior to 1997 of course).
it was, at its core, a classic case of risk management. Ellerbe was the safer pick from an optics POV and he was always going to be promoted.
There is a TON to blame Goss for but I don’t think Ellerbe is on him. Most ADs would have done the same.
If it was anyones fault - blame Eastern Kentucky. They hired Scott Perry so U-M needed a new assistant. That’s the only reason a “new to town” guy like Ellerbe (who did also have head coaching experience prior) was even around.
but he gave the guy the permanent gig. zero excuse for that.
Ellerbe didn't get the "interim tag" removed until after the season --- a season where U-M had a win over a top-ranked Duke team, won the (first ever) B1G basketball tournament, and were a #3 seed in the tourney. They won an NCAA game after 3 straight seasons without a tourney victory.
They lost to #6 seed UCLA of course in the 2nd round but that wasn't a huge huge upset.
From the lens of March 21, 1998 (when the interim tag was removed): U-M was coming off a very good season. There was risk in making Ellerbe permanent (the primary risk being disappointing Dutcher, who did resign a few weeks later). But there was risk in not making him permanent either: even if an observer thought Ellerbe had little to do with it, U-M was coming off a good season.
Perhaps the most costly good season UM has ever had
Well, Scott Perry is Drew Sharp’s first cousin, so the world would have exploded had he been hired as our head coach.
Not at all. Scott Perry comes from Michigan royalty.
His father Lowell (M class of '53) was a second team All-American two way player, Air Force officer, NFL player, first African American to broadcast an NFL game to a national audience, lawyer, first African American to hold a plant manager position at a U.S auto company, member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, head of the Michigan Department of Labor.
His grandfather Lawrence was M Class of 1920 and was a dentist in Ypsilanti.
I realize Scott Perry had just left for Eastern Kentucky and had been on Steve Fisher's staff. So what? Scott should have been brought home in 1997.
Scott Perry wasn't a realistic option either. If Fisher had been fired in the summer, sure. The problem was Fisher being hired literally when practice was commencing for the upcoming season.
I get it --- it's EKU, some low-major OVC program, and U-M was a big-time program with a chance for Perry to come home. The timing was simply impossible though - it was too late to hire away another active head coach.
Goss was a terrible AD, but I don't know if it's fair to blame him for what happened to the basketball program. The Ed Martin scandal (most of which didn't occur under his watch) really put Goss in a tight spot. When the outside firm the University had hired to investigate released its report, Fisher was as good as gone. There isn't an AD in the country that wouldn't have fired him. As for Fisher's successor, I can see why Goss opted not to promote Brian Dutcher, given Dutcher's close connection to Fisher and the fact that he was on Fisher's staff when most of the problems occurred. Since the report was released in October and the season was just a couple of weeks away, Goss didn't have a ton of options. Ellerbe was the only assistant on the staff who was minimally connected to the scandal and had head coaching experience. After Ellerbe's first season was a success, removing the interim tag seemed like a sensible decision.
It sucked, but it is what it is.
The law firm found three minor NCAA violations. That's not a lot, especially when Fisher had not been in trouble before. When Ed Martin landed in federal court a few years later, that's when people found out how much money he allegedly gave the players. That was 2002.
Goss had his reasons to go in a new direction, but it wasn't because of damning "death penalty-like" violations.
I look at this like the Gary Moeller situation that was discussed last week. What happened in both of those situations doesn't seem like much if we're looking at it through the 2022 lens but back then any infractions, major or minor, were viewed very differently.
Apparently -- it's a weasel word, but a qualifier really does need to be put in here -- Fisher left tickets for Ed Martin, and initialed the ticket form with "PW" for his assistant Perry Watson. I'd guess that's not an NCAA violation, but it's pretty gross to implicate someone else in the Ed Martin stuff. And there's a larger point that Fisher knew that Martin shouldn't be connected to the program, but the relationship continued anyway.
Apparently one of the advantages of the SEC is that the ice on the roads isn't as common in the winter.
There are not too many P5 programs that would have done more than shrugged at 3 minor violations for one of their major programs. The pearl clutching over the sensationalized coverage is what killed us. Need to stop punching ourselves in the dong, too many others are ready to do it for us.
Goss did have choices. Robbie Reid's father (a D1 coach) offered to be interim coach.
But, better, John Orr offered to coach Michigan for one year for free and help with the search for a new coach.
How do I know? Orr's close friends told me. Then Orr told me.
Goss blew Orr off.
You're right, Roger Reid did have conversations with Goss and U-M.
Roger didn't exactly help himself out, however, by making public comments like this after Fisher's firing: "What are we teaching, what kind of signal are we sending young men by firing coaches like this? Is it a pro team? Does truth, integrity and honesty stand for anything anymore? I know that several players, including All-American Tractor Traylor, returned for their senior seasons to play for the guy."
He was being openly critical of his potential boss/employer. Goss & U-M passing on Reid makes sense there. FWIW, BYU also went 1-25 (!!!) the year before and Reid was fired midway through that season.
The Orr information is interesting, thx for sharing.
https://www.deseret.com/1997/10/24/19341579/reports-indicate-reid-will-coach-michigan
Thanks for the reminder of the Halo. Damn that thing was awful. The one thing I could never figure among many awful features of the Halo was why the letters were too big/hung over the side of the Halo. Made no sense to me. It looked like a drawing of the Big House by a kindergartener.
