And who can really blame them after watching the same old collapse against the same lowly teams? This season has continued a progressive collapse of the program, with no solution in sight.

Yet as much as firing Howard might please disgruntled fans, it’s going to take more than just a coaching change to make the Wolverines competitive. They have to contend with a changing NIL market and years of poor roster building to become relevant again. Firing Howard isn’t the panacea everyone thinks it is.

In its current construction, Michigan isn’t competitive for a number of reasons. It can’t keep star players around, with raw freshmen like Jett Howard, Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabate leaving for bit roles in the NBA or deep in the G League. Meanwhile, other players like Frankie Collins and Hunter Dickinson have hit the transfer portal seeking bigger roles or NIL money. Losing so much talent and suffering from limited freshman classes has put the Wolverines in a negative feedback loop.

So how do they break out of it? To start, there needs to be reform on NIL. Michigan lags behind major men’s basketball programs like Kansas, who they lost Dickinson to last April. On his podcast, Roundball, Dickinson openly lamented his lack of an NIL paycheck as the biggest star in the program during his sophomore and junior years. In a market where some schools can give big-time players deals that rival pro leagues, Dickinson made “less than six figures” in Ann Arbor. If that’s the case for everyone, the Wolverines desperately need to change their ways in that NIL space for all sports, and especially men’s basketball. Howard cannot make that change alone.

Michigan Athletics has stood pat on the NIL front, and remains cautious to this day. At a press conference introducing Sherrone Moore as football coach on Jan. 27, athletics director Warde Manuel made that clear.