University of Michigan (UM) athletic director Dave Brandon spoke out about those demanding he fire head football coach Brady Hoke and then resign himself.
He told the Michigan Daily he had no such intentions. Since admitted that the UM athletic department made a mistake last weekend with quarterback Shane Morris, football fans and students have made their voices heard.
Last Saturday, Hoke and the Wolverines lost a second consecutive home game against an unranked opponent. In the fourth quarter, a Minnesota defender hit Morris helmet-to-helmet and the QB fell to the ground, whipping his head as he went down. Morris then got up, wobbled around and clutched a teammate's shoulder to keep from falling.
He stayed in for the next play and then came out.
"That was just another example of the failure of communication that took place between among of the doctors, all of the trainers - in this case, the head coach - to try to piece together what happened," Brandon told the UM student-run newspaper.
Earlier this week, hundreds gathered on campus for a demonstration calling for both Brandon and Hoke to be removed from their positions. Media outlets and publications have also expressed disappointment in how the situation was handled.
"The appropriate person in athletics - and I judged that to be me - needed to make it very clear that a mistake was made," Brandon said. "We own it, we recognize and we acknowledge that a mistake was made, we apologize for it - and I did - and we immediately committed that we would learn from it and make changes to ensure that it wouldn't happen again."
With everything known about concussions today, it was extremely dangerous for Morris to stay in the game, but apparently no one saw him take a helmet-to-helmet hit. Both Hoke and Brandon said none of the football or medical staff saw the hit, so they thought Morris stumbled from an ankle injury.
It has led UM to implement a new system to make sure something like this never happens again. The team will now have an athletic trainer in the press box and will be able to radio directly to the sideline to inform the coaches of a possible injury.
"That provides a couple of advantages," Brandon said of the new system. "He'll be able to see the field and and see things occurring that are hard to see on the sideline. He'll be wired to the sideline so that he can communicate with all those doctors and trainers in a real-time basis. He'll have a television set that is always on a six-second delay. So what he'll be able to do is watch the player live from their vantage point and then he can refer to the play on television.
"What I've learned, going through this process, is that one of the great advantages we can provide them, is to get them wired up in a way they can talk to one another without having to necessarily stand next to one another, because sometimes that's difficult."
