“Today I informed Brady Hoke that he will not be returning as our football coach next year. I had mentioned to all of you a couple of weeks ago that we would be evaluating his status at the end of the season and that's what today's announcement is about, so my primary intent today is to do this with deep respect for Brady, his family, the coaches, and all of those associated with our football program, and it is because of their contributions to the University of Michigan.
“This was not an easy decision. You see, I believe the longevity of our best football coaches are tied to the intersection of the performance or measure of wins and losses with the test and expression of values that underscore their program and everywhere I go there is zero question about Brady's values, and I mentioned this trait to you two weeks ago. Brady’s peers, both active and retired coaches, really respect him and his players love playing for him. He has done a great job of molding these young men and focusing them on success in the classroom and in the community. He's really earned the respect of all as being a value-centered coach. We need more men like him in sport today.
“So, you might ask how do you reconcile the tension between results and values? Well, one could also make the argument that we have a very young team and we’re about to pivot next year into being an extraordinary team. It has to do with making sure then that Brady has received adequate time to exhibit that arc of improvement that would come from his effort and I believe that Brady had enough time to produce results and they're just not there today, therefore I believe it's time to make this transition. I don't plan on sharing more of Brady's performance review or assessment frankly because I believe the dignity of this conversation is for him only. My next focus is to make sure that this exit for Brady is handled in a first-class way with heightened consideration for not only Brady himself but his staff and his family. Brady’s a hero. He's been an employee at our university for over 12 years.
“So what's next? Well, I plan on starting the search for his replacement immediately. We want to build on what's been established by Brady. My message to the student-athletes was that we’ll work to put them in the best position to win and reinforce that their daily effort is contributing toward being champions. The criteria for our future coach is defined in winning with the shared values of the University of Michigan. I ask for your patience with this search process. It's not fair for me to comment on potential candidates today or the institutions or organizations they currently may be employed by. I can't compromise the integrity of our search process by commenting prematurely until we have that new coach ready to go.
“I believe that the head coach of Michigan football is one of the finest jobs in American sports today and we will have great options. The University of Michigan remains one of the top programs in the country. Now, it's true that the pendulum has swung into a negative. However, one truth in physics is that as a pendulum is in the negative state it's always building energy for its eventual move back to the positive arc. My objective is to find the right coach for the University of Michigan; an individual who will recruit the best student-athletes and puts them in a position to win in the classroom, on the field, and in the community. This is what makes Michigan world-class and we're going to support that with great enthusiasm. Now, in the interim I've asked Mike DeBord, who's in the athletic department, to oversee the day-to-day aspects of the football program as a sport administrator until a new head coach is hired. Mike will not be a candidate for that job. So thank you. I'll be happy to take a few questions right now.”
I know that you don't want to divulge specifics of your meeting, but can you at least characterize for us the tenor of the meeting with Brady?
“Yeah, I think that first of all I can’t emphasize [enough] what an authentic and real person, so what you see is what you get so when you have a discussion like this it's a very straightforward and deliberate discussion. We took a lot of time together. I was not going to make this a discussion just about wins and losses, and so I wanted him to understand what I really appreciated about him and where I had said that he mastered certain parts of coaching. He needs to leave understanding that others should learn from him in some areas and of course, then, this is the part I’m not going to get into is what were the areas that we didn’t see the mastery in and I candidly said I wished I’d had more time with him. I would have liked to have had a shot at helping him with that.”
[After THE JUMP: the obliteration of the ‘Michigan Man’ meme]
With the past two coaching searches going the way that they have, how important is it this time to get it right for the University of Michigan?
“Well, I think you answered your own question. I think that the choices about people is a difficult thing. In business, where I have all the experience, there’s no guarantees, but you can bet on a process that helps reduce that risk and so I describe it as a highly divergent exercise in the beginning so we can make sure we see the landscape and we’re going to work quickly to narrow the question, and I have a lot of confidence that that process will yield a great answer.”
In your search for the next coach, one, are you exclusively conducting the search, no search committee of any type or advisors?
“I’ve devised a process and there’ll be a head-hunting firm that’s going to help me. I’ll have that news soon. Part of the choice there, by the way, is to find somebody I don’t have to spend a lot of time bringing up speed on what Michigan’s all about, and then the President’s asked me to make this decision.”
The parameters as far as what you’re looking for as far as experience in college, in the NFL, head coaching experience, money, age, all of those?
“Yeah. The way I’d answer that is that’s the divergent part of the exercise. We’re looking at the best out there and I think probably what’s of value is that we start to come to conclusions about that we’re going to tell you more.”
At any point did you think about giving coach Hoke another year, and at what point did you make your final decision that it was time for him to leave?
