John U Bacon's thoughts on the Hockey investigation

JUB did a great job highlighting major points. I see a coaching change. Glad to see UM taking allegations seriously.

Ultimately, I hope the right culture is instilled in the University. I believe it is headed in the right direction with getting a new president, admitting wrongdoing in the Anderson affair, and soon to be replacing their hockey coach. I just hope that there are no more skeletons in the closet or self-inflicted wounds.

What I don't understand is if University leadership has had this since May, and it's really that bad, why didn't they just pull the trigger?

JUB isn't one to throw out "he needs to go" talk willy nilly, and for him to come to that conclusion it seems pretty obvious that will be the conclusion.

I agree that if JUB's initial perusal of the report is accurate, Michigan needs to replace him. However, I can't help but wonder how they were so successful last season and why so many top draft picks came back for another season. There's still a disconnect for me that I'd like to understand.

Regardless of their reasons, the retaliation alone warrants his firing.

Michigan sports fans sure have absorbed some body blows recently, starting with Coach Beilein heading to the NBA, then Backich leaving and now Pearson. Three of our top 4 men's sports teams, all of them among the top-rated teams, losing their coaches, with the 4th one (Harbaugh) flirting with leaving. It kind of makes me a little paranoid. Warde has his work cut out for him.

Grrr. I just wrote a long rant, but screw it. Pearson's behavior (at least as apparently described in the report) pisses me off. If it's true, he's not an adult, he's an entitled (and enabling) child, and good riddance.

So I guess now I think the university won't renew Mel. Not sure how you can at this point. Almost like Warde wanted the report to be out in the court of public opinion before pulling the bandaid off to lessen the blow or at least have something more to stand on

This is eyebrow raising:

Apparently, when he and some fellow seniors-to-be tried to bring their concerns about the team culture to Pearson in the spring of 2021, Mann felt sufficiently retaliated against, and worried about Pearson bad-mouthing him to NHL teams, that he saw fit to forego his senior year to play minor league professional hockey in Sweden. 

At the end of the 2022 season, the entire senior class approached Josh Richelew to express their concerns – another eye-opener. 

That's not egregiously awful (like covering up sexual assault or something) but it says something when you basically have a mutiny forming amongst your seniors.

Very disappointing to hear that Bancroft was harassing women and got to 'retire'. What sort of message is that sending? That's the worst part of this whole things in my mind (and perhaps part of what the seniors were protesting about)

Lastly, it'll be interesting to see what this means for Wiseman's move. Was he implicated and thus the Islanders told him nevermind? Or is he clean and he's about to be announced as the next head coach

Yeesh, that doesn't sound good at all...  Guess the consensus that Pearson was safe seems to be wrong.  Makes me wonder how the team was so cohesive last season, and how recruiting hasn't dropped off one bit.

Are there any plausible ways that Michigan could keep him?  Not advocating that one way or the other.  Just wondering what might be said/done if Warde isn't willing to pull the trigger.

I love hockey, and Michigan hockey in particular, but I think Pearson has to go.  There is a lot of attention being drawn to issues prevalent in hockey culture (see e.g. the Hockey Canada scandal), and Mel seems to support the old-school mentality.  Not only is it bad for the U of M community and reputation, it is also apparently negatively impacting the team itself.  He has done a great job of recruiting, but it is not worth it to sacrifice the integrity of the program and the university to keep him around.

Sports are changing quickly, and we can either get ahead of it or be dragged into it, but the change will come regardless.

I am currently traveling through the Upper Peninsula on business

Best part of the piece. I'm a fan of this "business."

It’s simply mind-boggling that after all the tremendous publicity the Sandusky, Nassar, and Anderson abuse scandals received, coaches in positions of moral and legal responsibility to do the right thing continue to shirk that responsibility. How Pearson thought his decisions wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass is inexplicable.

A few days ago I posted a comment that since no media orgs had leaked any damning conclusions after they had received the report, that Pearson was cleared of the most serious charges. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This is incredibly disappointing.

This is not good.

It's worth noting that there's not much to assess about the Bancroft allegations because Bacon doesn't touch on them much, and Bancroft is gone. So I can't say how serious those issues may be. 

Strauss Mann leaving the program and leaving college to play in Europe because he's afraid of professional retaliation is pretty serious. The senior class coming, as a group, to present reservations is pretty serious. 

