Mailbag question: Follow-up to your Coach Kelly / Coach Rod article

Posted at 8:00am -- 12/23/2009


Mailbag question: Follow-up to your Coach Kelly/Coach Rod article

Hey guys, great blog,

Let me start by saying I'm "All in for Michigan" and for Coach Rod. Even though we are going through some new program struggles, I think 2010 will show great improvement, 2011 will be even better, and by 2012, look out, UM will be scary good. Okay, call me an optimist.

My question however is in reference to one of your responses on December 12th. While talking about Coach Rod and Coach Kelly, you said that there was no love loss, that Michigan gave him the cold shoulder and now he might have a chip on it. I've always been curious about that lack of Michigan interest because when it was first announced that Lloyd Carr was retiring, my coaching wish list was topped with Brian Kelly. He never seemed to come close to being an option though. Why? Did UM feel he hadn't proven himself yet or was he not interested in UM, or were there other reasons? I've wondered if it had anything to do with Mike DeBord's program at CMU.

Did he get disrespected somehow by the incoming Kelly regime, and that may have p/o'd the Michigan good ole boys club?

Anyway, keep up the good work and I'm definitely interested in your thoughts on this.

Thanks,

Tom T.

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Thanks for the question. Tom this response is not a slam to you but just a general thought.

It is always good to be "All-in" as the football slogan was for 2009. The problem we have is that everybody was not "All-in" and now all of a sudden this is supposed to happen by decree or magic? We know most fans always want the best for their program and want to support it. Being a fan is like an ocean ebb and flow, there are highs and lows. And we all know where the tide line is currently.

We wish the fans that are "All-in" now would have been 100% behind the team in the past. But in fact many Michigan fans were complaining about the previous regime and expressed dissatisfaction of losing three games a year. How a couple of years have changed the expectations around the Michigan fan base.

As Bo Schembechler said "Michigan is much bigger than any player, any coach, any one person, so that goes for all the past and current coaches and players. The team, the team, the team"!!

Now, the discussion is on to the rest of your question. While at Central Michigan, Coach Kelly made a comment that upset some in the state of Michigan, in particular those in the Detroit PSL.

Some took what he said out of context (like so many people do nowadays) and completely misrepresented (perhaps intentionally) what was said. Some went as far as labeling his comments as racist. When given an opportunity to apologize for or revise his comments, Kelly refused.

The uproar that would have happened if Michigan had hired Coach Kelly, in a "Politically Correct" climate such as Michigan, sealed the no consideration verdict. Predictably, many people were saying bad things about the guy without even knowing what he really said, or more importantly the total context or meaning of his comments. The thing with Coach Kelly is that he is going to tell you what he thinks, no matter if you like it or not, even if it is not the “correct” thing to say.

Another point is that many have stated that Coach Kelly has always dreamed of joining the NFL and that many Michigan people do not want the program to be a stepping stone for anything else-- including the NFL. They want a coach that will be around for a long time and end up retiring at Michigan. The administration types at UM do not want coaches to suddenly quit and go somewhere else.

Many people think of Kelly as a "wildcard" and assume he does not fit into the typical Michigan coach style regarding academic standards and recruiting tactics. Nothing we are aware of supports this perception. But agendas and rumors spread like the swine flu, and administrators who fail to conduct the proper research take some coaches off the coaching shopping lists.

Should Coach Kelly have been on the list of UM candidates? In our opinion there is no question and no reservations, because he has shown he can get it done by winning games, winning championships and, regardless of innuendo, doing his job the right way. Coach Kelly was successful at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan and also at Cincinnati. We believe he will do well at Notre Dame.

Also, too many people who say they are not (or were not) pushing an agenda now or back when the coaching search was going on, certainly were loosely throwing out damaging impressions that made several candidates look bad, with very little creditable, supporting substantiation. Some topics of “discussion” happened twenty plus years ago and we guess that the last name of some of the discussants is Pius. So to us the "good ole boys club" has been blown out of proportion by a large amount of people that are pushing their agendas on people that do not know what is really going on.

Any major sports program will always have fans, donors, alumni, etc. that are not happy with a head coach, whether it be speech patterns, winning, play calling, press conferences, or whatever. This effect is magnified when the media keeps putting a school in the negative limelight. Add to the mudpie the confounding variable that a school that has won for over a century has come up a cropper. The recipe is ripe for unrest and misinformation.

There is no attempt here to downgrade UM’s head coach or the school we so gladly follow, but people have to give Notre Dame credit for how they handled the coaching search and the obtained results.

The administration sought the opinion of the players as to what they wanted in a new coach and then the athletic director took control behind the scenes without all the media attention of getting turned down or looking incompetent.

Some were worried that Notre Dame had excessive concern about pulling off a good press conference and then getting a good coach. Well the Irish did both and they got it done in a timely manner with certain finality.

Written by GBMW Staff

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