“Yeah, that’s a great question because I want to emphasize with the young people watching me today that when you make a decision to change somebody’s life you better take the time to think about it, and in this case I did take the time. I was very deliberate about it, and I’ve said it’s like a ceremony. That’s why I said It’s a solemn ceremony. We have ceremonies in our lives that happen every year, birthdays and Thanksgiving, and why do we keep coming to them when they’re like they were the last time? It’s because in a ritual way it’s easy for us to identify with what to expect to have happen, so I think coaching assessments, especially for these long-term agreements, need to have that very deliberate ceremony. So you don’t want to prematurely make up your mind. You’re not kind of guessing every day where you are, and you’re building frameworks that are helping inform you about where the answer lies. Let me also point out that in these frameworks what you find is these tensions that are seemingly kind of in opposition or paradoxical, because we should be writing about what kind of great program he built in terms of the values but we didn’t have the results on the field. That’s the tension, and in trying to find out why did that happen that’s where I started to come to the conclusion. So I made the decision just Sunday night, and that’s when I decided where I was going to go. I called the President and the next person was Brady today.”
Going back to what you said a little while ago, you said that you don’t want to have to bring someone up to speed on what UofM football is in regards to the head coaching search. Does that mean you’re leaning toward someone who has strong ties to the football program?
“I was talking about the search firm, and the type of search firm I’m picking is someone who knows us because you’re paying for that consulting time and you want to make sure that money’s directed toward finding the coach, not me teaching them about Michigan.”
So you’re talking about the search firm.
“Yeah.”
How patient do you think you have to be or are willing to be in bringing in the right coach? Are you prepared to wait until sometime in January?
“That’s a great question, and I would tell you again in business we have a thing called a ‘walk-away,’ which means at what point can’t you hang in there because you’re going to jeopardize other things of value? So we’re building what we call swim-lane charts that show candidates’ time frames for their availability. They may be in bowl games. They may be…you know, wherever they are in their status, and we compare that against our swim lane. Where are we in trying to get our recruiting, to get our practice schedule started and so I’m drawing some conclusions about when we can’t take more risk at Michigan. But with that said, I want you to be patient because it’s a bit of trade here is if you get an answer quickly and you could wait a little longer and you believe you upgraded you might be willing to take that risk, so that’s part of the process that I’m mapping out.”
Have you decided in your own mind what that breakoff point is?
“Oh, yeah. I have that.”
And when is that time?
“Well, I’m not going to disclose that. That changes all the trading.”
Did you speak with the players at the meeting at all?
“Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I did meet with the players at 3 o’clock today, and I had a short moment with them because it was really Brady’s time and I’m going to come back and see them soon, and we’re going to have more of an open discussion about what they’re concerned about with the next coach. What are the things they want to see me address? Even the things they may disagree with about this decision. I’m a very open guy like that, and I would tell you that Saturday I couldn’t remember a more poignant moment than when our quarterback went over and touched the head of the injured quarterback. It underscored for me what I’m telling you about, [which] is where does that leadership for that kind of sportsmanship come from? It came from our head coach.”
There were a couple of assistants with multi-year contracts, Doug Nussmeier and Greg Mattison, and the rest of the staff. What is the status of those individuals?
“That’s a good question. So the nature of football, as I’m learning, is that there are agreements for head coaches and some agreements for the coordinators, and then the other assistants have, I guess, shorter horizons. So our people are meeting with all of them today to explain how we’d like to handle them, and one of the messages we’re going to give them is that we’d like to have our new coach have the right to interview them. I don’t want them to have to go through two disappointments, so I don’t want to say that they’re for sure a part of the next administration, so to speak, but in the case of the two that you mentioned we have long-term agreements with them and we plan to honor those either if they leave or if they stay.”
You said earlier that the search for the new coach is defined by winning and somebody who shares the values of the University of Michigan. Can you speak to if that specifically means someone who was a “Michigan Man,” because we seem to hear that an awful lot.
“Yeah, I want to get rid of the word ‘Michigan Man.’ Maybe today you could write about that. There’s three reasons. One is we live in a world where no business or anything would talk about just men in it. Second, the guy who said that, Bo Schembechler, one of my mentors and heroes, said it when he was being challenged about a coach being recruited somewhere else and he meant he wanted the person who was at Michigan to be the coach. The third thing, though, if you let it stand for what it’s supposed to mean here’s what it means: if you cut open the soul of the people who are ‘Michigan Men,’ so to speak, you find first selflessness. This was a thing that said- this is a point about how we stand for the team first. The second thing is the ability to win and be competitive. The competitive spirit in my lifetime and with others that you see around here that played, we knew that we had to work really hard. It wasn’t arrogance. It was about being competitive. The third thing is that we want to continue the legacy of what’s been great from a values standpoint, that this place does not need to cut corners to win and you’ve got a lot of pride in the fact that [if] you come here you know you’re signing up to be the best in the world without any kind of shenanigans going on. So thank you very much. I look forward to updating you.”