Michigan athletics is big business.

The University of Michigan Athletic Department has a budget of $74.5 million and projected revenue of $87.4 million this fiscal year. Last summer, Adidas and the University inked an 8-year agreement worth $7.5 million for the company to supply apparel to Michigan's 25 athletic teams. The new basketball coach makes $1.3 million a year with bonuses for reaching the NCAA Tournament and an extra $150,000 for winning it. The new football coach makes $2.5 million a year - more than three times the yearly salary of the University's president.

Athletic directors, the people who oversee all that money, traditionally have a strong connection to collegiate sports.

Fielding Yost, who served as athletic director from 1921 to 1941, was a longtime Wolverine football coach whose 1901 team outscored opponents 550-0 and won the first Rose Bowl. Fritz Crisler (1947 to 1968) coached the football team for 10 seasons, winning 71 games and losing only 16. Don Canham (1968 to 1988) coached the Michigan track and field team after competing on it as a student. Everyone knows Bo Schembechler (1988 to 1990), one of the most successful college football coaches in the sports history. Jack Weidenbach (1990 to 1994) was senior associate director of athletics before taking the department's top job. Joe Roberson (1994 to 1997) was once signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Even Tom Goss (1997 to 2000), an experienced businessman, played defensive tackle for the Wolverines in the 1960s.

Bill Martin is different.

Rather than playing on the football team here, he went to Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and then earned a graduate degree in economics from the University of Stockholm in 1963. Only after that did he come to Ann Arbor to get an MBA in 1965. His sport of choice is sailing, and he has served as president of the United States Sailing Foundation and the U.S. Sailing Association. He has never been a legendary football coach. He has been president of the U.S. Olympic Committee and has taught classes at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business School.

Above all, Martin is a businessman. A very successful businessman.

In 1968, he started First Martin Corporation, an Ann Arbor-based commercial real estate firm, which now has ownership interests in 40 area properties totaling about 1.4 million square feet, according to Robert Gates, an FMC vice president.

Take it from longtime competitor John Swisher III, co-founder and chairman of Swisher Commercial, who said Martin's company has set the pace for local commercial real estate companies.

"I can't think of anyone at the same level," he said.

Martin is a partner in or owns a number of other smaller commercial real estate companies, including C3 Capital Partners, 2401 LLC and Traverwood II LLC. He is also the founder and chairman of the Bank of Ann Arbor.

That's his résumé, but who is Bill Martin?

And what does the answer to that question mean for the University of Michigan?

Perhaps as a result of thousands of business deals, Martin has developed what is reputed to be one of the most charming personalities on campus.

During a recent two-hour interview in Weidenbach Hall, he doled out life advice to a writer for The Michigan Daily, mused about the power of Robert's Rules of Order and talked about the importance of taking economics classes.

He speaks quietly but firmly and clearly. When he gets agitated, he exudes an almost grandfatherly sense of disappointment. He's also a bit of a name-dropper. He read a quotation from W.B. Yeats ("Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart") that a big Athletic Department donor sent to him during the search for a football coach this fall. He mentioned an Easter e-mail he received from Pierre Woods, the New England Patriots linebacker. Then there are the New Year's gifts from billionaire alum Sam Zell.

Both real estate moguls, Zell and Martin got to know each other as competitors. Each year, Zell sends out small statues - each about a foot tall - that play songs the Chicago businessman wrote himself. Martin insisted on showing them off. For example, one is a replica of the torch from the Statue of Liberty with a rolling ticker that displays the entire Declaration of Independence and a recording of Zell's new lyrics to "This Land is Your Land."

Because Martin spends so much time working as athletic director (he says he's in the office from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays), he has scaled back his involvement with his business holdings, letting his sons do most of the work.

"I haven't been active at all," he said.

As one of the largest leaseholders in the area, it's of little surprise that the University is one of Martin's largest tenants.