Brady Hoke a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem at Michigan

In the 1960s, college students protested Vietnam. In the '80s, they protested to free Nelson Mandela. This week, Michigan fans protested because their football team is really, really bad. They believe it's not living up to the style and substance of those great teams of Michigan's past, which qualifies as a societal issue.   

When it comes to Michigan football, the administrators, fans and even the media are serving self-interests by seriously piling on to failed coach Brady Hoke. He is the world's easiest scapegoat.

But here is one thing I know for sure: Hoke is not the problem at Michigan.

Blaming Hoke is like blaming your flu on the sniffles. And what started with blaming him for losses has turned into painting him as a monster for leaving quarterback Shane Morris in the game Saturday for a play—and then for another one later—when he had a "probable, mild concussion."

Tony Ding/Associated Press

Hoke is not a monster. He maintains there was miscommunication on the sidelines. Most likely, it was ineptitude at not knowing what was wrong with his quarterback. At worst, Hoke is a neanderthal, wanting a kid to tough out a brain injury.

Michigan wanted a neanderthal when it hired Hoke. That was the point. That was the problem. Michigan is stuck in the past, in Bo Schembechler's time. It doesn't know how to move forward. In fact, it doesn't even want to. And that mentality has buried Michigan football.

Instead of blaming Hoke for being exactly what Michigan wanted him to be, Michigan should be asking itself what made it want Fred Flintstone to coach its team in the first place.

Hoke is bringing down Michigan football? Please. How do you explain why Michigan was falling for five years before he arrived? Everyone wants to isolate Hoke, scapegoat him. Athletic director Dave Brandon, known for loving the spotlight, slipped out of it for a few days after Saturday's game, making sure it could all fall on Hoke, the coach he selected. The media has focused on him because it is desperate to sound tough about something, and it's easy to talk tough when everyone else is saying the same thing. And the rest of Michigan's fans, support, power?

Well, they can blame Hoke, or they can blame their belief system.

The real story here isn't Hoke; it's Michigan, which always thought it was above this sort of collapse. It happened at Nebraska, USC and other places. But Michigan was doing it the right way with the right kids at a special place. Its spot on the mountaintop was permanent.

Yet with that belief, that history and incredible facilities, Michigan has found a way to make itself obsolete.

Sure, Hoke will be fired. He should be. But if Michigan wants to make real progress, it needs to fire someone else:

Tony Ding/Associated Press

The Michigan Man.

In 1989, when Michigan basketball coach Bill Frieder told Schembechler, who was then the athletic director, that he was leaving after the NCAA tournament for Arizona State, Schembechler told him to leave now. He wasn't going to have someone who isn't a "Michigan Man" coach his team. Steve Fisher then stepped in to lead the team to the national championship.

The Michigan Man has come to represent an ideal about tough play, high morals, hard work and doing things the right way. And winning. Michigan has won more football games than any other program in the country. But the Michigan Man hasn't evolved.

Football has.

You've seen those posters showing shadowy characters through evolution? The progression ends with the shadow of modern man with a cellphone stuck to his ear or something. The Michigan Man is still dragging his knuckles.

The rally on campus Tuesday drew about 1,000 people, according to Jeremy Allen of MLive.com. They were calling for Brandon to be fired. Student Alex Hartley told David Jesse of the Detroit Free Press, "I grew up a Michigan fan. Ever since (Brandon) took over, he has changed tradition to get more money."

Welcome to 2014, kid.

Student Craig Kaplan remarked, via Dan Murphy of ESPN.com, "It makes me upset how students have been handled and how the culture at Michigan has changed."

You find that there is a call for Michigan to change back. That is the wrong direction.

Michigan tried to move the right way when it hired Rich Rodriguez. He wasn't the Michigan Man but instead the "Modern Man."

Michigan wasn't ready for his newfangled hurry-up spread offense and rejected him from the minute he arrived. Rodriguez, now a successful head coach at Arizona, told me last year that he was undermined by the old guard because he wasn't a "Michigan Man" (said in a funny, sarcastic voice).

Year	W-L	Coach
2014	2-3	Brady Hoke
2013	7-6	Brady Hoke
2012	8-5	Brady Hoke
2011	11-2	Brady Hoke
2010	7-6	Rich Rodriguez
2009	5-7	Rich Rodriguez
2008	3-9	Rich Rodriguez

The feeling was that Rodriguez would never win at Michigan. So he was fired after winning three games, then five, then seven. Now, his offense is the trend in college football, and other coaches come to him for advice on how to run it.

Michigan brought in Hoke, the tough guy who was an assistant under former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr. Hoke derisively called rival Ohio State "Ohio" and called Notre Dame "chicken" for dropping their series. He talked about the tradition of Michigan and smashmouth football.

He was a caricature of the Michigan Man. That's what fans were buying, so that's what Michigan was selling.

When Michigan looks for a new coach next year, it needs to open up the model. Forget the Michigan Man or let him evolve. Realize that most high school star players around the country have no interest in what Michigan stands for or who played there.

They care only about playing in the NFL. Michigan hasn't been getting players there lately.

It's not easy to hold onto the past while moving forward. Nebraska is still fighting that. Notre Dame almost buried itself trying to live in the past. When it hired Charlie Weis, a former Notre Dame student, it fell so deeply in love with its past that it gave Weis a 10-year contract.

Then Notre Dame found Brian Kelly, a good coach who fit enough into Notre Dame's traditional identity but was doing things his own way.

Michigan needs to find its own Kelly. When you have all the money and all the facilities in the world, you can always find a way. Michigan still has time before it's history.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. He also writes for The New York Times and was formerly a scribe for FoxSports.com and the Chicago Sun-Times.  Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.