The Bill Martin Legacy, And What's Next

When Bill Martin took office as athletic director at the University of Michigan on March 6, 2000, he inherited a department in disarray. Tom Goss, who was forced to resign, had left the cupboards bare. The athletic campus facilities was stale and old, the basketball program was getting taken out to lunch by the NCAA, and the department as a whole was bleeding cash. Most casual Michigan fans don't pay too much attention to the AD. Unless rules get broken or something is not going the way it should, the role of AD publicly is just to be the PR guy, the face of athletics at the university. Sure, he must sign off on projects, approve budgets, but really Bill Martin might have spent more time delegating to his associates and sailing than he did actually turning around the department. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Maybe Martin's most significant role was not just his ability to do his job well, but hiring smart and dedicated people to surround him. I think Mart...