Free The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian

thirty-five years and needed to continue to fill the Big House to stay on top.
    Why? Projected athletic department revenue was estimated to be around $130 million for the fiscal year 2012–13, second only to Texas. Given the full-throttle race his department was running, Brandon needed virtually every dollar to self-fund twenty-nine varsity sports and 880 student-athletes, including $18 million for financial aid, $44 million in department salaries and about $15 million in interest on the debt load associated with $228 million in upgrades and renovations to just the football and basketball facilities.
    What kept Brandon—and so many other athletic directors up at night—was the razor-thin margin for error. Michigan’s overall surplus for fiscal year 2012–13 was estimated to be just $5.8 million. The athletic department needed rivers of cash to stay out of the red. More than 70 percent of that money—or nearly $90 million—flowed from a single source.
    “Michigan athletics cannot be successful if Michigan football does not lead our success, because the revenue it creates is what we live off of,” said Brandon. “I think it was Mark Twain who said, ‘If you put all your eggs in one basket, you better watch your basket.’ That’s our basket. It can’t get sick. It can’t falter.”
    That’s where the number 22 came in. According to the latest NCAA figures, just 22 of the top 120 FBS schools had turned a profit in 2010–11. The average institutional debt of the other 100 or so schools was approaching $11 million each.
    But Brandon didn’t see it that way. He didn’t see some unhealthy arms race behind the massive facilities boom sweeping across college athletics. Instead, he saw plain old American competition, with football as the economic driver to provide the coaching, the training and the academic and counseling support every one of his student-athletes deserved.
    “I need that kid to get everything he or she deserves, just as if they’re some star running back on the football team,” he said. “Because if I’m not doing that, I’m doing a real disservice to that kid. Yeah, football is a huge driver for what we do, but we’re here for a greater purpose.”
    At Michigan there was no question as to how that purpose would be accomplished. Plain and simple, it was Building the Brand. And nobody in college sports had proved more capable, more creative and, at times, more cutthroat in doing it than Brandon.
    “Our plan is over there on the wall,” Brandon said, pointing to the right side of his desk. “It’s one sheet of paper.”
    Indeed, the Michigan Athletics Game Plan had been reduced to a single page, sectioned off into twelve distinct boxes. Running vertically, along the left side, were Long-Range Goals, Strategic Initiatives and SMAC Objectives, short for Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Compatible Objectives, a product of Brandon’s days at P&G. Across the top of the page were four headings:
    GROW IN EVERY WAY
    BUILD THE BRAND
    DRIVE CHANGE AND INNOVATE
    TALENT AND CULTURE WINS
    Listed inside the twelve boxes were forty-seven different goals and initiatives, such as “Achieve annual revenues of 160 plus million,” “Own social media,” “Encourage and reward risk-taking” and “Achieve #1 national ranking in licensing revenues and total football attendance in the same year.”
    For Brandon it all started with that block
-M
logo and what Michigan football meant to his alums. He was fearful of television’s impact on game-day attendance. More than anything, he wanted that “wow” experience for his fans. So he upgraded the video boards, facilities and equipment inside Michigan Stadium, Crisler Arena and Yost Field House to the tune of $18 million. Out went the traditional pregame marching band music in the Big House in favor of a joint-jumping mix of hip-hop, rap and rock, as well as video board entertainment. Suddenly game balls were dropping out of the sky, delivered by “Rocket