ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The day after Dave Brandon resigned as the University of Michigan’s athletic director resembled most other football Saturdays in this college town.
Fans wearing maize and blue filled parking lots crowded with grills and beer and the bag-toss game known as cornhole. Alumni returning for the weekend crunched orange leaves during nostalgic walks through the campus. “The Victors,” the Wolverines’ fight song, played from stereo speakers at seemingly every corner.
But there was an uneasy undercurrent. The news of Brandon’s resignation turned the Wolverines’ 34-10 victory over Indiana on Michigan’s homecoming weekend into a backdrop for a conversation about the future of the storied program, which is floundering in its fourth season under Coach Brady Hoke.
“I think Michigan knows what it is and what it wants to be, but we’ve had this sense that we’re looking to find our identity,” said John Zalewski, a 2007 Michigan graduate. “The years under Brandon, it felt like we lost it.”
Having recently lost favor with the university’s board of regents, Brandon, 62, resigned Friday after nearly five years as athletic director. James P. Hackett, a former teammate of Brandon’s under Coach Bo Schembechler and a former chief executive of an office furniture company in Grand Rapids, Mich., is the interim athletic director.
In Ann Arbor, fans and the news media have turned their attention to Hoke’s future at Michigan, a favorite topic here all season that has come under renewed questioning as the Wolverines (4-5, 2-3 Big Ten) struggle.
“This is Step 1,” Rick Bennett, a longtime Michigan season-ticket holder, said of Brandon’s resignation. “Step 2 is hiring a new coach. Brandon created this mess, and I don’t think the people in charge had the confidence that he could clean it up.”
In January 2011, Brandon hired Hoke after firing Rich Rodriguez, who had completed his third season in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines have finished 11-2, 8-5 and 7-6 in Hoke’s three full seasons as their coach. (Rodriguez, who was hired at Arizona in 2011, has the Wildcats ranked No. 12 by the College Football Playoff’s selection committee.)
Entering Saturday’s game, Michigan was last in the Big Ten in several offensive categories, including total offense (320.8 yards per game) and scoring offense (20.4 points per game).
With Michigan’s performance spiraling downward, Hoke and Brandon became targets for criticism over the handling of a potentially concussed quarterback in a 30-14 loss to Minnesota on Sept. 27.
The team’s poor play since then has not diminished the unease here, and Mark S. Schlissel, the university president, said at a news conference Friday that he expected Hackett, the interim athletic director, to handle the evaluation of Hoke’s status at the end of the season.
On Saturday, despite the discussion that swirled around Michigan Stadium, the Wolverines started the post-Brandon era on a positive note by dominating the battered Hoosiers. Injuries forced Indiana (3-5, 0-4) to rely on its third-string quarterback, Zander Diamont, a freshman. Michigan built a 17-0 lead by halftime.
To many associated with Michigan, however, what happened on the field might have seemed secondary to the challenges the program continues to face.
Hoke declined to discuss those issues when asked to comment on Brandon’s resignation.
“I’m not going to talk on that,” Hoke said after the game, “because I’m going to talk about what those kids did between the white lines.”
Brandon took over as Michigan’s athletic director in March 2010 after serving as the chief executive of Domino’s Pizza. Although Michigan initially hailed Brandon’s business experience, the executive approach he brought to the job grated on Wolverines fans.
His marketing flair did not mesh with Michigan’s staid culture. He also raised student prices for football tickets, although the university recently announced a nearly 40 percent price reduction for next season.
“It’s clear that Mr. Brandon wasn’t in touch with the larger community,” said Edward Mears, a law student who was part of a student group that sought Brandon’s firing. “These are your future donors and probably parents who will send their kids here. To treat them more as a customer than a long-term investment is just bewildering.”
After the concussion episode in September, students rallied for Brandon’s ouster. Last week, in what apparently precipitated Brandon’s departure, a Michigan blog published emails seemingly sent by Brandon in which the emails’ author suggested that an unhappy fan “find a new team to support.”
The discontent surrounding Brandon culminated with his resignation. But the questions about Michigan’s future appear unlikely to subside any time soon.