Shemy is on HARBAUGH, not Warde.

Listen, enough. The sheep and the torch and pitchfork mob need to relax.

I fucking hate when I have to say this, but I'm going to say it. Sigh. "As someone who works in college athletics, reports directly to an AD, and has worked at 8-9+ different schools...solely in college athletics administration, I know WTF I'm talking about on this one."

Gross.

Moving on. One of my pet peeves is the mob mentality people have about the job of an athletic director, when most fans couldn't give you 3 lines of an ADs job description.

I'll start with the lede, this Shemy debacle is not on Warde. That hiring is solely on Harbaugh, his sport administrator, and UM HR (I don't know if UM Athletics handles its own HR or if they just post positions and manage interviews while central campus HR processes everything...different schools handle it differently).

Warde is responsible for the hires who report directly to him...that's head coaches and executive level admin. Like every other AD in the country, he's not involved in any other search.

I mentioned this in another thread, I've hired over 25 people in my career, I've had an AD be part of the search a grand total of TWO times. Both times were when I chaired the search for a new head coach. If I hired someone on my staff and they had Shemy's Twitter history, that's on ME and HR...the AD wouldn't have a clue what's going on. It's simply not their job.

Also, there is no way in HELL Warde is telling Jim who he can and can't hire in his program. Maybe if he tried to hire Art Briles as OC or something, but not no damn Asst. Director of Recruiting. Warde doesn't have time for that. Nor should he, that is not his job.

I wouldn't be shocked if Warde didn't even know about this hire until right before it happened. If Harbaugh has a position open, it's on him and his staff to fill it. Period.

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Now how does this happen? It's actually not that complicated. I bet $1 Shemy was hired like most Football staffers, as an "at-will" employee. These folks typically have contracts and they can be fired at any time.

With that said, they don't go through the same hiring process as your typical faculty or staff member would. Shemy wasn't applying on UMich.edu and going through a standard interview process led by HR. Football staffers never go through that process (compared to say, an Asst. Director of Marketing).

As a result, stuff like this can happen. Shemy's background check was a criminal one, I guarantee it. Once he passed that, it was done. There was no one checking his social media likes because it wasn't your typical hiring process. I doubt anyone checked Minter's or Patridge's or Denard's either.  It just doesn't happen within a football program (at least not before now).

It also makes it easier to fire an "at-will" employee...if he was a faculty or staff member, there would be a shitstorm about whether or not his likes actually broke any UM policies. If he was a professor, there is NO WAY he would be gone this quickly (or at all). Hell, if it was me...I'd still be there. They would have to go through notices, Legal Affairs probably has to get involved, it would've been a process. It would have never happened this quickly.

The fact that he's gone so quick tells me he was an "at-will" employee (unless Harbaugh just shamed him into resigning on his own, which I suppose is plausible, but based on the salaries these guys make...you can't run the risk of someone being like, "no - you will have to fire me").

Anyway, Warde is far from a perfect AD. When he was hired, I called him a B+. That's exactly what he's been. Nothing special, but definitelty above average. But Michigan just tied an all-time school record for championship teams. This year Michigan had four student-athletes who won the "Heisman" in their respective sport. Revenues are high. Warde Manuel is locked in.

I'm guessing Michigan adds to its HR staff and has someone who looks into this stuff going forward. This could've been an assistant coach on ANY team at Michigan, they're all at-will employees and they all get hired outside of the standard University hiring process that takes forever (you can't wait a month to hire an assistant coach because you're going through interviews, reference checks, background checks, etc. - and when you want to fire these folks, you don't want litigation, you want them gone...with or without cause). I'm not saying the position wasn't posted, I'm saying the hiring process is different. 

So blame Jim Harbaugh for this one, he's the one at the head of the table for hires within his program. Just like every other head football coach. 

...lol, I'll be damned if my ADs have spent a single second worrying about hires in our FB program that aren't head coach or coordinator related. I could only imagine Warde telling Jim who to hire into his program. That goes for every sport.

 

/endTEDTalk