CARTY: When Les Miles' agent reached out to Bill Martin Friday, he got silence in return
by Jim Carty | The Ann Arbor News Tuesday December 04, 2007, 10:55 PM
AP PhotoLSU coach Les Miles listens to a reporter's question during a news conference at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta on Friday.
On Friday night, Les Miles had a problem.
While most of the media speculated the Louisiana State football coach was about to jump to the University of Michigan to succeed Lloyd Carr, neither Miles nor his agent, George Bass, had heard from anyone connected to Michigan in any capacity.
Bill Martin, Michigan's athletic director, had received permission Wednesday to talk to Miles after Saturday's Southeastern Conference title game, but had not called to set up a meeting or schedule a phone call.
LSU, meanwhile, was pushing hard behind the scenes to keep Miles, offering a multi-year contract extension that would boost his pay by millions.
Forget all you've heard about secret deals using third-party intermediaries between Michigan and Miles. Bass said it's just not true.
Miles had no idea if Michigan really wanted him.
So Bass decided to ask.
He said he called Martin's cell phone on Friday and left a message. He just wanted to know where Miles stood.
Then, when he didn't hear back, the agent said he called Martin again.
"The (LSU) deal was so good that we couldn't just wait," Bass said via phone Tuesday. "I didn't know if we were one of the candidates in the pool at that time. There was just no communication."
Where was Martin? One source places him in Florida, at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo. Wherever he was, he didn't call back.
We all know what happened next.
ESPN began reporting Saturday morning that Miles had reached a deal with Michigan. Miles' LSU players began to plaintively ask him at pre-game chapel at the team hotel if he was leaving them for the Wolverines.
Miles, irate at the erroneous report, told LSU officials he was staying, then called an angry pre-game news conference to rip ESPN and say he'd never talked to anyone about leaving. Soon afterward, LSU issued a press release saying he'd agreed in principal to a new contract.
That was it, game over.
Miles wasn't coming to Michigan.
And while some in the media tried to portray the former Michigan offensive guard as a cynical all-about-the-money guy who'd just used his alma mater and the memory of Bo Schembechler to leverage maximum bank out of LSU, the truth was, he'd essentially done what Michigan wouldn't do.
He called home. Twice.
"He will always love Michigan," Bass said. "It's a place that's very special in his heart. This has been very tough on him."
Why didn't Martin call back? Why hadn't he called Bass already, to set something up, particularly after LSU's athletic director said in a printed report that he had no problem with Martin calling the agent?
Was he at the beach? Out sailing?
Martin did not return a message left on his cell phone Tuesday, and Michigan spokesperson Bruce Madej said the athletic director was attending a football awards dinner in New York. Martin did e-mail that he was "on a fund raising trip for football stadium. Also working on coach search."
There are really only a few explanations for what happened with Miles, though, none of them very good.
Maybe Martin is so old school he refused to deal with an agent.
Maybe Martin believed Michigan is such a special job that Miles would wait as long as was necessary to talk to him.
Or maybe, it was all a show. Perhaps Martin never really wanted to hire Miles, and asked permission to speak to the LSU coach simply to appease the former Michigan players and the legions of fans who were clamoring for the big-name candidate who bled maize and blue. Perhaps he was also scared off by reports that LSU would pay more than $3 million annually to keep Miles (Michigan, by comparison, paid Carr about half that).
It's hard to say which of those truths would be worse.
The first two mean Martin is in over his head and bumbled away his shot at Miles.
And if it was a show, why?
Why not have the courage of your convictions and publicly rule Miles out? Was it in hope that Miles - encountering silence from Michigan - would take Martin off the hook and rule himself out by taking the LSU deal?
What's clear is that Michigan's athletic director, intentionally or unintentionally, appears to have waited away any chance he had of hiring Les Miles.
And that Miles, in the aftermath, has been unfairly portrayed as being all about the big contract and nothing more.
Well, yeah, LSU showed him the money.
But before Miles agreed to take it, he asked Michigan to show him the love, to show him something - anything really - that indicated he would be the next Wolverines' coach.
He got silence in return.
Maybe by design.
Staying at LSU suddenly makes all the sense in the world.
You sure can't say the same about Michigan's search for a new football coach right now.
