What may well have been a sideline miscommunication among the University of Michigan (UM) football staff has quickly become a major PR problem for the school's athletic department.
According to ESPN, hundreds of Wolverines fans and students gathered Tuesday evening to walk from a popular meeting place on campus to the president's house. The group's purpose was to call for the firing of David Brandon, UM's athletic director.
President Mark Schlissel has responded by ordering a "thorough review" of what transpired during Saturday's loss at home to Minnesota. The incident in question was a head injury sustained by quarterback Shane Morris, which head coach Brady Hoke and the entire sidelines staff and medical personnel apparently missed.
"Despite having one of the finest levels of team medical expertise in the country, our system failed on Saturday," Schlissel said in the statement obtained by ESPN. "We did not get this right and for this I apologize to Shane, his family, his teammates, and the entire Michigan family. It is a critical lesson to us about how vigilant and disciplined we must always be to ensure student-athlete safety. As president, I will take all necessary steps to make sure that occurs and to enforce the necessary accountability for our success in this regard."
Brandon released his own statement Monday to address UM's commitment to student-athletes' well being and to explain what happened. Morris took a helmet-to-helmet hit in the fourth quarter, which Brandon said no one saw, and then stayed in for one more play.
Afterward, Morris was visibly dizzy and needed to clutch a teammate's shoulder to stay upright, but Hoke and the medical staff though that was due to a high ankle sprain he sustained earlier. Brandon then confirmed Morris had experienced head trauma.
Several media outlets called for Hoke's job to be taken away for missing a crucial injury to his quarterback, regardless of whether or not it was actually just his ankle. Leaving a football player in the game after he sustained head trauma is extremely dangerous, especially given how far concussion research has come.
Though some of the outrage is reserved for Hoke's ineffectiveness as a coach. Michigan is 2-3 despite the tougher part of their schedule being ahead of them and the team has now lost two straight home games against unranked opponents.
"Michigan has a special place in my heart," Craig Kaplan, a UM senior who helped organize the demonstration, told ESPN. "The fact that it's been mismanaged like this hurts me deeply as a student, as a fan, just as a person that cares about this university. It makes me upset how students have been handled and how the culture at Michigan has changed."
