He’s the man who handpicked the newly minted Big Ten Coach of the Year, directing a Michigan football program out of the mediocrity experienced during the Rich Rodriguez era into a new age of Michigan football.

He played for Bo Schembechler and longed to return the Wolverines to success tasted under one of Michigan’s greatest.

He also chest bumps the starting defensive end after marquee wins.

Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon sat down with Michigan Daily football beat writer Tim Rohan on Wednesday to discuss the state of the program and how Hoke saved the day, among other topics.

The Michigan Daily: What was your impression of the win over Ohio State last weekend? How big of a win was it for the program, ending the Buckeyes’ seven-game win streak?

Dave Brandon: At Brady’s first press conference, he talked about Ohio. It’s a focal point. When I played here, it was a focal point. It’s always been a game, really, that’s defined a season. And Bo (Schembechler) always said you can’t have a successful season at Michigan if you don’t beat Ohio.

It was a big game and had big implications in terms of our bowl picture. It was important for our fans. It had been a lot of years since we walked off that field feeling good. So I was really pleased for our kids and our coaches and our fans.

TMD: Back in January, when you hired Hoke, even in your wildest of dreams did you imagine you’d have a chance at a BCS bowl this season?

Brandon: I don’t think that way. There’s so many things in this game that could change fortunes. The bounce of a ball. Injuries. We had certain positions going into the season, that had we lost a player or two, we would have really been hurting.

We were just really fortunate it didn’t happen. I just believed in our coach and he believed in our team. Brady’s expectation going into the season was that we were going to compete for the championship. You go back, people talked about rebuilding years, foundational years and start-up years and he didn’t want any part of that. He basically said you don’t rebuild at Michigan. This is Michigan. We compete for championships. And he’s a very believeable guy.

So I had high expectations. But hey, listen, I’m like anybody else. I’m thrilled we’re 10-2 and love the position we’re in. It’ll be a great reward for this team to go off and play in a great bowl game.

TMD: When did you buy into Hoke? In the interview process, was there a moment you said, ‘This is the guy I want?’

Brandon: Yeah, really, there was. I intended to spend a couple of hours with him. I had never met him. I intended to do a two-hour block. At some point I looked down at my watch and went, ‘My God, its been three-and-a-half hours.’

And it was really as a result of the fact that it seemed every issue and every area that I wanted to delve into, I was just so impressed with his responses, his fit, the way he thought, the way he approached communicating, his philosophy towards kids and football and Michigan.

It just, at the end — and I think I spent about five hours with the guy — at the end of it, I had a matrix, kind of a scoring system for all of the interviews that I did. I got to the end of the interview, shook hands and he left. And I sat there and I added up all my points, to put in the far right column, kind of the total point rating that he got on the interview. And I added them all up and I had to do it twice because I thought I had miscalculated. The number was so high, I thought, ‘This can’t be right.’ And I went back and I added them again. It was right.

At that moment, I just knew this was a very special guy who was very specially — he was very uniquely positioned to come here and do what needed to done.”

TMD: What ‘needed to be done’ about the football program?

Brandon: What I liked about Brady was he really understood the culture of Michigan football and the tradition of Michigan football. There’s an expectation here that is about our coaches, about our players.

As importantly, there is an expectation as to what the tradition of Michigan football is all about. And Brady understood that better than most. I loved the emphasis on defense.

Let’s face it. We’ve gone through a three-year period of time where we were trying to outscore everybody. We were playing horrible defense.