The recruiting debacle provides anecdotal evidence that we didn't cheat before
Ryan Day simply holds a press conference and gives his payroll budget request ($14 million).
We already have an idea of what D. Moore is being offered to go to Oregon. (I heard $5 million)
Dan Patrick reported that one QB prospect was asking $8million
We lose the Prince of Michigan royalty to Notre Dame (good luck to the kid really).
Raylen Wilson decommit.
The Hunter Wilson pleas for a better NIL system.
This does provide me the sober satisfaction that Michigan wasn't paying players. If we were, we'd be a lot better at this than what we're showing.
I mean, we also kinda sucked at cheating too. You're not supposed to get caught but yet we did in the 90's and had to ignore the Fab Five and their accomplishments for decades
sucked at cheating? Uh, I don't know about that. It took a 1999 FBI case into Martin's numbers game to uncover things that were cleared by a Big Ten/UM investigation in 1997!
I'd say UM was pretty good at cheating and only got caught by very unfortunate circumstances at an unfortunate time (because nowadays, even FBI stings aren't enough!)
I'm starting to think JH to the NFL was because he saw this coming (Michigan NIL), He first advocated for players to be paid and now that its here we don't have crap going on. Seems to me JH doesn't think Michigan will do what it needs to do in an NIL world to get back to a championship. Would not be shocked to see more rumors next offseason, Why coach at a place that won't give you a chance to win big.
According to Sam Webb, this is how Harbaugh wants it. Michigan is "transformational, not transactional."
Then Harbaugh is proving to be a dinosaur in a time where everyone else is evolving. If it weren't for the "iconic" wings, we'd probably want to revert to leather helmets again for the sanctity of the game.
Then Harbaugh is proving to be a dinosaur in a time where everyone else is evolving.
So to extend the metaphor...
This is the saddest thing I've seen all day
+1
+1 this is made me laugh out loud
Then Harbaugh is proving to be a dinosaur in a time where everyone else is evolving
I doubt this is Harbaugh. My opinion: he's being a company man. If it were up to him UM would be knee deep in NIL
OR he is going to redeem himself in the free agency/transfer portal market.
Like one cat said up top where one QB just negotiated 9.5 million. He might flame out. Let other teams spend the money then we transfer in the next Jake Rudock.
Just saw that Emoni Bates is going to Eastern. How much money did Memphis (or MSU) waste on that?
good
Good for moral posturing, bad for recruiting.
i don't care about recruiting.
i don't care if michigan goes 6-6 every year.
i don't care to try to gamble millions of dollars on 17 year olds.
i don't care if michigan says "eff this" and joins the Ivy League
i will still root for them.
i root for the kids wearing the winged helmets.
it's a game played by college kids for our amusement.
holy hell do you guys get your knickers all knotted up over something that has no bearing on your life.
between the constant negativity, bitching and whining over recruiting, nil etc. this place is almost unbearable.
what the hell happened to the real fans? the ones that supported the school and the kids that matriculate at the school instead of only giving a fuck about where a high school kid goes to play a game, or wins and losses?
y'all the same complainers that wanted to fire harbaugh saying michigan had zero chance last year.
I wish I could transfer all my points to you because this is spot on. It's a game and there is no reason to get worked up over it.
This is a post on a sports board? Where did you come from and why are you still here?
If most fans think like you, we've already lost and you will get your wish for 6-6 seasons.
We already went through our down years with RR and Hoke. Now at least we have been competitive under Harbaugh but we will be heading back to the down years if we keep losing top talent. Unless Michigan embraces NIL like most other schools, we will be left in the dust and only get 2 and 3 star players. Sad that the University has to place it self on a high horse and destroy its competitive football program.
it's a game dude ... a game. played by kids.
It's a game but would rather see Michigan win then flounder. But to each their own.
so would i, but im also not going to post apocalyptic nonense on a message board over a game.
LOL, you've probably never visited any of the subreddits for different video games. People get worked up for games, all kinds of games. If you have no passion for this game, maybe a checkers subreddit would be more appropriate?
Not trying to flame, but seriously...
"i don't care if michigan goes 6-6 every year."
Why are you even on this message board then or watch the games? You sound like you don't have a competitive bone in your body.
Fans aren’t actually competing.
i watch the games, i don't play ... what am i supposed to be competing at exactly?
