I wish Harbaugh had addressed the Durkin situation directly.  His non-response response had the whiff of covering for Durkin and "protecting the shield" as it were.

I also wish that someone in the room had asked a follow-up in the line of Brian's comment - "Did you ever witness such behavior from Durkin during his time here at Michigan?"

Great opinion post. I whole-heartedly agree except that I'm not convinced "realized the mistake he made by hiring a brick-dumb yelly guy who'd never really been his own man". I certainly hope that's the case, but it's hard to identify that when Durkin left for a HC job. Would be a lot easier sell if it had been more of a lateral move.

Thanks for being willing to call out our program. This is the type of stuff that (hopefully -- ah who am I kidding) neuters irrational fandom before it starts.

It's important though, so thanks for it. 

Scott Frost, much like his surnamesake, took the road less traveled. And that has made all the difference.

Very concerned about this, I don't ever want to see anything like that happen at Michigan (or anywhere else obviously).

Also I think I like Scott Frost now? I am confused... 

Well... this explains a lot.  

Is there any benefit to Harbaugh or UM by answering though?  

The media or public may want to hear it, but what's the point of saying it to the media? If he's approached by attorneys, then I'd expect him to be more forthcoming.  

The best thing that could happen would be for Durkin to be tried and face jail time. That's the only thing that's going to get through the CTE addled brains of a lot of coaches. 

These schools also have to have medical professionals on site at all times during physical activity who do not report to the athletic department. That's not going to solve every problem seeing as there's some schools where the leadership of the overall university are co-opted by the athletic department in unacceptable ways, but it will help keep this from happening at many schools. 

I'm a little surprised after the whole  Free Press stretchgate thing that Brian is taking some shaky reporting and giving it full weight.  I guess we will see.

The Mcnair situation willl play out with actual facts.  No need for anyone to speculate.

As to the toxic culture and Durkin is a huge dick.

1. How come Durkin's recruiting was going better than their record?   If the staff is full of dicks they couldn't recruit without success on the field.   The players would give the scoop to recruits.   If they did manage this large conspiracy to keep their dickness quiet then.....

2. Wouldn't a team with a "toxic" culture suffer massive losses in transfers?   I've heard nothing to suggest a problem before.

We continue to have this clash of cultures.  Football is brutal and when things don't go well you will have people with stories to tell.   Coaches like this are romanticized when things go well and demonized when they don't.   

Durkin coached under some of the biggest names in college football.  You think he's doing anything that drastically different then what he learned.  I'm pretty sure Alabama is not all sunshine and roses in the conditioning room.

Brian uses Frost as an example of how to handle it, but Frost is one misstep away from being with Durkin if one of those players had died. 

It's good to hold these coaches to a high standard to protect the health of the kids but some perspective is needed.  ESPN can target any team in the country and find ex players or staffers willing to give dirt on the team and spin it ugly.

There is a big difference between being a dick (or bully) coach and leaving a player who might be in serious trouble on the side of a practice field to die for an hour.  There is ample evidence to suggest that Harbaugh can be the former at times, or least tolerates it from his assistants. 

I don't think we have any evidence that he (or anyone on his staff) has ever done the latter.  I would hope that the program has in place safeguards that take any and all decisions dealing with player safety out of the hands of the coaches and into the hands of trainers and medical professionals.  We should have doctors and/or trainers at all practices / workouts, and they should have the authority to stop the practice or workout for any individual player at any time if they feel it necessary, with no questions asked from the coaching staff.

i'll reach back to harbaugh's media campaign after the peters thing at purdue, i'll say he cares about player safety, and maybe just enough to keep durkin's BS reigned in.  also recall he said UM would be taking a lead role in addressing the issues with "standard of care."

“We are going to look at everything we are going to do for the visiting team, as it relates to a standard of care for the visitors. On multiple levels,” Harbaugh said. “It’s become apparent after going around to all the visiting schools in the last couple years that it’s a conscious effort of gamesmanship. … It is unsportsmanlike when you have locker rooms that are too small. They’re not heated or cooled properly. There’s no air conditioning in this case, such a tight, cramped environment.

“People walking by, they’re watching you dress. A number of urinals or bathrooms for players, I think there were two. There’s not even a private door around it. And then mainly the health and safety of the players. Very small space for a training room that had nothing different.

“This is no different than the facility I saw in 1986. I’m not putting this on Purdue. This needs to be addressed by the league and by the commissioner. We’re going to lead the way.”

That said, it's a little disturbing that Harbaugh brought him to UM after already working with him at Stanford. We've talked at length about how Meyer made this mistake bringing Zach Smith to OSU because it's not like people really change from stop to stop.  Durkin was already a jerkbag at Stanford, was apparently one at UM, and it caught up to him at Maryland. 

So although Harbaugh and the wider policies and standards at UM may have kept Durkin's crazy slightly at bay, I hope JH is doing a little soul searching on how he evaluates assistants and how being loyal to your network might cause trouble.  

We totally dodged a bullet by getting Durkin out of here.   I never liked him with his stupid smile while his defense was getting killed by OSU.   I think that he has some type of issue that is best to let another team explore.

I don't blame Harbaugh for his comments but I feel we are lucky that Durkin didn't cause a significant problem worse than bad defense vs. OSU.   

I think it's likely that having Harbaugh & Mattison kept Durkin from being the evil dude that he truly is while he was at Michigan.