Shemy Schembechler joining Michigan Football Staff
Why would it have to "compete" with his broadcasting deal? Isn't Urban Liar still on the staff at OSU?
That would be pretty cool. I think it migh be more likely to get TB12 on campus for a few big recruiting weekends rather than on staff.
What a great suggestion to add to the BBQ at the Big House. A visit, and perhaps TB could talk about what it takes to be successful in the NFL, and how great of a place Michigan is.
I thought he was TB10 around these parts ...
This sucks!
Shemy should know his way around. He can start the recruit tours with "Let's take a walk around my building."
Here's the ESPN link I posted in my "Too Late" edition OP (which I've now deleted)
Until reading this a short time ago, I didn't know the wealth of experiences that Shemy has had at the NFL level. Hoping it translates well to Michigan Football.
Adding a long time NFL scout to the staff who worked for a number of teams. Seems like a lot of value added.
Thanks for the background. Solidifying the scouting/recruiting team with someone who has both NFL experience and deep understanding of the Michigan culture seems like a solid organizational move. If his last name were anything else, this would be celebrated as a home run personnel move.
According to the M-Live article, Shemy will be the Assistant Director of Recruiting. Also within the piece is Shemy's previous experience as an NFL scout.
Good luck to Shemy and welcome home.
Congrats Shemy
in all honesty though, shouldn't we be distancing ourselves from the schembechler name?
To paraphrase a certain Good Book, The alleged sins of the father shall not be revisited upon the son.
Certainly, but I think you have to weigh that against whether or not he'd get this job if he had a different last name. It's a really thorny question and we have to hope that he was hired on his own merits. I'm not sure the AD has earned that benefit of the doubt, though.
He'd probably get the job.
He certainly has more qualification than Denard (although will click with players 100X less). Shemy has been some type of college/ NFL scout since the early 90s (I guess you can argue that he hasn't been promoted since the early 90s too).
yes, and his biggest qualification for those other jobs was his last name.
That sounds biblical.....
"What do you mean biblical?"
That's some wise advice. I don't really know that book too well, but if you say it's good I'll have to check it out. 😊
Shemy is not Bo.
Shemy did, however, appear on TV to say the accusers were lying and his dad was innocent. So there's that.
Fuck this hire. It's gross.
I'm certainly not going to defend that.
But, I will try to imagine him trying to mentally process the allegations against his father, which likely conflicted with everything he believed about his Dad.
I think it is plausible that in his mind he believed very strongly it couldn't possibly be true and felt intense pressure to defend his father.
Should he be blacklisted for it? It's fair to debate. But, I can't bring myself to hold Shemy accountable for anything his Dad may or may not have done.
Not to be cute or the "just asking questions" guy--legit question: Did Schemy slam all accusers or just his step brother?
I think there are a lot of layers there that go beyond the Anderson thing.
It's awkward at best to bring back the son of the guy at the head of a major sexual assault case against the university. It's unconscionable when the guy they are hiring called one of the victims a liar.
“Unconscionable”. Hmmmmm, yeah, no. The son had nothing to do with the alleged activity and his response to the accusation against his dead father are, while regrettable, understandable from his position.
That said, I wouldn’t have hired him precisely because of the awkwardness it would bring up. But Harbaugh is going to Harbaugh.
You can either be unfairly tied to the actions of your father or you can put yourself in front of a camera and call a victim a liar. Like it or not, hiring him is an endorsement of his words and actions by the university/athletic department. Really poor judgment in this decision.
He defended his father which most normal sons would do. I think rational people understand why he said what he said.
Of course it's natural for a son to defend their dad. He can be understandably defensive about Bo and the University can say they take what happened seriously, but both can't exist together when the U hires him.
One of the people he called a liar was his adopted brother, so it's a bit more complicated than a "normal son" defending his father against the world.
