Bill Martin called The Huge Show, which is broadcast on a few stations around Michigan including 1050 WTKA. Martin talked about the search process: – Said he knew that this would be a hire outside the coaching family from the get go. – Talked about the challenge of convincing Rodriguez and his wife to take this job and move to Ann Arbor sight unseen. – Joked about taking the President Coleman to the giant Cabela’s off of US-23. – Great quote, said Mary Sue Coleman “could sell coal in Newcastle”. He didn’t say that Coach Rod is the dog’s bollocks. – Thought it was 70/30 that he would come to Michigan after Rodriguez left Toledo. – Martin said he was excited based on the emails received about the hire. Perhaps he took his football filter off now! – Rodriguez will be at practice tomorrow. The audio is in two parts, missed a few seconds of the interview in the middle: [display_podcast]
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If you’re waiting for an email reply from Martin…
Don’t hold your breath. All your emails were tightly filtered and placed neatly in the virtual circular file. Excerpt from MLive’s recap of the post press conference interview with Bill Martin: Q: What took you by surprise? Anything? MARTIN: The passion of Michigan fans. The absolute passion. I had to put filters on my e-mail, because of the number of e-mails I got on this search. Anything that said football was dumped and put into a bucket, and ultimately deleted so it couldn’t be FOIAed. It’s all gone. Gee thanks man. I hope no one wrote him to “donate millions to the football program”.
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Rich Rodriguez Era Starts today, WVU coach Hired
Reports breaking minutes ago, Rich Rodriguez has accepted the Michigan job. As speculated here, looks like this was locked up on Friday. So what happened? 1. Martin went to Toledo to close the deal and not let Rodriguez out until he accepted. Looks like that happened. 2. Something happened after the Pitt game that turned Rodriguez against the WVU officials, not sure what. He kept them in the dark during this whole process. 3. Assume they worked out the details of the $4M buy-out, just like they did with Coach Beilein. If this money is also going to the West Virginia Foundation that campus is going to have some Thornton Mellon phat facilities soon. So what’s next? 1. Looks like Carr will of course coach the Capital One bowl game but Rodriguez won’t be coaching the Fiesta. Will Carr need to pull an Al Haigesque ‘I’m still in charge’ plea? 2. Should be interesting to see how Rodriguez uses the current players, especially Mallett. 3. Jim Carty has a Big East background and there’s talk (just talk) of some questionable recruiting incidents related to Rodriguez. If true, you can bet Carty will be looking into it. 4. Hopefully talk of assistant coaches will occur soon. I’d like to see him keep Fred Jackson, possibly Ron English but without knowing how…
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The Best of the Les Petition
There’s no doubt the online petition to Save the Miles is making an impact on State street. The cleverly titled the ‘Les Go Blue’ effort to organize fans to convince Bill Martin to get LSU coach Les Miles in Ann Arbor has gathered over 800 legitimate signatures so far. Forget unreturned phone calls, I’ll got out on a limb and predict that this could be the difference in this whole mess. The petition asks for name, email and a pledge amount to the athletic department if Les Miles is hired (default is $10). A quick scan of the signatures to date yielded a few beauties: * #659 Joel Jackson – Pledged $10,000. Hey big spender! * #607 Edward Martin – The posthumous funding source of the Fab 5 gave no specific amount but offered “money and cakes if Les is hired”. * #231 CCBIV -tied some conditions “$100 if it’s Miles, $0 if it’s ferentz, debord, grobe, pinkel” We’ll let the accountants sort that out once this is over. * #472 Dave Paton indicated some bitterness in his offer: “$10 in pennies–and they won’t be rolled”. That’s old school retribution, baby. Nice work. * #277 Stacey guaranteed she give “Whatever is left of my will”. How generous! * Mike Hunt. This name shows up on many petitions for some reason…
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Jim Carty, WTKA from this morning (audio)
As posted on MLive.com today, here’s the audio of Ann Arbor News columnist Jim Carty on Sam Webb’s Michigan Insider show this morning. Obviously he talks about Bill Martin, Les Miles, the agent, etc. He’s pretty darn critical of the AD, perhaps rightly so. I think Carty does a great job for the Ann Arbor News and I really enjoy his time on WTKA, but drenching us with sarcasm and mocking Bill Martin was a bit over the line IMO. Judge for yourself: UPDATE: More from Carty. Just posted on his blog, some details of a conversation this afternoon with LSU’s associate athletic director.
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Kill Bill vol. 3! The Martin Man March
Callers were freaking out on WTKA this morning. The Martin Man March to be scheduled soon. Suggested protest MMMarch route: – Start at corner of Stadium and Main (outside the Big House) – Wind down to State Street in front of the athletic administration building – Head over to Main Street and park it a Conor O’Neils for a pint. Then we’ll sort all this out. I’m working on picket signs. A few suggestions: 1. MARTIN SHORT (sighted) 2. At least we have hoops season 3. Let’s get Moeller’d 4. Now I know why the AD hasn’t returned my calls. 5. Michigan Sailing Rocks! 6. DeBord DeBlows 7. Hey Ferentz, you’re next! 8. Cancel Christmas 9. MSC: Maize doesn’t necessarily mean Corn 10. Did Pep make the NBA? 11. New recipe: Les Miles, Less Martin 12. Can Dave Shand come back now? For context read on why all the former players, alumni, bloggers, and columnists are furious, please see Jim Carty in the Ann Arbor News, and Michael Rosenberg in the Detroit Free Press.
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Everyone take a cold shower
Quoting the great Lew, a legend on this site, everyone needs to chill out a little bit. Venom is being sprayed everywhere and it is getting ridiculous. Scanning the blogs, message boards and talk shows, it seems you have a bone to pick with just about everyone: Lloyd Carr: For not liking Miles and for spinning this whole coach search to not hire Miles. Ok, so maybe he doesn’t like Miles. Since Carr coached with the man and knows him better than any of you ever will, maybe he’s on to something? Either way, if it is even true, all you are accusing Carr of doing is standing up for what he believes in, or in this case, who he doesn’t believe in. Chill out. Bill Martin: For not landing Miles. What should he have done? Secretly sign Miles before Carr even officially retired? Fine, but then he would have been accused of sneaking around and disrupting LSU’s season. Not cool. He asked for permission to speak with Miles after the regular season, that permission was granted. It looks like LSU made sure it wouldn’t happen. That’s not on Martin. Les Miles: For what? For indicating he loved Michigan and hinting he’d be interested in returning? or is it for burning Michigan? Mitch Albom suggested this was all a ruse…
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Guess Not!? Wha?
Uh, what? This is so ridiculous. As predicted, the death march drags on. UPDATE: The 2pm presser where Miles was supposed to confirm he resigned and he DIDN’T. He simply said “I’m the head coach at LSU. I will be the head coach at LSU. I have no interest in talking to anybody else. I have a championship game to play.” He wouldn’t take any questions because you know what he would have had to answer. He hasn’t signed with LSU yet and this is ridiculous. UPDATE II: I slapped together a mini timeline to keep all this straight. A work in progress, click to enlarge: