There’s really only one topic worth talking about this week, and as I type this, Brady Hoke and Dave Brandon are still employed by the University of Michigan, so I guess enough hasn’t been said. I’m just not sure I know what else needs to be said, what words could possibly convey to those who can make a difference here that they should. And now.
This isn’t just about a bad football coach. We’ve known Brady Hoke was mediocre for a long time. This is a guy who talks about winning championships when his team is 2-3 even though he hasn’t won anything more than a single division title in 11 years of coaching.
This isn’t just about a miscommunication either. How can there be a miscommunication when there’s no communication to begin with? Hoke still refuses to wear a headset on the sideline, which means he can talk to no one who isn’t within a few feet of him at any given time. I’m not the first to wonder if Shane Morris would’ve come out of the game when he should have were Hoke not some kind of technophobe, and I better not be the last.
Honestly, listening to Hoke at his train-wreck of a press conference, I wasn’t even sure if he knew on Monday that Morris had been concussed in the game. He came off as completely oblivious to the goings-on around him, including the actual sport he is supposed to be coaching.
Kirk Herbstreit wonders if anyone would care about this if Michigan was undefeated. He has a point, but it’s still just conjecture, and I’d prefer to think that there would still be outrage.
Because there should be outrage.
Michigan had timeouts. They had a neurologist who, according to Brandon, noticed Morris was exhibiting symptoms of a concussions even though he didn’t personally witness the hit. In fact, according to Brandon, no one saw the hit at all. Not a single staff member on the Michigan sideline was watching the QB when he got drilled, slowly got to his feet, stumbled and grabbed a teammate to barely stabilize himself.
I’m exasperated. Even if everything Hoke and Brandon have said is 100% true (even though it almost certainly isn’t), it’s still enough to fire everyone on that sideline. They all failed at their number one job: improving the lives of young adults.
No one, myself included, can say it any better than the student-run Michigan Daily did, but I guess we all have to keep trying.
Leave a Reply