Saturday's game against Rutgers gives Michigan a chance to change the subject after a tumultuous week for the program, and it can't come soon enough for the Wolverines.
Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon went on a media blitz Thursday, speaking to several outlets around the state to explain his view of the situation involving quarterback Shane Morris and his treatment last Saturday after he suffered a concussion.
"I don't think Brady (Hoke) deserves any blame for what happened on the sidelines," Brandon told the Detroit Free Press. "Because Brady is responsible for coaching.
"Our medical staff, which incorporates all of our trainers, our physicians -- it's a rather large complement of people down there -- their job is to notify the coaches if a situation occurs where either somebody needs to come off the field or somebody cannot go back on the field."
Brandon, Hoke and the rest of the Michigan athletic department have spent much of this week doing damage control in the wake of the incident involving Morris in last week's loss to Minnesota. Morris, who started the game for the Wolverines, was laid out on a late hit and appeared to get up woozy. However, coaches failed to notice the issue, and he eventually returned to action before being removed permanently from the game.
"Part of the problem here that we own, that we're apologizing for is a lack of internal communication," Brandon added. "That's part of the problem. There's a lot of voices, a lot of moving parts, a lot of people involved, a lot of people who had opinions and perspectives on what happened and we did a horrible job of gathering all that together and getting everybody on the same page. That's one of the things we have to apologize for, own up to and fix."
Despite considerable criticism being leveled directly at Brandon -- students marched to the school president's house Wednesday to demand Brandon be fired -- Brandon, the former Domino's Pizza CEO, maintained in an interview with the school paper that he hasn't considered resigning and firing Hoke is not on the table.
It's been a difficult start to the season for Michigan, but the recent media blitz by Brandon and the support he has shown for Hoke makes it clear that the two are tied at the hip in Ann Arbor, for better and for worse.
You can follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.