All due respect, Magnus, i'm not buying that Harbaugh is a competitor who believes strongly in the principle of a level playing field.
He knew he wasn't going to be able to maintain his typical recruiting. I think he took the Vikings debacle very hard.
Jim was able to call up individual donors to pay for the international trips with one check.
And when is the next international trip planned? There is none and probably never will be. Much like the satellite camps and crazy recruiting trips these ideas come and go for reasons. Not saying they aren't legit reasons, but when Harbaugh hits too much resistance he moves on to something else.
Now he's stuck here because the NFL didn't want him. He's probably given up the NIL fight, now just going with the flow as he has one good season at M left - maybe 2 if the transfer portal doesn't destroy our team after next season.
Sam slurps up all the UM talking points with pride and dutifully regurgitates to the slaps
Webb said many times that Harbaugh's dalliance with the NFL was going to be problematic for Michigan and that he was going to have to work very hard to rebuild things back to where they were before he decided to test the NFL waters. Was that a U-M talking point?
Webb had been saying for months that Raylen Wilson's status as a commit was not solid, and he was proven right. Was that a U-M talking point?
He's been saying for weeks that not getting either Moore or Carr would be a big blow. Was that a U-M talking point?
He's been saying for a week or more that Oregon now leads for Dante Moore. Is that a U-M talking point?
He's also been saying for several weeks that Michigan's stance on NIL is probably going to put us at a disadvantage with respect to other programs. Is that a U-M talking point?
Its actually the opposite. Its JH that does not want to engage in the outright free for all go to the highest bidder recruiting. People seem very confused how NIL works...it is not the university paying players. I'm sure there are some things UM could do to be a better facilitator, but the real issue is other schools already had back channel booster apparateus set up to pay players when this was illegal. Now they are just doing it in the open. If JH wanted to step up our NIL game, I am sure he could make some phone calls and assemble a group of alumni/boosters to get this working. He has chosen not to try and compete in the highest bidder arms race. I'm willing to let it play out, I just hope it stays a "we'll always hover in the 10-15 recruiting range" and not "holy shit we can barely break top 30"
Michigan now has collectives with supposedly big money (I am skeptical that this is true but I guess we will see) but they have been explicitly directed by Harbaugh and the AD to not contact recruits. Their sole goal is to pay guys on the roster. Which is a noble gesture at face value but when recruits go to elsewhere because of no up front promise, they will be left giving money to a roster of 3 stars.
Michigan is basically sacrificing this recruiting class from a sense of overcaution to NCAA regulations and state law. I am hoping that when December rolls around and this class is in the 20s that they will realize error of their ways and have to play the game. Either that or accept losing.
One poor recruiting class isn't the end of the world. Two in a row and it gets bad fast
The collectives don't have that much money yet.
Angelique's article seemed to imply that there were some big money backers. Also I listened to a podcast by the guys organizing the collective that their goal is to make it top of the line.
If not then this is real bad lol. Michigan can't even point to guys on the team and be like "sign here and you'll get paid approximately what this other guy who plays your position is making".
Thanks for your response Seth. Must be fun for you looking at the board these days 🥱
Folks seem to want to keep ignoring that providing NIL for "prospective students" is not legal under State of Michigan law.
The law needs to change. It was a good attempt at supporting NIL endeavors before the NCAA made it a free for all. Now its a competitive disadvantage to states that fully allow it.
Hell get Sparty's AD on board (which MSU I am sure would be in favor of) and Warde Manual could get the law changed easily enough
Folks seem to want to keep ignoring that providing NIL for "prospective students" is not legal under State of Michigan law.
So what is MSU doing? Mel Tucker has won nothing as a head coach, and now he's suddenly pulling in top recruits?
Michigan paid players and always has! Good lord what a stupid comment
We for sure did provide payments and benefits - but I don’t know if our recruiting/booster apparatus was as sophisticated as the big boys however. Some of the roundabout ways that other schools were funneling cash to players and their families was far more complex, organized, and consistent than anything I’ve ever hear wind of Michigan doing.
Pardon me good sir "Never-Punt" but I will beg to disagree. Back in my day Coach Yost would hide silver dollars in my locker and Coach allowed me access to his Packard and that rascal had something called air-conditioning.
