Michigan AD Dave Brandon is Finding Out Just How Far the Michigan Football Brand Has Fallen

When a premiere job like this opens up, why wouldn’t guys like Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald and TCU coach Gary Patterson be interested? Their programs aren’t in the same solar system as Michigan. Neither school has the football history or cache of the Michigan job. Even former Michigan player Jim Harbaugh passed on the Wolverines – and remember, we’re talking about a guy who had a record of 17-20 at Stanford before this season. (We hear the money Harbaugh was offered, with bonuses, would have paid a bit more than the 5-year, $25 million deal he signed with the San Francisco 49ers.)

How to explain Michigan’s fall from grace? Losing five of seven bowl games doesn’t help. Being supplanted as the best program in the Big Ten (Ohio State) doesn’t help, either. Michigan hasn’t won a Rose Bowl since 1998.

So who wants this job?

Brandon put his entire focus into Harbaugh last month and was left starting over from scratch when Harbaugh bailed. We hear that the Wolverines have had zero interest Bo Pelini and Jon Gruden and the only reason you’re hearing their names is because their agents are doing a great job of forcing them into the discussion. (Pelini is pissed guys like Wake’s Jim Grobe and SMU’s June Jones make more than him; Gruden is just an attention whore who loves having his name attached to any job.)

Les Miles, we hear, wasn’t even on Brandon’s initial radar. Fitzgerald and Patterson were on Brandon’s wish-list ahead of Miles, who is 57.

But now Michigan is practically forced to make a move on him because there really aren’t any other options. What are you going to do, try and lure Kevin Sumlin away from Houston (his name was hot last year at this time) coming off a 5-7 season?

If Brandon can’t land Miles in the next 48 hours, the guess today is that he’ll settle for Brady Hoke. As fluid as the search has been, we do reserve the right to guess differently tomorrow at this time.