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.
-----------------------
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
🎶What’s the ugliest part of your body 🎶
The inside of my nose
What about....
My anus, I can't see it. I just assume it to be true because nobody else wants to look at it.
Thanks for the reminder about the way organizations work.
Yikes. I type that earnestly, no snark, and it reads snarky even to me.
Seriously, it doesn't take torches and pitchfork to misunderstand how high profile jobs are handled. Most of us, if it's not our job, we don't know the details of high-profile jobs and don't care until something bad or awkward happens.
In this case, it makes sense to me that it wasn't Warde's job. (You didn't mention one other aspect of an AD's job description: getting complaints.)
One other thing: of course, people can disagree. As I understand it, it's a free country. But I don't understand why you got downvoted. People may not agree and you may be wrong. But you state your opinion, explain why your background leads you to that opinion, and give reasons. Other than omniscience and signed agreements from all involved that you're correct, I'm not sure what else you could have done.
I didn’t downvote OP, but I would for the opening, “sheep, torches, pitchfork” bit. That was too condescending even for the good info he brought after.
You make a good point.
War & Peace < words than the OP’s soliloquy on why he loves Warde.
Edit: I carefully re-read the OP's post this morning and he's 100% correct, I was wrong in assuming the title of the post simply led to a Warde apologist thread but actually reading it made me change my mind entirely.
I was wrong, the OP was right.
We all love Warde, we're just not man enough to come out and say it.
Harvard Business Review recommends not conducting social media checks.
https://hbr.org/2021/09/stop-screening-job-candidates-social-media
Sorry, you can come up with "studies" to prove most anything.
If studies are meaningless, then HR as a field is meaningless and you might as well hire by throwing darts at the wall. HR is underpinned by science.
It's simple: see pictures of the candidate at a pride rally, with kids, a recent pregnancy announcement, at a Mosque ... they may not be hired in violation of EEOC and expose the organization to lawsuits. Screening also doesn't predict performance. If screening is done, it needs to be through a third party using narrow criteria.
Schemy does have a higher standard due to his name and maybe football staffers need higher scrutiny than the average Jill and Joe hired at UM. But normalizing extensive social media screening isn't going to produce a better performing organization. It can't be assigned to an intern or low level staffer as many have suggested. That is going to result in EEOC violations as many times as red flags are caught.
I don't think it's on anyone and it worked as it's supposed to. The likes were racist. But I also recognize the risk of screening likes means a hiring manager may not hire someone who went to a pride rally. I think the outrage should be towards all the hiring managers who didn't hire gay, black, Muslim, and pregnant women after seeing their social media. I'm sympathetic to the notion that a process can screen for red flags without allowing for those biases, but I don't believe it in aggregate.
I get your point and your striving for important nuance here.
I don't disagree about the challenge for bias in either direction. There's plenty of bias without checking social as well (see: Harbaugh hiring Shemy even if Shemy didn't have a social media).
Especially with public facing jobs with responsibility for creating relationships with individuals, having recent public receipts of your mindset which is going to make it near impossible to create relationships with a group of those individuals is hireable/fireable, and should be. No one made Shemy act publicly the way he has chosen to. That has impacted his hirability.
Oh yeah? But what has Harvard Business Review been posting on TikTok lately?
Why would we question anything out of Harvard?
Regardless of how logical it sounds, when you are the top guy, you are to be blamed because you didn't have proper controls in place. Meaning, did AD ensure there are policies and procedures in place. When mistakes are made, it goes to the top. In this case, it is a shared blame. I disagree with your assertion that it is on Harbaugh and not on Warde. They both screwed up.
when you are the top guy, you are to be blamed because you didn't have proper controls in place
Not only has this sort of inaction and incompetency become a trend with Warde, but if for some reason there wasn't extra checks done on the son of a legendary coach involved in a massive scandal, then that also falls on him
The idea that Ward has the ability to put controls on Harbaugh in this manner is, at best, far fetched.
Try to imagine how that conversation is going to go.....
Ward: "Hey Jim, just a quick FYI.....I'm going to be putting some limits in place on who you can hire and fire. No big deal, just make sure to run everyone you plan on hiring past me for a quick check and my approval. It isn't that I don't trust you, it's just that........
