Look, most of you are really overthinking this.
If you buy into the Eric Kaler / Norwood Teague / Board of Regents devised long-term plan for UofM revenue sports, you have to give Patino at least a few more years.
Now I know, I know this requires a huge leap of faith as it sprung from the fevered brows of the above mentioned Kaler, Teague and BoR. While it's true that Kaler is and has been mediocre at his job, and that Teaque was and is just a complete effing moron that no sane person should ever have hired and in the end became an embarrassment even to himself. And it is definitely the case that the BoR is comprised of the most feckless array that a feckless governor could come up with. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME.
The history of bringing in big time proven or semi-proven fixers wasn't working (you could see the germ of this thinking in the successful hire and compensation of J Kill). The thought was to bring in younger guys and grow the programs, personnel and relationship with the state over time. This "over time" concept is critical to understanding the plan. Patino and Fleck weren't expected to turn things around quickly. They were expected to keep the arrows pointing in the right direction over time.
Now it's true that the institutional memory is fraying badly with the welcome departure of of Kaler (for the love of God is it really that hard to find a President of the UofM who actually has some long-term love and affection and familiarity with the state and the university from the nearly six million people who live here???). Teague is of course gone and Coyle might be a smart guy, but hopefully he was onboarded to this plan as it was so blatantly obvious when he was hired. Much unfortunately rest on the shoulders of the BofR. But again just because they are inept, doesn't mean that they might remember and hold to a pretty good plan - at least one that wasn't doomed to fail the same way as the others. I say there's a fifty fifty shot that they do the right thing. But then again I'm an optimist by nature. The programs aren't great, but the arrows are pointing in the right direction. That was the deal! I mean if somebody articulated a better plan (I mean a genuinely better plan - for instance Flip Saunders as long term coach) I'm all ears. But nobody's come up with one.
Lastly as an aside, I don't know about Coyle, but how difficult is it really to hire an AD who lives here and loves and cherishes the state and the U? All they have to do is get rich old people to give them money and hire and fire the right egomaniacs. We've got six million people here . . . . . . .