The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1123063
50 THE WOLVERINE JUNE/JULY 2019 I t was the best of times … and just like that it was over, going down just like John Beilein said it would. He snapped his fingers last year in predicting how his time at Michigan would come to an end — that he'd leave his post as the Wolverines' head basket- ball coach when he knew it was time to call it quits, probably without much notice. May 13, 2019 was that day, ending the run of U-M's best- ever basketball coach. And while Beilein's departure for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers caught the fan base and even Michigan director of athlet- ics Warde Manuel off guard — "Yeah, I was surprised," Manuel admitted to reporters that same night while attending the Big Ten A.D. meetings in Chicago — the coach's flirtation with the Detroit Pistons last year should have been an eye opener. Yes, he probably would have left had he been offered the job a year ago, and while he said then that he planned to end his career in Ann Arbor, several things happened to change his mind. For one, the Cleveland job opened up. Cavs assistant general manager Mike Gansey is like a son to Beilein, having played for him at West Vir- ginia, and Cleveland is centrally located between Beilein's kids and grandkids, smack dab in the middle. He'll now have much more time to spend with them in the offseason. Two more players, guards Jordan Poole and Ignas Brazdeikis, left for the NBA despite being likely second-round picks (at best), and the new rule allowing kids to flirt with the league with agents rubbed Beilein the wrong way. "It will be interesting to see how many of those kids come back to school," he said of players with agents advising them shortly after both underclassmen declared. Brazdeikis didn't, and neither did Poole. It's the latest disturbing trend for college basketball, and one Iowa head coach Fran McCaffery, a good friend of Beilein's, insisted helped drive him out of the game. "He didn't like it there. He loved it there," McCaffery said in an inter- view with The Des Moines Register. "But our game has changed. I know he's disappointed in the state of our game right now, the unethical nature of what's been going on." That included the cheating aspect. The FBI did its job in uncovering the seedy side of college basketball recruiting recently, exposing many recruiting scandals, but the NCAA seems to be following up in slow motion. Gonzaga's Mark Few was among those to chastise them for their lax response to the recent scandal that implicated programs at Kansas, Arizona and elsewhere. "It's getting harder and harder the way he does it, the way I do it," Mc- Caffery said of Beilein. "The way it should be done." The man voted cleanest coach in the country in a vote of his peers last year with a whopping 26.6 percent of the vote might have been the best in the business at what a college basketball coach should really be. He competed for championships while avoiding the gray areas, was a great teacher and mentor, and his teams regularly boasted perfect Academic Progress Rates (APR) of 1,000 while receiving APR Public Recognition Awards for ranking in the top 10 percent of their sport for a department- best eight straight years. He had also become the guy treading water in the middle of the ocean after a shipwreck, surrounded by sharks. You can only keep your head above water so long before exhaustion gets the best of you. "Rosters turn over every year. Guys who are fringe NBA pros- pects and good students leave school early, or at least test it," SI.com's Mike Rosenberg wrote. "The transfer market gets more active every year, and rules keep getting more lenient so they can go wherever they want and, in some cases, play right away. "You can argue that this is all progress, and maybe some of it is. But if a sport loses John Beilein, that sport has a problem." One of perception only. We're talking about a sport that helped the NCAA bring in $1 billion in revenue for the first time ever last year, after all. Sadly, Beilein is just collateral damage to a runaway money train. It's up to Juwan Howard to fight that battle now, and there's plenty of excitement for his arrival, as there should be. He's considered one of the up and comers in the coaching profession. "Congrats to Coach Howard and us!" Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh tweeted. "[I'm] happy to see a Michigan Man coaching the Michigan basketball team!" But he should have added "con- tinue." For the last 12 years, Beilein ran a program as well as anyone could, leaving as "Michigan Man" as anyone who's ever coached in Ann Arbor. ❑ Chris Balas has been with The Wolver- ine since 1997, working part time for five years before joining the staff full time in 2002. Contact him at cbalas@ thewolverine.com and follow him on Twitter @Balas_Wolverine. INSIDE MICHIGAN CHRIS BALAS Don't Be Sad It's Over … John Beilein left the Michigan basketball program in much better shape — on and off the court — than where it was when he inherited it in April 2007. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL