re: Did anyone see Bob Griese on ESPN today?

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This whole Les Miles thing is a smoke screen. Hoke is the Lloyd Carr's group guy and they will get him. You have to understand, there is a power play going on right now within the Michigan camp. This is just my honest opinion, and I have no facts to support it other than what I am told by my friends, but I believe Brandon was set up by a certain group within the Michigan family. This is an abbreviated synopsis but you have to understand that what is going on within Michigan is like a modern day Hatfield and McCoy feud. If you listen to this past week's press conference by Brandon he expressed his desire to unify the Michigan family. He believed Harbaugh was the guy to do it because you have multiple factions. For simplicity purposes, you have the: (1) Bo and Mo group made up of the loyal players who played under Bo and Gary Moeller as well as the "blue hairs" that sit in the stands on Saturday afternoon (Les falls into this camp); (2) lloyd carr group which consists of some of lloyd's players but mostly of coaches like deboard, english and brady hoke but more importantly mary sue coleman-msc (president of u of m); and (3) modern/progressive group who welcome change and believes michigan needs to get out of the 70's in order to compete in modern football. to them, the rr hire was a refreshing change.

you first have to understand that lloyd is pissed that he didn't get to name his successor when he retired after the 2007 football season (thank god because we would have likely ended up with mike deboard or ron english). what is sad is Michigan knew about Carr's impending retirement at least a year in advance, so you would think they could have had some decent succession planning in place. However, it didn't happen likely due to the lack of adequate candidates on the staff and Michigan's inability to reach outside its incestuous family. Enter bill martin (michigan's then current ad) who then proceeds to conduct a national search to identify potential candidates. one caveat....the candidate list could not include les miles. let's just say les has a checkered past that does not endear him to many within the lloyd carr circle. so, the search committee goes out and comes back with a report that identifies les miles is the guy. martin says absolutely not and instructs them to go back out and do it again. again, they come back with les as the guy and you get the famous "miles to michigan with tenuta" report from one of my favorite espin commentators who was used as a pawn by one of the individuals on the search committee (you can figure out who that might be) to leak information all with the intent to shift the balance of power and get miles hired. all the while miles was reaching out through various channels to express his interest and desire for the job. that is where you get the famous saying "bill martin is out sailing and doesn't have cell phone coverage." while miles was trying to reach martin on the final weekend of the 2007 football season, martin was in florida sailing and not taking calls. all the while Kirk Ferentz was Michigan's main target as he is Lloyd Carr's best buddy. Well, that didn't work out (likely due to Ferentz's salary or him being content at Iowa) so when it fell through Martin turned to Schiano at Rutgers. Schiano initially accepted the job but 24 hours later changed his mind. This led to the need of an emergency hire. Ironically, Schiano's agent also represented RR. Therefore, a hasty meeting was set up in toledo, ohio and the rest is history.

rr then shows up in 2008 and you have one faction who is pissed their guy (miles) didn't get the job, another group who is pissed that they didn't get to pick a successor and a third group blindly excited about the future but getting led to slaughter all because the athletic department is stacked with cronies left over from the previous administration. from that point on there was constant undermining, backstabbing and leaks to the press. while i do put some of the blame on him, rr really never had a chance. he was an outsider who walked into the cross-hairs of an all out war being waged. true, had he won, everything might have been different. however, he didn't. he radically changed things which the michigan culture was not ready to change. it is like flipping from a mac to a dell or vice-versa. it was too much for michigan to swallow. then "practice gate" occurs (purposely leaked to the Detroit Free Press by AD insiders), resulting in Michigan being placed on probation for the first time in its storied history, player attrition and finally 3 horrible seasons capped off with and embarrassing gator bowl performance. after stretch gate, bill martin exited and David Brandon (former CEO of Domino's Pizza, a Michigan alum and player for Bo) was brought in this past March to clean up the problems. Ultimately, RR became the fall guy and a way for one of the factions to get "their" guy back as coach.

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