ANN ARBOR -- Jim Hackett changed Michigan's athletic culture with one sentence Tuesday evening.
He might have been the only one who could do it.
"I want to get rid of the phrase 'Michigan Man' as soon as possible, hopefully today," the interim athletic director said, bringing smiles to many Wolverines fans and gasps of horror from others.
Hackett was in the process of explaining why he had fired Brady Hoke, but with that comment, he changed the headline. Instead of announcing that he would need to find a coach from inside the Michigan family, he opened up the search to consider people like Bo Schembechler and John Beilein -- outsiders who came to Ann Arbor to have unquestioned success.
In explaining why he wants the phrase to go away, his first reason was that, in today's culture, "Man" isn't the right way to think about things. His second reason, though, went right to Schembechler's original meaning of the phrase.
"Bo was my mentor and my idol, and when he said 'Only a Michigan man will coach at Michigan', he was referring to a coach who was in the process of leaving for another school," he said Hackett. "Bo wanted someone who could win and still be true to the values of the University of Michigan -- someone who, if you cut them open, bled selflessness. Someone who knows that we don't have to cut corners at this place.
"Someone who comes here knowing you will have a chance to be the best in the world without any shenanigans going on."
Hackett is exactly right -- Schembechler was talking about why Steve Fisher was going to coach the Wolverines in the 1989 NCAA tournament instead of Bill Frieder, who had agreed to leave for Arizona State after the season -- but he also knows how the phrase has become twisted over the years. It started as for Michigan insiders to attack Rich Rodriguez, whose hiring ended the dynasty of Schembechler and his assistants.
At the time, it also applied to Beilein, who was struggling through an ugly first year, but the focus was always on Rodriguez. He was the one who brought the spread offense to Ann Arbor, and he was the one who went 3-9 in his first season, ending the bowl-game streak that Schembechler, Gary Moeller and Lloyd Carr had built for more than three decades.
By the end of Rodriguez's tenure, "Michigan Man" had come to mean a true member of the Wolverines clan -- someone that was a true heir of the Schembechler legacy. And, even if that was never what Bo meant, he had died and wasn't able to change the perception.
Dave Brandon didn't even try to change it -- he hired Hoke to replace Rodriguez, putting the program into the hands of a former Michigan assistant who wouldn't refer to Ohio State by name, and who wouldn't wear red shirts when he coached at schools with red uniforms, because it reminded him of the Buckeyes.
Under that way of thinking, Michigan's search for a new coach should begin with Jim Harbaugh, who played for Schembechler, and if for some reason, he's not available, it should go immediately to Les Miles, who played for Schembechler.
Hackett, though, sounds like he has a different plan, and he has the credentials to pull it off. He played for Schembechler in the 1970s before becoming a huge success in the business world. He retired early this year, only to step into the breach when President Mark Schlissel fired Brandon.
Officially, Hackett is only the interim athletic director, but even if he leaves the job in early 2015, he'll have had an important tenure. Not only will he have fired the football coach and hired his replacement, he'll have ended a poisonous way of thinking that has damaged Michigan's football program.
Only Nixon could go to China, and only a Michigan Man could end the Michigan Man culture.
