Columnist says Michigan AD never wanted Miles

Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon met Monday night with LSU football coach Les Miles. On Tuesday morning, Miles told LSU officials he was staying in Baton Rouge. While it appears Brandon didn’t get Miles, Michael Rosenberg, a columnist with The Detroit Free Press, suggests that’s not the case. “I don’t think Brandon ever really wanted Miles. I think, once Jim Harbaugh decided he would not return to his alma mater, Brandon wanted San Diego State coach Brady Hoke,” Rosenberg says. Rosenberg notes that Brandon talked to other coaches, including Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald and Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, before flying to Baton Rouge and meeting with Miles. Rosenberg suggests that Miles would have taken the Michigan job if conditions were right. But those “right” conditions may have included lucrative salaries for his defensive and offensive coordinators. Brandon “had a nice, long talk with Miles (it ended very amicably, I’m told), and probably offered 80% of what it would take to get Miles to come to Michigan,” Rosenberg says. That allowed him to hire Hoke, the man he really wanted. Read the full column here.