Stupid is as Michigan does; same goes for Arkansas

[HUSKER 37]

Why not Jim Harbaugh ???

 

Stupid is as Michigan does; same goes for Arkansas

http://cbs.sportsline.com/columns/story/10521564

 

By Gregg Doyel

CBSSports.com National Columnist

 

 

Michigan has stumbled so stupidly in its search for a new football coach, the Wolverines have made Arkansas look smart.

 

Any idea how hard it is to make Arkansas look smart? It's damn near impossible. But Michigan did it by hanging up a "gone fishing" sign -- literally -- when it should have been locking up LSU coach Les Miles. Michigan then failed in its attempt to lure the football coach from Rutgers, a sentence that brings me such pleasure, I'm not sure I'll be able to write again for at least five minutes.

 

 

Houston Nutt smiles all the way to Ole Miss while Arkansas stumbles through a coaching search. (AP)

OK, I'm back. Michigan? It's gone. The Michigan we knew and feared has been replaced by a smarmy, screwed-up bunch of elitists who think Michigan is still great because, well, we're Michigan. No, you're not. You're not even Arkansas.

 

And Arkansas is a complete tragedy.

 

Arkansas can't do anything right. Arkansas couldn't even fire the intensely fireable Houston Nutt, who bumbled around for years -- losing winnable games and alienating blindly loyal fans -- and still was begged to stay.

 

This is how bad Arkansas football has become: Houston Nutt took a paycut to leave ... for Ole Miss.

 

And now as it lurches for his replacement, Arkansas is making the Nutt era look serene and sensible. Arkansas can't find anybody good to take over a program that controls an entire state for recruiting purposes and also is able to dip into Texas and the deep South for talent. When it comes to football, Arkansas should be the perfect school. Instead it has become a fool. Or a tool.

 

The only thing Arkansas has done well since losing Nutt is obtain raises for coaches all over the South. Tommy Bowden used Arkansas to get a raise and an extension at Clemson, which I find amusing considering Bowden has produced something between squat and bupkis at Clemson. Tommy Tuberville used Arkansas to milk some extra money out of Auburn, which I find admirable considering the way Auburn tried to go behind Tuberville's back with that tramp Bobby Petrino in 2003. Since then Tuberville's salary has risen from $1.1 million to $3.8 million by 2013. When all is said and done, he could bankrupt the university and then parachute out for another job, where he will continue to kick Auburn's ass.

 

That job better not be at Michigan, though. Michigan is only good at kicking Michigan's ass, which is the way I like it. Ever since then-athletics director Bo Schembechler uttered those haughty words in 1989 -- "A Michigan man is going to coach Michigan" -- Michigan has set the bar for arrogance. Whenever a job opens at Michigan, especially in men's basketball and football, it is treated as reverentially as an appointment from God.

 

The Michigan job has long been considered one of the plumb positions in college basketball, for reasons that elude me. Crisler Arena is a dump inside, it's freezing outside, and the Wolverines' wonderful tradition includes one of the ugliest NCAA investigations ever. Other than that, it's a kingmaker of a job. Ask Steve Fisher or Brian Ellerbe or Tommy Amaker.

 

Plus, Michigan is a football school. Or it was. We'll see what it becomes now -- women's golf? -- but Michigan's days as a football giant are in jeopardy. A football giant might lose a bidding war with LSU, but not with Rutgers. And a school as great and mighty as Michigan doesn't conduct its business as ineptly, and then as unethically, as this one.

 

Michigan was farcical in its pursuit of Miles, seeking permission to speak to him in the days leading up to the SEC title game. Michigan got that permission, and was set to officially negotiate with Miles after the SEC title game, so in the meantime Michigan's athletics director went underground. Or overboard. The Detroit Free Press reported that Michigan AD Bill Martin was unavailable to Miles' representatives while attending a boat and yacht show at his exclusive Key Largo, Fla., country club. LSU was putting on the full-court press to convince Miles to stay. Michigan was coldly silent. Miles chose LSU.

 

Martin learned his lesson from that fiasco and decided to cut the next school completely out of the equation. Breaching protocol in college athletics, Michigan never officially sought permission from Rutgers to speak with Greg Schiano, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. Martin just interviewed him on the sly -- and still couldn't win him to Michigan. Schiano chose the reality of Rutgers, and presumably the possibility of Penn State, over the Wolverines. Michigan now goes to Plan C.

 

Arkansas is just about on Plan F of a process in which the only state entity that has looked more incompetent is the media, who have flailed blindly for imaginary news. Fort Smith television station KNWA was among those to report that Tuberville would be hired, and then the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette led a group of outlets reporting that Wake Forest's Jim Grobe would be hired.

 

Don't be surprised if soon you see a headline out of Arkansas that has the Razorbacks hiring Gus Malzahn, the former high school coach who pimped out his best players to get a job on Nutt's staff in 2006 as offensive coordinator and left one year later when Nutt refused to entrust the offense to him. Malzahn is an assistant at Tulsa, but he has interviewed for the Arkansas job and might be the last candidate left after the Razorbacks have been rejected by Tuberville, Bowden, Grobe and Butch Davis. And possibly others.

 

The hiring of Malzahn would be a joke, but those in charge at Arkansas are too dumb to get it. But at least Arkansas isn't Michigan, whose leaders are too smug to understand we're already laughing.

 

 

[REDSTEEL]

Probably, because MICHIGAN looks at Stanford just like Nebraska fans looked at Buffalo as a low tier school, and Harbaugh only had one year as head coach.

[admo]

After that incredibly long read, I dont really follow what this writer is babbling on about. If his point is how Michigan is handling it's new coach search, he could have left off a few paragraphs. I understand the spins the other coaches did. So what? Michigan needs a Michigan guy. Great. Like Husk37 said, just get Harbough. Forget about Miles.