Jim: "Are we talking? Did you just tell me what to do? I'm calling Santa, then I'm going to my agent to line up some interviews for NFL gigs I've had my eye on. Please, finish that sentence......."
"It goes to the top." Except, in this case, Ono is on top of Warde --- which defeats the Ono savior narrative. So you should actually clarify: "it goes to the top, but not the tippity top. Just the top of the department, but not the football department, the AD department. and definitely not Ono."
Many on this board love to play sports administration expert when it comes to ragging on Manuel. Same for Kevin Warren. Same for juwan. Not so much for harbs and their hero Blind Eye Bo. Look into which way Bo leaned politically. Yet they're clutching their pearls over his son being a racist. It's an obtusefest
Racists and bigots come in a variety of political stripes and those aren’t the only sins a person can possess.
Kevin Warren is a buffoon. So was Jim Delaney. Delaney is openly mocked yet you ignore that which is typical.
Um... OP didn't even mention Delaney (Delany)
What a lazy take. Of course they come in all stripes, but if someone supported the party of Nixon and his racist "Drug War", and Reagan (see CIA and crack), we should be far from surprised that his son is a racist.
Oh, and you forgot to rebut the part about him looking the other way while his players were molested. What a guy, so deserving of the benefit of the doubt!
Weird how innuendo seems to so frequently evade you guys' radar on bigots and racists that don't come right out and say it publicly. "No, no, he just SUPPORTS bigots." LOL. Warren's a buffoon? Based on the Salvatore sports admin handbook? Foh.
You're the same guy that took until the very last minute to notice that Hoke was in over his head. And he came in the door with clown shoes on. Bottom line: the standard isn't the same. Per my original point that flew over your head. Wonder why that is.
Obtusefest would be a great name for a beer. I hoppy American adjunct lager would fit the name well.
As someone who works at UMHS and is in an union UM typically suspends a person for a period of time before they are terminated. Only time they are auto fired is if they caught doing something criminal.
Harbaugh is to blame for not doing his due diligence. Shemy is ultimately responsible for being a racist jackass. I hope he reforms himself.
Leopard can't change its stripes.
They can if they desire too. It’s happened before.
I ain’t reading all that.
Happy for you though, or sorry about that.
I’m going to go back to getting excited about the Back to Back Big Ten Champion, pre-season #2 ranked team that I cheer for. Go Blue!
I ain’t reading all that.
I’m going to go back to getting excited about the Back to Back Big Ten Champion, pre-season #2 ranked team that I cheer for. Go Blue!
That's how endemic abuse becomes endemic. "Hey, we're winning, who cares if Dr. Shithead is sexually assaulting students?"
Abuse becomes endemic because someone didn’t want to read a blog post?
No wonder abuse was so bad im the pre-internet era!
Buddy, I'm an average Joe on a message board. Sounds like you need to go take a walk, go touch some grass, get some fresh air. Everything is gonna be alright. Deep breaths.
Eh. I think both Harbaugh and Warde come from a generation — as I do — where reviewing social media histories and twitter feeds was not a thing. Doesn't mean they haven't heard of it — it just means it isn't a fundamental part of their processing.
This probably seemed like a simple no-brainer, and then, when things start popping up, they think, "oh fuck." And, by the way, once the facts were made public, they immediately did the right thing and corrected the error.
I would, for what it's worth, like to agree with the OP about the job Warde is doing. We crushed him for retaining Harbaugh ... but that turns out to have worked out ok. Yeah, Juwan has run into some problems, but noone in his right mind is suggesting he should be shown the door yet. We're winning championships, competing in sports we traditionally haven't (lacrosse???), and more popular than ever.
People disappointed in how a season has gone take out their frustration on the AD, obviously. But I don't see any real dysfunction in our athletic department. Go Blue. :-)
Eh. I think both Harbaugh and Warde come from a generation — as I do — where reviewing social media histories and twitter feeds was not a thing. Doesn't mean they haven't heard of it — it just means it isn't a fundamental part of their processing.
I'm in my mid 30's and it would never cross my mind to check someone's social media history. To me a background check means criminal history, maybe look at their transcript, maybe do a drug screening. Wouldn't think to do anything beyond that...