Goss was a lousy AD, but he wasn't responsible for the Halo—that was entirely on Bollinger.
This is from "Endzone" by John Bacon:
Wow, man I will happily stand corrected on this one. Apologies Mr. Goss on that one.
Now that I know Bollinger is the one that pushed for this, I'm starting to believe he really had a keg in his house after the PSU game. You have to be drunk to love the halo.
The key factor was that the Philly architecture firm Bollinger hired to do the Halo was the same firm that had previously designed his house in New Hampshire. He was comfortable with them and bought into the hype about their excellence, not understanding that making changes to the stadium wasn't remotely the same thing as designing a home out in the north woods.
A lot of highfalutin' Ivy League academics believe they're experts on everything, and a lot of architects have that conceit as well.
Goss wasn't forced out over the halo. He was forced out because he was just plain bad at running the AD. He botched the negotiations with Nike so badly that Michigan had to pay Nike to outfit its teams instead of vice-versa. That, among other missteps, led to a $3 million budget deficit. And that was despite the fact that he let the non-revenue sports languish and stagnate under his leadership, to the point that parents of student-athletes in the non-revenue sports complained about him. The straw that broke the camel's back was the Jamal Crawford investigation by the NCAA, which Bollinger learned of by seeing the news on TV like everyone else instead of hearing about it from Goss.
Man, it physically hurts to see that picture. So cringe.
It's really unbelievable that Bollinger thought it was good. It's straight tacky trash.
Ellerbe was HC at Loyola MD before he was hired by UM. Took a 9 win team and made them a 13 win team...not very impressive hire.
wow. good find. last time i thought of him and looked him up he was as you said
- assistant
- at Morgan State
- to Todd. Bozeman. IIRC
how the mighty have fallen.
a career path resembling Ryan The Temp? yeah.
("Ellerbe extinguished the FI-RE!")
Not sure I'd say that Ellerbe was ever "mighty"...
In anticipation of how this thread will go, let's hope Ellerbe isn't a lurker here, or we can kiss our chances with Harbor goodbye.
Perhaps Brian harbors no ill will toward the University.
Ellerbe always seemed like a decent guy in an incredibly tough position. Not many would have succeeded at Michigan at that point in time.
Ellerbe was liked well by the players, so that counts for something, I guess. He seemed to have a really flat personality. I couldn't imagine him being popular with recruits, boosters, etc.
While this is an interesting coincidence, I think it is a bad idea to have a thread that presumably will trash an influencer in a 5 stars decision.
FWIW--I don't know what all a HS athletic director does, but it sounds like a lot more fun than 99% of what everyone else in the world is doing.
I agree. FWIW - the track coach at the HS also has M ties - probably at least indirectly due to Ellerbe - and she seems to be the bigger influencer in NH’s future plans. (From what Sam Webb has said on his podcasts I don’t believe she is pushing him hard to M — just making sure M is repped properly particularly when schools come in and bash M track and his chances to become an Olympian if he doesn’t go to a school that is also a “Track school”)
Yeah, as someone who has had a lot of different jobs before finding the right one, I can't be too critical of his unique career path. Hopefully he has found the right position for him and has the best interests of his athletes in mind. And clearly it is in the best interest of NH to go to Michigan. :)
To be fair to him, he kept Lavell Blanchard from going to Georgetown or Syracuse and landed Jamal Crawford in his first real recruiting class. If the NCAA treated us like Kansas or UNC, Crawford would've been eligible all season and they may land on the right side of the bubble in 2000. And maybe he decides to come back for an even better sophomore season.
If the athletic department invested in the hoops program like it started doing under Beilein, he may have been able to carve out a nice 10-15 year career that could've survived the sanctions in the early 2000s. But when your AD runs the department into a deficit, that's hard to accomplish.
People got to eat. I am not judging.
I guess it's better being the AD at AC rather than being AC-DC.
NTTAWWT...
And AC/DC is one of the all-time great rock&roll bands to ever play a song!
Sorry, I'd rather be Angus Young or Brian Johnson right about now.
This was discussed some last summer, as well. But that's a LONG time ago when speaking of high school players, so I'll allow it. You're welcome...
As a DC resident, I can confirm that Michigan has an outstanding reputation in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC), which includes schools like Dematha (Hunter Dickinson) , Gonzaga (T Will), St John's and many others. Not making a "Harbor to Michigan is done" claim here, but I know from a number of prominent WCAC alums that Harbor has a very favorable view of the Michigan package for him (academics, football, track, social setting). Harbor is a very smart kid, with great academic focus and objectives....I wouldn't be too concerned about his HS AD poisoning the well.
and if that was the case, surely that would have been impactful by now - rather than momentum gaining. Lets hope..
Davis and Harbor would be a huge boost to the recruiting for this and next year
I believe Sam has said that he talked with Ellerbe and that there is no ill will on his part, which is pretty remarkable. If I were fired, even if it were completely justified, I couldn't help but have at least a little resentment
If you were fired like 6 more times after that would you still remember that first or second one though?