Are we using the correct arguments to defend our stance?
*Not a lawyer, but I took intro to logic! To which every college student should be subjected, as no one seems to be able to form a cogent argument in any avenue of life.
So…if the grounds of the defense is based on procedural irregularity on behalf of the big ten without addressing the undermining issue, aren’t we short-selling our defense?
see the following:
—Original NCAA rule of which we are alleged to violate involves advanced in-person scouting, based on a financial advantage
—NCAA itself does not see the advantage of signal stealing to be significant enough to warrant intervention, nor to be an outlawed practice
—this practice is commonly accepted among the wider coaching circles
—if coaches are allowed to “trade knowledge,” this act in and of itself would implicitly allow advanced in person scouting
—ADs argue advanced knowledge of signals results in player harm, a point the NCAA itself denies, as the rule itself was on the table for removal
—past precedent regarding advanced in-person scouting dictated a decision from the NCAA resulted in punishment for said infraction to the tune of a single half for past violator
—at one full game served banned from sideline, the whole issue should be over and done with
Additionally, would Harbaugh and the Regents have a case against the NCAA in antitrust law a la the current prof article stating this rule is in violation of the full educational expense of the student?
thanks in advance to all the mgolawyers, and let’s burn this whole thing down
November 12th, 2023 at 4:29 PM ^
Our straightforward defense is that they are trying to put us in jail for a parking ticket.
To quote Woodson: "It's all bullshit."
November 12th, 2023 at 4:35 PM ^
Agreed but that doesn’t seem to be swaying the court of public opinion
November 12th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
-- George Carlin
November 12th, 2023 at 4:55 PM ^
Epic line. Well said.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:32 PM ^
I love George Carlin. The only problem is that he assumes the median is the average. Dummies like those at Staee and Ohio can bring the average significantly down though the median is higher.
November 12th, 2023 at 9:09 PM ^
My favorite quote of all time. I am frequently reminded of it.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:49 PM ^
When it comes to the court of public opinion, my recommendation is to adorn yourself in the spirit of Special Agent Albert Rosenfield and pan them with gusto.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:50 PM ^
Because the court of public opinion does not actually give a shit about this story at all, they just want to use it to bludgeon Michigan.
TBH, it will just have to fizzle out over time. We haven't heard much about the "shocking" Northwestern hazing scandal recently. Or whatever provocative / stupid thing Deion said.
The next shiny object will take over.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:44 PM ^
Only way to win public opinion on this one if for Ryan Day and OSU to end up looking like the spoiled babies they are. Otherwise we’re losing that one and leaving it up to the lawyers to actually win
November 12th, 2023 at 5:52 PM ^
I think the public opinions on this are heavily tilted towards trolls, and some less trollish rival fans who are looking for excuses. Talk to other fans in real life and they mostly think this is nothing - some of my Pac 12 buddies thought we cheated minor and then when our leaks came out last week they thought "cheat" was too strong of a word.
Share wetzel's op Ed far and wide, and everything Joel Klatt says. I unsubscribed to the athletic because Stewart Mandel has revealed himself to be a troll, and Ari Wasserman doesn't know ball. I think Feldman got duped in his article and he seems to have come off it but ... Whatever don't worry about that this team is great and is going to prove it.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:16 PM ^
Yeah ill admit im in an NFL city where most people in my circle didnt even realize Harbaugh had been in trouble for a week. Most of what I hear is reddit and twitter…so yeah
November 13th, 2023 at 12:29 AM ^
Trolls only read headlines, and headlines are all about clickbait.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:01 PM ^
And they're doing it without a trial or even waiting until the investigation is complete.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:34 PM ^
IANAL. Everything so far has been in the court of public opinion. Our best arguments have been powered by the lawyer’s pens rather than keyboards and talking heads.
There’s really no defending our stance because osu and msu fans are the most active and facts don’t matter when it comes to them.
The rest of it hinges on whatever evidence Michigan has, uncovers, and makes public. Petitti is in an inescapable corner if Michigan has a bombshell on osu. He set a precedent and would be screwed legally if he doesn’t enforce a similar penalty without affording osu due process
November 12th, 2023 at 4:38 PM ^
He wouldn’t be “screwed.” There’s a million reasons he can make up on the fly, as he’s already shown he’s willing to do. “Their scouting was less flagrant or extensive.” “The evidence is less clear.” He just needs to say it, doesn’t matter if it’s true. He’s apparently able to dictate what happens with no faithful adherence to the handbook.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:07 PM ^
I hear you, however, I am certain he will quickly find out how far that type of thinking will get him.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:10 PM ^
That'd be nice. We'll see I guess.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:20 PM ^
Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:42 PM ^
Love this quote. One of my faves.😆
November 12th, 2023 at 4:34 PM ^
I hate to say it, and it will be unpopular. But I kinda think UM should negotiate a 2 game suspension with the BIG to drop the lawsuit and claim that Harbaugh missing win 1000 is enough penalty.
I don’t like our chances winning the hearing Friday and I am a lawyer but I did not take logic.
brian’s logic on this is sound. After Mel and Schemy, UMAD did not take responsibility and committed yet another stupid self-own. The entire AD should have been combed by an independent firm to find this type of thing. I mostly lay this at Ward’s feet.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:39 PM ^
I will be shocked if we win on Friday. I've never seen a court punt a TRO like this. A two game suspension would be a good result.
The Big Ten's original punishment said that it wasn't final and could be supplemented. Two games with finality would be a good result. I wonder if the league would go for it given that OSU runs the league office now?
November 12th, 2023 at 4:54 PM ^
If two games brought us finality, I would agree. But by all accounts it won't.
Also, the litigation serves an important secondary purpose: it reminds the NCAA to tread carefully in its own investigation and in imposing any punishment, as we are willing to fight an unjust result.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:45 PM ^
I actually think that the lawsuit may have been filed, in large part, in an attempt to negotiate a lesser suspension.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:09 PM ^
The time for negotiation was before the lawsuit. The threat of the lawsuit was our leverage, now that we've filed and seemingly drawn a judge that doesn't care, we have no leverage. Petitti is not going to walk this back. In fact, if he does win on Friday, I'd be worried about him extending the suspension once we beat Ohio State.
Our next steps are to drop what dirt we have on the whining coaches and demand Petitti abide by his new precedent. Turn the playbook on OSU and hire our PIs to investigate them. We all know they're the dirtiest program in the conference, so let them enjoy the new standards they've created.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:46 PM ^
Amen to scorched earth.
November 12th, 2023 at 11:09 PM ^
As satisfying as that would be, revealing our dirt on other coaches won't persuade Pettiti to take action against them. His basis for his action against Michigan was that the NCAA supposedly told him that they had definitive evidence that Michigan broke the rules. We won't have anything like that on other schools, so he can just say it's different.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:04 PM ^
Name checks out.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:51 PM ^
Not a bad idea. Petite might grab for the compromise.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:52 PM ^
At this point I agree. If they could negotiate 2 games Harbaugh is back for OSU. I don’t like Michigan’s chances in court. This team has great leadership but they need Harbaugh on the sidelines for OSU. Even if Harbaugh agreed to it I feel like that ship has sailed because the Big Ten feels very confident they will win in court.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:29 PM ^
What if NCAA does it's own thing? These things have no end. Cutting a deal with B1G is basically agreeing that you knew. It is not going win public opinion. I just don't see Harbaugh liking. It will give him more ammo to leave. It sounds short sighted to me. Fuck OSU game.. I want Harbaugh here long term. Do what Harbaugh wants.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:45 PM ^
Agreed. After several of these misses you would think the AD would put a protocol in place to root this stuff out before it becomes a problem. Not sure if Warde & Co. aren’t asleep at the wheel.
November 12th, 2023 at 7:12 PM ^
I’m a lawyer. A big chunk of my practice was non-compete litigation/trade secret litigation (thanks FTC!) where I had to go into court and get TROs and PIs, and I’m not terribly worried. I’m not reading much into the judge not granting it ex parte . Big ten is represented. It’s like there would be no coach absent action. It involves the interplay between Big Ten and NCAA rules and not standard contract provisions.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:35 PM ^
There are a few things that I think we could've used more in our arguments, but at this point it's kind of moot. That said, I don't know why we don't go this route more:
1) Michigan got Single White Female'd (or Manti Te'o-ed). We were taken by an overzealous con artist who wanted to seem valuable to one of the most publicly-visible coaches in the FBS. Stalions may have been on staff, but he wouldn't have been if his actions were known to the remainder of the staff. Michigan is as outraged as the B1G and were blindsided simply because they never expected someone to concoct a scheme like this on their own.
2) I have difficulty pinpointing the specific advantage in-person scouting has OVER standard scouting. Is there something you CAN get in person that you CAN'T from watching film? It seems like people are able to decode the entirety of teams' signals without in-person scouting. So what's the point? And if there's no point, what's the damage?
November 12th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
2) I have difficulty pinpointing the specific advantage in-person scouting has OVER standard scouting. Is there something you CAN get in person that you CAN'T from watching film? It seems like people are able to decode the entirety of teams' signals without in-person scouting. So what's the point? And if there's no point, what's the damage?
I think it's just a question of manpower or time. With standard all 22 film, you don't have a clear view of the signs. You have to spend hours and hours staring at the screen figuring which signs are up for which plays. With a direct view of the signs, the puzzle is all laid out for you plainly to be solved.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:59 PM ^
Ah. So it's a shortcut. That means my 1 and 2 feed into each other. To prove his value and establish himself as some sort of Guru or savant, Stalions resorted to shortcuts as part of his scheme. This served to enhance his standing in the eyes of the coaching staff, who believed Stalions' military training made him an asset in this particular arena.
It also was his undoing. As it became harder to manage, he got sloppier, and as the stakes rose, he needed to continue to escalate his expertise to keep himself in the staff's good graces. It's a typical con game that went wrong in a very typical fashion.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:40 PM ^
That's what I believe too, im sure other teams have guys who are actually really smart and are good at decoding the signs. Stallions cheated to be as good as those guys, but there's no doubt in my mind we can easily hire someone honestly good at the job to replace him.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
Mel Pearson was single white female #1 and Schemy was #2. We should take some responsibility for number 3. I don’t like the way the Big did it, but we need some amount of understanding that we fucked up here.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
Schemy was a nepotism hire that they didn't vet. Clear mistake but not on this level.
Pearson created a culture problem and got what was coming to him. That said, it wasn't about the football program. If you want to fine Michigan for cultural issues, that's another question, but that's an Athletic Department (read: Warde Manuel) problem, which doesn't feel germane to this.
I agree there's a level of responsibility that Michigan can take, but I think it would've been a very different conversation if they said "We fell for a con" and worked WITH the investigators instead of the way they did it.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:18 PM ^
Boston: split hairs all you like, but you must remember Brian saying before the season that Ward should not let anything slip by again after Schemy and Mel, so go argue with Brian Cook about it. I happen to agree with him.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:24 PM ^
I'm not saying Michigan shouldn't face consequences. I think we all expect some sort of punishment from this at this point.
That said, what I'm ONLY talking about how Michigan as an organization can approach crisis comms from a PR and narrative standpoint. This thread isn't about what we actually did or what trends are emerging within the program. It's about messaging, and that's what I'm discussing.
November 12th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
1. I feel kind of bad describing Stallions as a "con artist." He was a young man who tried to impress his boss by going above and beyond. I agree, his mistake was massive — a fact of which he is no doubt at this point acutely aware — but I haven't yet seen evidence that he's a bad person. (Which is what the phrase "con artist" implies). Still, yeah, agree otherwise with your first point. One staffer screwed up. Not Harbaugh or anyone else on the coaching staff. That seems all-too-often ignored.