I understand why he said what he said; doesn't mean it is a good idea to have him hired on at UM in a football capacity. He's in his 50s and has been working only for NFL teams for decades now - he's not some college football lifer. I just don't get why you're bringing in a guy with little demonstrated ability to help run a college recruiting program beyond the fact he shares a name with a building. And so when that's your biggest calling card it is quite normal for people to question that decision especially given the context around Bo's time at UM per Anderson. You obviously disagree but I also suspect you wouldn't be defending this hire nearly as much if his name wasn't Schembechler
It's a bit of the reactionary Harbaugh that we're going to get from time to time.
Or, we can acknowledge that people are complex, and life is complex. Two things can be true at once. Things can change. And especially people are not static.
It's not wrong to acknowledge that it's possible for a man from whom some indefensibly horrible things came to have also produced beneficial things—let alone one of those being a son, who has the capacity to produce much that is valuable, to be a decent human being, and even to grow in the level of decency.
Why would we engage in multi-generational canceling?
Why would we engage in multi-generational canceling?
You start by saying things are complex and then reduce the (legitimate) question of not hiring him down to "cancelling."
Not hiring him is not cancelling him. He's had other jobs, he's not ostracized from society living in rural Alaska because he's not allowed to live life with the rest of us. Him not getting this job is not the difference between him having any job or no job at all.
And as for the complex part, as I stated elsewhere, does the math make sense to hire him (he is not Bo but he is also not completely clean of the Anderson situation) given his credentials weighted against his negatives? I'd argue no because he's not the greatest scout on the face of the earth. Michigan could hire another guy with just as good of a career without the downside.
it seems to me that once JH went to young dynamic guys in recruiting that M's recruiting took off like a rocket. why go backwards?
As others have said, he is not Bo.
However, I doubt he is the only candidate on the planet with his qualifications that Michigan could hire. He's not the Nick Saban of football scouting. I'm sure there are 50 other guys who are equally qualified that don't bring the issues that he does.
And as for those who say not hiring him would be "cancelling him" that's not accurate. For one, he has all those qualifications people are pointing to so he can get another job so he's not "cancelled." He's had jobs before this after the Anderson story so he hasn't been sitting in a dark hole eating bugs because he can't get a paying job. Also, while he's not Bo, he's not 8 degrees of separation from the overall (complex) issue. He waded into the whole conversation and has made public statements that were certainly not... great.
So really it comes down to, is it worth hiring him for his qualifications given the negative things that come along with him? My answer would be no. As I said, Michigan could probably hire 50 other guys with comparable career experiences without bringing up the whole Anderson thing all over again.
Easily the most uncomfortably thing about Michigan football right now is that it's pretty clear Jim doesn't care about or doesn't believe the accusations against Bo. This hire is going to remind the national CFB audience of that
Most of the national CFG audience doesn't remember or care about the Anderson case. So that's a bit of a stretch. It's not like Big 12 media is going to be talking about this. Our bubble is not the national media.
Pretty sure I remember a podcast where someone, Balas? Interviewed Schemy about some independent recruiting evaluation business he was starting. This was 7-8 years ago and clearly he went into NFL scouting too. Either way, the guy has been around scouting and talent/recruiting evaluation for many years and thus can hopefully help.
edit: as I’m catching up on Schemy’s comments around Anderson etc. I do have huge concerns about the hire and it’s not where I would have advised Harbaugh start. But I wasn’t consulted and Schemy is hired. I’m sure there are 50 other guys who can do what he does and don’t come with the baggage. But Schemy is who we have now so I hope it goes well.
EDIT AGAIN: ok I read screenshots of his tweets/likes. Schemy should never have been hired and netizens were right to raise the issues. Geez what a terrible move.
This feels gross. Just a mess of a hire all around
I'll refrain from discussing the Schembechler of it all but I honestly don't know how much he'd upgrade the recruiting services here at UM. His LinkedIn profile shows a lot of recruiting-related services but it's also hard to tell how much he actually did and what his success/failures were. Like, he was apparently a scout for the Washington Commanders for over a decade and his big take-away was "I made some friends and worked under some name-checked coaches". The Oakland Raiders gig was "I worked as a college scout and then an area scout", which again doesn't say a lot. I'm sure there are more details there but the Raiders the past couple of years haven't had great drafts so again hard to judge him on merit.
