For Michigan, Dave Brandon's resignation is just Step 1

The failures of Dave Brandon's tenure as Michigan's athletics director can be tied to a pair of decisions made during his first nine months in the position.

Brandon, who resigned on Friday amid a chorus of calls for his ouster, was named to the post in March of 2010; by Jan. 11, 2011, he had fired Rich Rodriguez — now winning at a historic clip at Arizona — and hired Brady Hoke, the latter a longtime Michigan assistant without any major-conference coaching experience.

Rodriguez, 22-11 overall at Arizona, has the Wildcats in the thick of the College Football Playoff race. Hoke, who reached the Sugar Bowl in his first season — with the help of players recruited by Rodriguez (and Lloyd Carr), it would seem — has won fewer games in each of the past three years, and seems destined to be replaced after the end of the regular season.

Amid his other missteps, two botched coaching moves will help to explain Brandon's tenure at a university defined in significant part by the success of its football program — one that remains the winningest program in the Football Bowl Subdivision despite a precipitous slide from the championship conversation.

Yet the legacy he leaves behind is far grander: Brandon might have set the bar for pure incompetence.

It's not just about the losses; he's not the first athletics director to botch a hire, nor the first to wage a losing battle against public perception.

It's about the total picture. Brandon drew the ire of the student body and alumni base for high ticket prices, leading Michigan to announce this week that season-ticket prices for students would be dropped from $295 to $185 for the 2015 season.

In late September, Brandon and Hoke came under intense criticism for the school's handling of the concussion suffered by quarterback Shane Morris during a loss to Minnesota. Not until two days later — and not until after midnight local time — did Brandon release a statement saying Morris had suffered a "probable, mild concussion."

In the wake of this controversy, a rally on Michigan's campus on Sept. 30 calling for Brandon's firing drew nearly 1,000 students. Fans had been planning to wear anti-Brandon shirts — reading "White Out, Dave Out" — for this Saturday's game against Indiana.

Also this week, a Michigan fan site, MGoBlog.com, published a series of combative email exchanges allegedly between Brandon and members of Michigan's fan base. "I suggest you find a new team," Brandon responded to one fan who called watching games "too painful."

Asked for comment on Tuesday about the purported emails, Brandon said, "I don't read blogs so I think it's nonsense."

Brandon's resignation will help to placate a fan base nearly united in its call for a change in athletics-department leadership — but it also muddies the Wolverines' future coaching search, which, barring an unforeseeable run by this current team, should take place after the conclusion of the regular season.

Consider three important factors. One, the decision on Hoke's future now falls to an interim athletics director. Two, the university will be conducting two simultaneous searches, one for a new administrator and another for a new coach, that are not mutually exclusive — one is tied directly to the other, and one could make the case that hiring an athletics director takes precedence over a new face of the football program.

And three, potential candidates for the Wolverines' coaching spot — Jim Harbaugh, perhaps, or Les Miles, Dan Mullen and others — will be placed in an awkward position: Given the importance of the relationship between coach and athletics director, would a potential high-profile replacement feel comfortable joining the program without an administrator in place?

This could be Brandon's final parting gift, after all the errors, mistakes, missteps and botched decisions that dotted his embattled four-year turn: While already gone, he could affect the ability of Michigan's football program to dig itself out of this mess.