Dave Brandon By The Numbers: $100 Million Gift, $3 Tickets
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - It will be an unhappy Halloween for embattled Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon, who is expected to resign his post Friday.
The football team has a record of 3-5 after losing badly to rival Michigan State on Saturday. The team's struggles have triggered an avalanche of fan ire, and earlier this week a report surfaced Brandon was not handling the criticism well, allegedly sending snide and condescending emails to unhappy fans who had reached out to him. Neither the university nor Brandon denied that the athletic director sent those emails.
Michigan's ugly on-field performance this season has been accompanied by scandals large and small, from the mishandling of a player's concussion and a resulting public relations gaffe to Coca-Cola seeing fit to give away its allotment of Michigan-Minnesota tickets with purchases of $3 in beverages.
Brandon, formerly the CEO of Domino's Pizza, became Michigan's athletic director in 2010. In the last four years, the Michigan football team went 7-6, 11-2, 8-5 and 7-6. The men's basketball team, on the other hand, emerged as a national power, making runs in the NCAA tournament each year, including to the Elite Eight last season and to the national championship the previous season.
While those two sports get the most attention, Brandon - a Michigan graduate who played football under Bo Schembechler - has made himself popular among the smaller sports as well, committing millions of dollars for their facilities and well as those of football and basketball. Under the helm of Brandon, the athletic department received a gift of $100 million - part of a total donation of $200 million, the largest ever gift to a university - from longtime Michigan supporter Stephen M. Ross.
Coaches have supported Brandon, but students have railed against him. Not only unhappy at how he rearranged seating at the stadium, students talked about season ticket prices, which at $295 were higher than any other Big Ten school. Michigan announced a 37.5 percent reduction in student season ticket prices for next season, but that offering came only after some students organized a petition and on-campus rally to have Brandon fired.
Some Michigan fans felt Brandon out of touch with the tradition of the program. Greg Skrepenak, a former All-America lineman at Michigan, railed about Brandon last week.
"Dave got lost in corporate America," Skrepenak said to Mike Stone of 97.1 The Ticket. "That's what bothers me the most, and I understand how corporate America works. I understand that we need money to run our athletic programs … What bothers me is that every other team in the country would love to have the tradition that we have, and that tradition is what is the heartbeat of college football.
"When an athletic director comes in with a corporate America attitude and his attitude is, 'If it ain't broke, blow it up,' you don't understand the tradition, and that probably has upset me the most because our tradition has taken a hit," Skrepenak continued. "That basis and that foundation of that tradition should maintain the same. When you remodel your house, you don't change your foundation."