The bigger takeaway is that he hasn't actually recruited to colleges for a long time; he's an NFL-focused guy and evaluating college talent is much different than trying to evaluate and recruit HS kids. Maybe he's good at it, maybe not. But I will say that nobody would be particularly excited, nor do I think he'd be getting this job, if his last name wasn't Schembechler. And before you say "what about Jaybaugh?" Jay has at least shown for years now he can do the job. Glenn is in his 50s and hasn't done a college recruiting job in decades, if at all. So it'll be interesting to see how he handles the responsibility.
Maybe he'll be scouting in the portal vs scouting HS kids?
Yeah, that would probably be the best use of his background, though I also think UM won't ever be dipping too deep into that pool and, again, he's not really done anything like that before. I don't know how NFL scouting of college kids go but my assumption is that it's a more formal process where guys declare for the draft, agents talk to staffs, etc. The portal is way more wild-west than that.
The three constants in life are death, taxes and nepotism. The last is especially so with college football coaching staffs, which is almost as incestuous a community as your average classical civilization pantheon.
I don't like that Shemy was mostly hired because of his last name, but he isn't the first nepotism hire and won't be the last, and in a few years' time no one will care* unless he is profoundly, Brian Ferentzly bad at his job. One of my coworkers is the boss's son and it's fine because he does his job just like the rest of us.
(* This is admittedly leaving aside the Bo Thing, which I have a problem with, but to not go further down that wormhole I will simply say that if we're waiting for the university to officially or unofficially address that issue to a broad consensus satisfaction, then... have a Snickers bar.)
Yeah, I personally think UM should move farther away from the Schembechler associations but that's unlikely, and as you noted if he's good at his job nobody will ultimately care. The University has made it clear, like most organizations, that they'll take something as seriously as they need to until a critical mass of people stop caring loudly about it, and with the football team doing so well the outrage over the Anderson scandal and how it was handled has petered out quite a bit.
I'm sure he'll be fine doing it, but he is still pretty unknown in this role and so I'm interested to see what he does and how it structurally improves the recruiting process.
Kind of what I'm thinking. There's no need for anyone over 40 in the recruiting department. This is throwing a lifeline to a personal friend of Harbaugh's. I'm willing to bet that we never once hear a recruit mention they committed because of a connection with Schemy, the way we do for Denard, Osbourne, or any other staff member.
I think this is 100% what’s going on — he’s a charity hire because he’s the son of Harbaugh’s coach who’s down on his luck and cashing in his main asset, his name.
I met him a few years when he came to our alumni group to stump for a radio show that he was trying to start (based on his name), following which he spammed our Facebook group with posts promoting his show. My impression of him was a self-promoter a little too eager to remind you who his dad was (if that’s not obvious from the fact that he even uses “shemy” as a first name).
Why is a guy in his 50s with decades of nfl scouting experience taking what is essentially an entry level job where a 20-something year old will be his boss? It’s not because he’s exceptionally qualified. The next step up for a good scout is a higher position in an NFL GM’s office.
Also why is he the only one promoting the hire, not the university as generally occurs with new football hires? My guess is this hire has virtually no effect on the football program. The $50k or whatever that it costs to pay his salary is de minimis for the AD so I don’t think it limits the ability to hire others. And I doubt his job will involve anything of much importance.
Not to be pedantic (because I'm really doing it to make people feel old) but Denard isn't a 20-something. He's 32.
The LinkedIn reference makes this entire thread.
I think that Harbaugh and Schemy are roughly the same age (within a year or two). They've probably known each other since they were kids.
So a Schembechler may finally win a national title.
It's a crying schem this hasn't happened yet.