Steve Shields bringing this stuff up is pretty serious. Shields is a program legend. And he's known Mel for 30 years--Mel was here assisting Red when Steve played, and even worked for him when Mel was at Michigan Tech. Some speculation when word of an issue first came out was that it was some disgruntled nameless staffer. But Steve Shields was the goaltending coach and has roots in the program as deep as anyone and has been in hockey for a long time. 

Which raises lots of questions. Shields has known Mel for a long time. To raise complaints either suggests that Mel's behavior grew worse, or that Mel has always been this way, and it's a "times have changed" sort of situation we've seen in many sports. I don't understand why Steve would have kept working for him if that's the case, though. 

And there's *something* that's hard to understand here, because Michigan has successfully recruited a lot of star talent, and those players have very visibly remained in the program when they have had other options. Maybe this is a case of Mel playing favorites with the young stars (as opposed to the senior class), but if the locker room is toxic, it still doesn't seem like a pleasant place to stay. 

Anyway, this is very, very disappointing. 

I have a feeling that President Ono will put pressure on Warde to fire Pearson.

I get the sense that he understands - with his predecessor's dishonorable dismissal - that the buck stops with him.

The Athletic has a story up, looks bad for Mel:

https://theathletic.com/3468455/2022/08/02/mel-pearson-michigan/

The website is broken.  Can someone give me a good synopsis ?

I am hoping that the only reason for the delay is getting the replacement lined up.

Mel Pearson - CYA!

Can't read the John U Bacon link, as it's "508 Resource Limit is Reached" at this point but did read Katie Strang's piece in the Athletic and holy shit! Fuck Mel Pearson, he should be shot off into the sun.

One additional note:

Alton, on twitter, floated a scenario (while specifically saying that he didn't actually believe it was the case) that Mel would be extended and it would be announced that he served a 90-day suspension without pay, before details of the report were released. 

That mostly serves to try to explain the delay in bringing things out. Another possible explanation could be that the AD needed to be able to clear the final disposition of the case with the new University president, and so they slow-played things without making any firm statements to give that transition time to take place.

I am raising both of these scenarios because, while I have been patient to wait on this for a bit, it is now August and details of the report are leaking months after it was completed and there is still zero word from the Athletic Department about what is happening. 

And that is simply inexplicable.

Long-time readers will note that I am a robust Warde defender here, and I stand by many of my defenses of him. And, as I discuss in this post, there might be an explanation that makes some kind of sense. But this is weird and it isn't good for the program. And it makes previous issues, like the COVID situation (which is discussed in the report but was a bit odd even at the time) and the WMU game cancellation look worse. The details Bacon reports remove a lot of the benefit of the doubt.

Mike Babcock, Jr.

I've enjoyed Michigan hockey's success and really disappointed that this was going on behind the scenes.  Goodbye, Mel.

Why can't we catch a break? I mean seriously, we have to be one of the most cursed fanbases in the country...

Well, f*ck Mel. And fire Mel. And let's move on. Maybe yet another generation will have to die off before we start to get this right, or maybe some of it is inherent in these organizational power relations and hierarchies, but f*ck Mel. And fire Mel. And let's move on. It's a damn shame that he should bring shame on our vaunted hockey program, like he has. Show him the door, Warde. 

Mel Pearson can go fuck a tree.

Where is the AD in all of this?

I will be in the minority opinion here - in reading the Athletic piece, this sounds more negligent than malicious and I would bet some of these complaints can be wagered against 75+% of major athletic programs across the country.  (Percieved retaliation, belittleing staff, etc.) 

I don't follow hockey as closely as many do here - so I don't have some loyalty to Mel - but what I've read so far does not seem to rise to a level of firing him.  

EDIT - i should clarify that just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean that M should.  Yes, that's true - but this is a pervasive problem in sports (and probably across many jobs, for that matter).  I don't know if firing a coach for practices that are widely happening across the country - much of it in the report does seem to be he said, she said - is the way to go.  I would not be opposed to probation, suspension, etc. with the mandate to reform.  Across society there is more of a push to "restorative justice" and I think that would be very much reasonable in this situation.

it's extremely damning.

the retaliation against the players who wanted a better culture is, to me, fireable.  if we believe that college sports exist, first and foremost, as a part of the core values of the capital-U University (and many of us do, believe it or not), we can't stand by when those core values are set to the side in favor of wins and losses.