Les Miles, the newly fired head coach of LSU, has at various turns been connected to the same job at his alma mater Michigan. Miles still has fond feelings for Michigan, and his name came up often when the Wolverines job was open in 2007 (to be filled by Rich Rodriguez) and in 2011 (to be filled by Brady Hoke.)
Michigan reportedly once tried to land Les Miles with a Domino’s airplane, but couldn’t deliver
A tastier pizza brand might have worked better.
Crystal LoGiudice-USA TODAY Sports
Obviously, it never happened. Miles didn’t take over at Michigan, and he almost surely never will, even if he really ought to go satellite camping with Jim Harbaugh.
But according to a former LSU athletic director, Michigan pushed hard for Miles in 2011 and did so in a way that incorporated pizza, as all things should.
In a Wednesday interview with ESPN Radio 104.5 FM in Baton Rouge (and written out here), former LSU AD Skip Bertman said Michigan offered Miles the UM job, vacated that year by longtime coach Lloyd Carr.
“I swear to God that’s true. He turned it down,” Bertman told the station. “LSU had just given him this new contract, and the president of Domino’s Pizza flew down on a Domino’s plane and offered him [the Michigan job], and he says, ‘You’ve got to tell me tonight, Les, because if you don’t say yes, I’m going to get Brady Hoke.’ And sure enough, he took off and the next day you read in the paper that he hired Brady Hoke.”
Michigan hired Dave Brandon, then the pizza chain’s chairman and CEO, to be its athletic director in 2010.
Whether Michigan offered Miles the job is a point of contention by lots of Michigan fans. A book released in 2011 tells a story of Miles coming pretty close to winding up in Ann Arbor in 2007; of course, he didn’t. The same author, John U. Bacon, wrote that no offer was made in 2011.
Anyway, there you have it. Perhaps a Pizza Hut plane would’ve done the job.*
*It definitely would not have done the job.
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