The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/575020
THE BUSINESS OF MICHIGAN ATHLETICS librium is starting to come back. It didn't cost us that much money, and we got it fixed." The Wolverine: With all the need to fix football, and all the attention paid to it, how are the other sports getting the care they require? Hackett: "The patience of those other coaches and their endorse- ment of me getting football fixed — I couldn't have done it without their help. "[Basketball coach] John Beilein has been wonderful. Red [Berenson, the hockey coach] has been wonder- ful, seeing what we had to get done. "A compliment to Dave [Brandon] — as he was building the facilities, he did a great job of learning about all of those individual sports and what the student-athletes needed to be successful. He made a number of changes on their behalf that are in place now. "I inherited a lot. Our other sports are extremely healthy — coaching, support with sports administration — the big one was in trouble, and that's what I ran over to. "I had a long meeting with Hutch [softball coach Carol Hutchins] the other day. I just talked to the wom- en's soccer team. I'm going to a vol- leyball game. "In the less than a year that I've been here, I've learned that all our success is centered around our coaches. It's the student-athletes who are the ones who perform. But if we have really great coaches that have longevity, you will find a high cor- relation to our success. "Not every sport is winning at the rate it should be, but the coaches we've got are really good. There are just not a lot of bad spots that have to be addressed." The Wolverine: Do you have future plans to expand Michigan Stadium? Hackett: "I know in the Levi's Sta- dium [home of the San Francisco 49ers], they built a smaller footprint. The strategy in that is your ticket rev- enue isn't less. You're making more elite seats with higher prices. "I don't want to do that at Michi- gan. We don't want any more elite seats. In fact, if anything makes us strong, it's the egalitarian part. This is why it was a debated question on whether or not to build those boxes. "The fear was that it was kind of against the egalitarian principle of the University. Its diversity … 1877, the first African-American woman graduates with a doctorate. How many universities can say that? "It was the right decision, though. I'm fortunate to have inherited it. But the big issue now isn't around the capacity. It's around all the stuff that enables our fans to have a great time at a game. "That's what we are going to be working on. What part of the tick- eting process can we move to your phone? What part of the information we share in the game could be ahead of what the people that aren't there are getting? How do we intensify the experience? "I don't think we have to be big-