Shemy Schembechler joining Michigan Football Staff
It's just so bad. There's a ton of other available options -- with a Michigan past or not -- without his last name. It's clear everyone with the school has collectively taken the "not going to worry about it -- bo is dead -- let it be" with the statute, building, and everything -- but you don't have to also hire his son and make even more of completely ignoring it all.
If they wanted to go the forget about it route -- why on earth would you choose to make it more of a story with this hire? It doesn't matter that he is not Bo -- he has the name, and that's all it takes to be a story - especially when everyone remembers his video response to his step-brother.
Because Harbaugh wanted to help out a friend and doesn't care what you or I think.
I'm not sure harbaugh would have sole hiring discretion when this big an issue is at play with the hire -- unless he just wanted to flex on warde and the school that he could do whatever he wanted regardless of the bigger picture.
Winning two B1G championships gives you a lot of leeway
Ugh, this sucks. His Twitter is terrible out of touch shit too. Fucking let the Bo shit go Jim.
Need more distance from Bo. Shemmy is not at fault here but once again the optics aren't great from Warde and Jim.
This hire reeks of the "good old boys club." Shemy Schembechler should not be anywhere near the football program. His views are not appropriate for representing the University in any capacity.
This has been in the works for a couple months and thought he was already on staff. Surprisingly it took this long to announce it. Heard about this 6 weeks ago and asked JUB and Angelique, both confirmed it.
Can you show me or tell me how/where Bacon and Angelique confirmed it?
I do truly encourage everybody to go look at his Twitter likes: https://twitter.com/ShemyScout/likes
For every random #GoBlue tweet, there's about a dozen just absolutely unhinged, hateful, divisive tweets that he's seeing and interacting with.
Including stuff from Steve Deace, the white supremacist whose work got banned here at mgoblog.
Such a great culture hire!
I wasn't aware of any of that. If true, that would change my opinion considerably about the hire.
Yuck....I just looked and wish I had not. Let's hope recruits and their families don't check him out, that would be a pretty big negative to have someone in the recruiting org publicly high-fiving a white supremacist, among his many other questionable twitter shout outs.
How can they not even look at that before making this move?
So not only is it revolting that he's that unhinged, he's also a dumbass for not even thinking to remove that garbage before he moved into the spotlight of a UM job.
I'm not sure whether him or Jay Paterno would be the worse hire.
Wait, did this get cleaned up? Or do I not know how to use Twitter?
going back to October 2020 I can only find 1 tweet from Deace, about Good Friday, and nothing at all about election or LGBTQ?
The Deace tweet is pretty intense to be sure but I don’t see any of what I expected to find.
Looks like he scrubbed it
I can't say I am the biggest fan of Steve Deace but I have never heard him say anything that could be confused with white supremacy. I have been aware of who he is since 2008. He doesn't even come close to the line like a Tucker Carlson. I know this site calls him a "well funded white supremacist". But it is a ridiculous assertion backed by zero examples.
I wonder what Matt Schembechler thinks of this hire.
Guy's, Yoder had this like 2-3 months ago....come on
you can't be trusted as a breaker of news when you are equally wrong about your guesses of news as when you are luckily correct.
Seems like they could find someone more qualified in the recruiting circles and without the baggage. Every once in a while, Harbaugh has a wtf moment like the punt formation at the end of the 2015 MSU game or hiring Drevno.
Shemy needs to clean up his twitter yesterday and get a lesson on social media from somebody at Michigan.
This is dumb
Good for Shemy. Good for Michigan.
Go Blue.
Like, anyone liking Tweets by Ted Nugent, Catturd, Stephen Miller, a bunch of other accounts claiming Trump won the election and railing against LGBT and “woke” culture, etc is not someone who I’d imagine is going to help us on the Recruiting trail.
A lot worse stuff than that. He liked insanely racist images of African tribesmen with bones in their noses in reference to a minority politician in Washington.
Some people have different politics than other people, nothing wrong with that, but this was way beyond that, it was full on racism and he belongs nowhere near Michigan Football.
As a longtime HS football coach I jumped at opportunity to attend Harbaugh’s first coaching clinic.At this clinic I met Shemy and he was super humble and nice.We shared a mutual friend in the coaching business.Also met JH and he was down to earth in cleats and khakis taking notes while others spoke.Met coach Hanlon on a lark(little guy btw)and talked o line play.Enough of political litmus tests of who gets hired.
Wait, so you are a long time football coach in MI, likely white and probably not too far away from him in age and you found him agreeable and got along well? Shocking.
We are more concerned with recruits and their parents checking out his feed and realizing that the M program employs someone who publicly supports white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ (believe it or not, some recruits might actually be gay or not white), etc., etc.
It isn't a litmus test, it is basic common sensibilities to the reality of the world he lives and works in.
Why not defer to JH and trust his hires.I would guess that Shemy has been properly vetted.
I wouldn't. I'd guess that he was superficially vetted at best.
If anyone in the hiring process had taken a look at the copious amounts of white supremacist hate on his twitter, then this thread probably wouldn't exist. I have a hard time believing anyone in HR would be fine with it, at least.
That's not even mentioning the connection to the Bo situation. It's a bad look by multiple metrics.
that's funny, i would guess that the "vetting" consisted of reading the second word on his resume, specifically the word "schembechler."
Dude, I'm at middle management level and if my company saw me liking/ retweeting those type of tweets (they won't even look for them, since I'm too low), I'd be canned ASAP.
Because....well.......he might not be as socially adept as he needs to be (gestures at a lot of turmoil and unnecessary drama around coach) and he could do something dumb, like...oh....say....go and hire someone that publicly and eagerly supports people and values that would be acutely offensive to the vast majority of the players we are trying to recruit.
No wait......he just did that.
So the answer is "this," because of what he just did.
For the most part, people on this blog are handling this discussion in a civilized way. For something this polarizing, that's nice to see folks.
minus those who are invoking politics as reasons to oppose the hire
never will understand the "think like me or be wrong" crowd.
I'll never understand how you don't realize that sentiment is intellectually lazy, disingenuous, and hypocritical.
"It's the people that don't tolerate racism that are the problem! I am very smart!"
It's called empathy. If more conservatives had it, maybe fewer of them would want to shoot up nightclubs or burn churches of people "who disagree with their politics."
May his time on the staff be very short.
Saw some Twitter likes of this man and he can go along for all the other reasons.
If this is too political of a comment I don’t care.
We're not like best buds (and our politics are very different) but I've been talking to Shemy about the book he's writing about his parents--Millie played a huge role in preserving a lot of Michigan's pre-Crisler history that people like me mine all the time--and recently talked to him about what he's here to do, which is to implement some kind of scouting matrix that's had success for a few NFL teams he's worked with. Don't know if it's going to translate to Michigan, but they're always looking for a scouting edge. I don't believe his job is player-/recruit-facing. More on the analytical side.
They also gave him his dad's old office, because nobody else felt comfortable taking it.
You're kidding me. I'd have settled right into that office. Maybe wear some of the old man's clothes, like Costanza wearing the Babe Ruth uniform.
Keeping him away from people seems like a good plan.
thanks Seth.
Keeping him away from people in an office that everyone is uncomfortable in seems like a great thing for a guy in the recruiting department
Michigan/Harbaugh has done just about everything right the past couple of years, but this is a big swing and a miss on multiple levels. It seems so unnecessary too.
Schemy Schemsterino Schembechler! C’mon down!
At this point under the JH regime, I tend to think of Michigan Football in terms of it being run as a quirky family business (vs, say, the Ohio State FB program, as the Steady Corporation -- consistent product, never straying from message, embracing the NFLification of CFB, etc).
They both have their plusses and minuses but Michigan Football as a quirky place definitely did not start with JH.
A lot of really awesome and smart takes here, lol.
Kidding aside, while "political purity tests" shouldn't be a thing (duh) I don't think it's crazy to want your public university employees to NOT publicly call for sedition, removal of voting rights and/or promote insane right-wing conspiracy theories.
That doesn't make the other side "PC" or whatever buzzword you fancy at the time. It makes the other side, ya know, sane and NOT a person willing to hire absolute fn weirdos to be around students.
That's not anti-conservative or anti-anything other than anti-weirdos being around students at your public, prestigious university.
Agreed. Likewise when they use the “different opinion” line when they get called out on a factual matter.
If there was an apple and someone tried to convince you that it was a banana would you call that a different opinion? No, you would you call it for what it actually is - utter bullshit.
Hard agree, WayoftheRoad.
The voting rights thing in particular is baffling to me. Like- If someone thinks the voting age should be raised to 25, what does that say, generally, about their opinions of 18 to 24 year old people? Nothing great, I'd wager. So should someone who feels that way, generally, about 18 to 24 year old people really be working around a program comprised primarily of 18 to 22 year olds? Or working on recruiting 15 to 17 year olds? I guess if he's primarily working as an analyst and watching film, that probably wouldn't factor into things as much, but still.
Anyone asuming that conservatives care about democracy more than legislating their values into law hasn't paid attention for a couple decades at least.
So no bullshit this is kind of weird but dang you gotta love Harbaugh. Mending fences, showing his brand of loyalty and leadership. I’m not saying I agree but this seems like it is about him and Bo.
there are roughly (checks notes) eleven bazillion people in this country that could do that job. but no, we're going to hire someone on the basis of their last name. a semi-disgraced one, at that.
someone up north in the thread says something about the sins of the father, etc., and i agree - but i don't see any reason that we have to be the ones that un-visit those sins. let him work somewhere else.