If you work in college athletics, when do you actually work because you spend a lot of time on this blog posting.
that explains 8 or 9 employers......
Attack the messenger rather than addressing the message? C'mon.
So gainfully employed people have time to check a sports blog (probably at least daily), comment on things posted, but say they don't have three minutes to read something (but still comment on it) or wonder how someone has time to post something at night when that person has a job? You can say he's full of shit and explain why for sure, but this line of reasoning is weak.
Right after Shemy was hired and as the Twitter shitstorm was just beginning, I noticed an ex-UM olineman from the Bo era (who shall remain nameless) congratulated Shemy on Twitter. I checked out his Twitter likes and while it wasn’t on the Shemy level, there was some pretty not-great things there. I checked back today and those dicey Likes and Retweets were gone. I guarantee he’s not the only one and there is a massive amount of Twitter scrubbing going on amongst that generation who wants to stay close to the program.
What a revelation.
TLDR down here in Bolivia.
So down there, does the water in a toilet really swirl the wrong way???
Logged in to downvote this waste of an original post.
“Blame Harbaugh” you keep saying?
Do we really want Harbaugh to do background checks instead of creating new schemes or recruiting the next great player. JFC! Absolutely not
Is your ”Defend the AD” rambling really worth two pages. Only an idiot is blaming the AD.
The only thing to complain about with this hire is all the stupid arm chair coaches, fans, and self proclaimed ADs that want to point fingers. But those idiots always exist and they are easy to ignore.
This was a hire, and they may have actually checked his twitter posts but not his likes. What company or organization checks twitter likes. NONE! This can’t even be called a mistake made by a staffer. Certainly not a mistake by leadership. At the end of the day the system worked. He was hired and then one week later he was fired.
What company or organization checks twitter likes. NONE! This can’t even be called a mistake made by a staffer. Certainly not a mistake by leadership.
For someone hired in a recruiting capacity in the age of social media, yes, you certain can call this a mistake. If we aren't checking the social media site in the hiring process that someone is going to be interacting with recruits and fans on the most, then our process is seriously flawed
I was reading that comment thinking the same thing. Yeah if you are hiring a guy for a data entry job low level at a large corporation, you probably aren't checking their social media. If you hire a guy to help direct recruiting 14-18 year old kids in todays world, you probably should consider that half of their job will be using social media to promote the program.
Not doing so is like saying if you are hiring a bus driver, no need to do an extensive search on their driving record because when you hire a waitress you don't do a check on their driving record. When you hire someone, you make sure they are clean and capable to handle the duties they will be assigned. Using Twitter to try and convince high school kids (many of which are not white) while having a trail of racist propaganda (liked or tweeted or re-tweeted, whatever I don't Twitter) is not going to work out well.
What company or organization checks twitter likes. NONE!
Dude....how old are you? For anything but the most low level, menial jobs, the answer here is "ALL!"
I wouldn't even think of making a hire without knowing any and everything I can about the person I'm hiring and that is certainly not limited to a criminal background check. We gather and interview a group of candidates for any role we hire, from admin/data entry level to experienced engineers/execs and after an initial round of interviews the list of "maybes" is given to HR/the recruiter and vetted for stuff just like this. At any company I have worked at over at least the last 5-7 years, this would have obviated the hire of Schemy immediately.
I am suggesting that the twitter posts are vetted but the thousands of “likes” as in this case are not reviewed. It’s my understanding that Shemy didn’t write a bad post but “liked” many. Apparently he had thousands of likes.
As someone who doesn't squeal "TL:DR" every time a post runs longer than a bumper sticker, I found the OP's opinion to be compelling. I give more weight to legal advice when it comes from a lawyer, or medical advice when it comes from a doctor. In the same vein, I'd give more credence to the opinion on the procedures of a university's athletic department when it comes from someone who has actually worked in several of them.
True, he wouldn't know for certain unless he was a member of the UM Athletic Dept. and had first-hand knowledge of the Schemy shitstorm. But then, that's also true of everyone else who've plastered their opinions all over this blog. At least he's got a better basis for understanding the situation than the rest of us.
That this post is getting uovoted tells us that a lot of us are fucking stupid.
Every non-contractual employee (like 90% of non-teaching staff) is at will at U of M.