I think it’s a little more complex than you’re making it out to be.
As to your first point, I agree, we were only on par with Duke and Kansas when it came to recruiting. Fisher was not a special coach, and he couldn’t get much out of those subsequent recruits. It’s telling that we went from an NIT team to a #3 seed under Ellerbe, who himself wasn’t much of a coach. (Losing Mo Taylor and his bad attitude was also probably addition by subtraction).
Here’s the issue I have with the whole situation. The NCAA is a cartel. It has made athletes taking money into some unforgiveable sin, when really, there’s nothing morally wrong with it. Now, if the NCAA enforced its rules fairly, and punished the biggest wrongdoers appropriately, I’d have a lot more respect for the rules. But they don’t. You’re a huge basketball fan - I don’t need to give you all the obvious examples. But one glaring example is Coach K, and the parallels to John Wooden are interesting. And then, when it comes to something that really is morally wrong (PSU football), they basically backed away from most of their original punishments.
So, as a Michigan basketball fan, we’re stuck in the following world: (1) we have to rigidly adhere to the rules of a corrupt organization; (2) we want to be competitive; but (3) most competitive schools break the rules, but we’ve determined on our own we can’t. Plus, and this is really the kicker - despite being super clean, the NCAA screws us every chance they get anyway. See Mitch McGary.
I’ll tell you one thing I would do, and I don’t think there’s anything illegal about it (open to debate, maybe, but I think it’s legal) - I’d sign very short contracts with Nike, and I’d make it abundantly clear that I expect Nike, if it wants me to renew those contracts, to wield whatever influence it has (which, many have suggested, is considerable) to steer star basketball players to Michigan. I mean, as great as say Kentucky basketball is, I have to imagine the revenue Nike generates from the Michigan football program is significantly greater than whatever it generates from UK basketball. While I wouldn’t allow our coach to cheat (and I’m 100% confident JB would want no part of that anyway), I’d be a little less involved in “oversight” if I’m the AD. I think my message to the coach would be, while you can’t commit any University resources (like say, Fisher with the tickets to Martin) to people you have or should have serious reservations about, there’s no reason you can’t recruit certain players and be on speaking terms, and friendly, with those people.
I’m personally a super competitive person, so I hate the idea that we simply can’t compete for many recruits, though I’ve somewhat accepted it. It’s impossible to win without elite players, and it’s nearly impossible to get elite players without being able to recruit top 25 kids. JB has done it before (Hardaway, Burke, Stauskas, Caris), but we’re really relying on elite talent identification to be able to do it all the time. JB might be the very best at this, but he’s had plenty of misses and really, it’s a super difficult thing to do.
When you look around the landscape, though, why do we have to be Northwestern? Stanford (an unquestionably more prestigious academic institution than Michigan) relaxed its admission requirements when JH coached there (and I’m sure that’s continued). Tommy Amaker has gotten Harvard to do the same. UCLA (on par with Michigan) has been paying guys for 40 years. It hasn’t hurt their academic reputation any. I applied and was accepted into the law school, and never once did I think, “Hmmm, they’ve had some scandals in sports.”
So no, I’m not crazy about the way our administration views basketball recruiting. It’s antiquated. And for a school that is really liberal in many respects, we are sadly behind the times when it comes to the rights of athletes (including compensation arguments). I’m not saying the Webber situation wasn’t a big deal - it was - but I am saying “who cares” if Ed Martin gave Jalen Rose a couple hundred bucks here and there. That’s not worthy of condemnation. And I did really hate Mary Sue Coleman’s speech - just say “mistakes were made, we’ve put systems in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” and move on. To me, it wasn’t a cause which required her righteous indignation.
By the way, what is the difference between hiring Perry Watson (who was a great HS coach, by the way), and hiring Devin Bush, Sr.? I don’t get it. Yet one move is lauded and the other condemned.
This is part of why I am such a big Beilein supporter. We’re not going back to the Fab Five days with recruiting. So we need a coach who can coach. There are certain things about his teams that drive me crazy (poor rebounding fundamentals, poor defensive fundamentals on certain of his teams), but his offense is a thing of beauty and as long as we’re going to have to get our top players from the 50-150 and beyond talent pool, this guy is unreal at spotting hidden gems. He’s like an investment advisor who gets you a 20% return without being able to pick any blue chip stocks - you can live with a few minor flaws. And he’s a really decent guy, which means something. I mean, so was Brady Hoke, so it can’t be the overriding consideration, but there’s something gratifying about winning without having to compromise yourself. But on the administration side, I do think there are some things we could do to improve recruiting without having to cheat. And I hate to say it, but if this were football, we’d be more motivated.