Michigan AD says he will not resign or fire coach Brady Hoke

Embattled University of Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon, in an interview with the school paper, said he has no plans to resign or fire football coach Brady Hoke.

Brandon also responded to the thousands of Michigan students who are calling for his job.

“That’s very hurtful,” Brandon told the Michigan Daily on Thursday. “Anybody who thinks that they want groups to gather with the topic being criticism and sometimes very personal attacks on the work and the job. It’s hurtful. It’s hurtful to me, it’s hurtful to my family.”

The football program has been embroiled in controversy since Saturday, when quarterback Shane Morris was allowed to return to the Minnesota game in Ann Arbor, Mich., with what turned out to be a concussion.

“I’m not tone-deaf,” he added. “I felt very badly. My job and my personality is to the best of my ability, I have to fix that.”

Hoke said he had no idea at the time Morris had a head injury. He thought Morris was nursing an ankle sprain. Brandon waited two days to release a statement saying there was a breakdown in communication among the athletic staff.

“The appropriate person in athletics — and I judged that to be me — needed to make it very clear that a mistake was made,” Brandon told the school paper. “We own it, we recognize and we acknowledge that a mistake was made, we apologize for it — and I did — and we immediately committed that we would learn from it and make changes to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again.”

Brandon said Morris returned to the game before he could be evaluated by a neurologist.

Morris has been ruled out of this week’s game at Rutgers.