It's a question of degrees (and indirection, with payments), but I agree that Michigan has paid players for a long time.
Every school in the country has given some level of improper benefits. But if Michigan has been giving $1,000 to ten kids on the roster, and Ole Miss has been giving $40,000 to forty kids, that's an imbalance.
This does provide me the sober satisfaction that Michigan wasn't paying players. If we were, we'd be a lot better at this than what we're showing.
There's a world of difference between dropping $10, $25, or $50 thousand for a player (or looking the other way while some booster did it for you), and the millions of dollars that we're seeing thrown around in today's NIL marketplace. I'm not so sure that Michigan's inability/unwillingness to do the latter means we didn't do the former. My guess is that it happened.
I think a big part of the idea of the Michigan money cannon comes from the amount of money that is raised for different charities like the EDSBS charity bowl. You know, things that actually make a difference in the world. I don't blame UM fans/grads, etc. for wanting to put their money toward charity instead of dropping millions on one fucking high school recruit. In fact, I'm actually kind of proud of it.
I support players getting paid. I just think the amounts that we're seeing thrown around right now are a major sign of misplaced priorities. It's pretty sad actually. And it makes me even more proud that some of our highest earning players like JJ and Blake use their NIL money for good purposes, donating some of it to charities and making the world at least a little bit of a better place.
If we were paying players before NIL, then we were awful at it. We have way more money than Ole Miss or Georgia, yet we kept losing 5*s to schools like that on signing day. When was the last time a 5* flipped to us on signing day? Never? It argues to me that we were pretty clean.
When was the last time a 5* flipped to us on signing day? Never?
I seem to remember someone doing this in December 2018. Flipped from Bama to UM on signing day. A safety maybe? I can't remember his name but I think he was pretty good...
Not exactly to your point, but I also recall Hackett saying something about Rashan Gary getting offered six-figures from Clemson, but still signing with UM.
(I'm not saying he was paid. Just addressing your comment about flips on signing day.)
Agreed. My first and unexpected reaction when I heard the 8 million dollar price tag on that QB was an immediate sadness and drop in my interest in college football. I ruminated on it that day and it just is what it is. I know I'm going to feel less emotionally invested moving forward. It's just not interesting if this is all that's going to be determining who's winning games. Even the pros have salary caps so it's an even playing field. This is a joke and to me just rapidly heading toward not being fun anymore.
I agree with your charity comment. I am a married public school teacher, DINK, and we live pretty comfortably. I would rank my Michigan fandom an 8.5 or 9 out of 10. I was angry for over a week after last years MSU loss. BUT I would NEVER give my money to a high school student to go play for Michigan and that includes my former students who are being recruited. I just do not see a worthwhile ROI on that sort of thing.
I thought about it, even more, imagining I was a millionaire...I still wouldn't be giving my money away to high school kids. It is easy to spend others' money and talk about a money cannon here and there. I see this as something that will lower my interest in my fandom.
All the power to these kids making money. I get it. That is the primary reason why we go to school. So, later on, we can work to make money. It only makes sense for a kid to take a seen figure NIL team from a team compared to a "once you're here there are NIL opportunities." If I had a kid who was being recruited, I'd have to steer them to take the money like that compared to a wait-and-see approach.
Team Pay the Players vs. Team Moral Superiority is going to be 80 percent of the arguments on this blog for the next year or two.
Any guesses as to which side ^^^this^^^ guy is going take? : )
Probably 3-4 if nothing changes drastically from the current setup. Either we are going to wake up to articles in 2026 about how Jim Harbaugh “saw this coming all along” and built a different kind of team to succeed alongside pieces on the blowback from fed up boosters no longer willing to pay big bucks at A&M or most of us won’t even be on the blog anymore as we read about how some billionaire made Toledo football a juggernaut and how Michigan missed the moment just after finally making it to the mountaintop again in 2021.
This is like the stock market. We may be missing out on huge returns by not buying the IPO. We may be more or less in the same place by holding our index funds. Or we may watch a bunch of day traders lose their shirts. It’s wild, man.
at least I got to watch us beat OSU one more time before the pro-era of college football began
anyone willing to pay millions for a 17 year old kid to play a game is insane and ridiculous.
if college football upsets you this much, maybe stop watching?