EXCLUSIVE: When Miles needed an answer, where was U-M's athletic director?
December 4, 2007
BY MICHAEL ROSENBERG
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
Last Friday evening, word filtered back to Ann Arbor: Louisiana State was trying to sign football coach Les Miles to a huge extension.
Miles was widely believed to prefer the Michigan job. He had sent signals through back channels for weeks, and he knew the terms of a pending five-year Michigan offer.
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But now he needed to know, for sure, that he was Michigan's man.
As I wrote in Sunday's Free Press, U-M athletic director Bill Martin could not provide that assurance. I now know that was only part of the story.
Martin did not even tell Miles' representatives to hang on and wait until their Sunday or Monday interview.
He didn't tell Miles, or anybody else, anything.
Multiple people at U-M have told the Free Press that Martin was nowhere to be found. Several people tried to reach him, in pretty much every way. They all struck out.
We live in the era of constant communication: cell phones, text messaging, e-mails, BlackBerries, Sidekicks, iPhones. There are 50 ways to find your lover.
Yet nobody could find Bill Martin. He was unreachable.
One person familiar with what happened said Martin was in Florida. A database search found an address for a William C. and Sally Martin in Key Largo, Fla., by the Ocean Reef Club. Another database search showed two other addresses for that William Martin: the U-M athletic director's home address in Ann Arbor, and the address for his business, the First Martin Corporation.
Martin is an avid sailor and pilot. This past weekend, the Ocean Reef Club hosted Vintage Weekend, which Forbes magazine has described as "a showcase of the finest automobiles, motor yachts and aircraft."
How, on the most important weekend of the year, could the Michigan athletic director simply drop out of contact with everybody?
I attempted to reach Martin on Tuesday, but a U-M spokesman said he was unavailable. So we can only search for explanations.
• EXPLANATION NO. 1: Martin blew it.
Hey, it's possible Martin just flaked out. Maybe he naively assumed LSU would wait until after Saturday's SEC championship game to offer Miles an extension, and he never imagined that LSU would make a take-it-or-leave-it offer to a highly successful coach.
Miles had sent every possible signal that he wanted the Michigan job, short of dressing his LSU team in winged helmets. Maybe Martin figured Miles would never sign an extension without talking to Michigan, and so the athletic director went sailing. Maybe.
• EXPLANATION NO. 2: Martin knew exactly what he was doing.
There was a growing movement at Michigan to stop Miles from getting this job. Fans pin this on Lloyd Carr, whose aversion to Miles is widely known. But Carr is definitely not the only person who thinks Miles is a bad fit for Michigan.
Through intermediaries, the Free Press learned through multiple sources in the Michigan and the Miles camps, U-M had gone way down the line with Miles -- to the point where contract length and terms were no longer an issue and discussion had moved to his staff. From all indications, Martin had pinpointed Miles as his guy early. Right up until Saturday's announcement that Miles was staying at LSU, many people at Michigan believed Miles was still Martin's guy.
But what if he wavered? What if he started to think the anti-Miles crowd might have a point?
In this scenario, Martin could have found an out. He could have ducked away, forced Miles to stay at LSU and made it look like Miles' choice.
Yes, it sounds crazy. But here is the evidence to back it up: After LSU won the SEC title, Martin had a chance to interview Miles. After all, permission already had been granted. Miles had agreed to his extension but hadn't signed it. Friends of Les insisted that his interest in Michigan had been sincere.
And what did Martin do?
He made a half-hearted call to Miles' agent Sunday.
Then Martin released a statement basically saying he tried to contact Miles, but, hey, it wasn't going to work out.
We might never know the real explanation. But we do know this: Les Miles wanted Michigan, and when he needed somebody in authority to say Michigan wanted him, nobody could find the athletic director.
Even now, a lot of Michigan fans and Friends of Les still hold out hope. After all, Miles still hasn't signed his extension. And Michigan has obviously not hired anybody else.
What if Michigan dawdles for the next month -- before the Jan. 7 national championship game between LSU and Ohio State -- interviewing candidates but not offering the job to anybody? Miles could coach LSU to the national championship, then take the U-M job.
If you buy Explanation No. 1 -- that this was a colossal mistake -- then that is still plausible.
But if you believe Explanation No. 2 -- that Martin had joined the anti-Miles crowd, or at least conceded to them -- then you can forget about it. That ship has sailed.