(Though, to be fair, I suppose you could hold Harbaugh responsible for not making it clear to everyone on his staff to "follow the fucking rules" and not putting the team at risk, as Stallions did. I sure hope Harbaugh, or Warde, or someone, has sat down with everyone since to point to the rule book and say "learn it, love it, live it.")
2. In principle I agree with your second point too, but ... I still think you're not allowed to decide which rules you're allowed to break and which not. If Michigan felt the rule was pointless, they should have advocated to have it removed. Not simply violated it, in secret.
Plus, I'm sorry, but ... certainly Stallions, at least, thought he could gain an advantage by doing it. I think that argument, despite how often it's been made by people on this blog, is a non-starter. The guy who's job it was to decode signs though he could gain an advantage by hiring people to help him do so. Us, now, later, saying "but we didn't get anything by it!" isn't going to convince many people ...
November 12th, 2023 at 4:53 PM ^
So I don't know if Stalions is a "bad person" either, but he CERTAINLY did clandestine, underhanded things. I think they were too nice to him, and Stalions' own statement did a lot of the heavy lifting for this defense. If you're going to let a guy take the fall anyway, you might as well lean into it.
I also agree with what you're saying about #2. HOWEVER, I believe you can mitigate the severity of the charge or the fallout by demonstrating there isn't significant, if any, advantage to it. It's a broken rule, sure, but that doesn't mean it has to be a *major* broken rule. My point is that they should've downplayed it more proactively and did a little more to own the narrative in their statements.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:16 PM ^
Stalions was very clearly NOT doing "clandestine, underhanded things." He never tried to hide what he was doing because, as he seems to have realized, what he was doing was not against NCAA rules (unless he personally engaged in in-person advanced scouting, which is very far from clear). His supposed appearance at the CMU-NSU game seems pretty clearly to be a case of mistaken identity (the "sign stealing guy" had hair on his head, while CS shaves his head).
The position that we should take is that nothing that can be demonstrated was against NCAA rules. Tiny Tipetti claims that he has the power to unilaterally decide the case for the NCAA, but that stance relies on the dubious proposition that he somehow by divine dispensation has that power.
Was it wise of CS to exploit a very-poorly-written NCAA rule? No, in terms of it being worth the effort and the expenditure of funds from The Bank of Dad, but Stalions seems to be the kind of guy that would waste a ton of effort for the slightest advantage in the shadowy struggle between all the "sign stealers" on all of the teams Michigan would or might face.
The media, even that element favorable to Michigan, seems to have whole-heartedly bought into the concept that Stalions is certainly guilty because A Guy on the Internet said that he was. My stance is "believe what is evidenced and only that." The actual evidence so far shows Stalions doing nothing wrong. Stalions and Michigan deserve due process and are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
November 12th, 2023 at 5:41 PM ^
I agree, his mistake was massive — a fact of which he is no doubt at this point acutely aware — but I haven't yet seen evidence that he's a bad person. (Which is what the phrase "con artist" implies).
He also ran a fraudulent vacuum repair business and stole Blake Corum's name to do it. Also an incident made public about stealing personal data from the military.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:30 PM ^
I also question what type of vetting would’ve weeded Stallions out. Naval academy grad, marine, and was completely dedicated to Michigan. Yeah, he was probably obsessed with Michigan to an unhealthy degree, but how exactly do you identify that in the hiring process?
November 12th, 2023 at 4:56 PM ^
On the first one, we'll get there. But we can't run hard with that until both sides know what the facts actually are.
November 12th, 2023 at 6:51 PM ^
Perhaps but they can counter with past examples of insufficient due diligence on past hires that led to eventual terminations. They can say that if we didn’t know then we should have known or at least had a process in place to properly vet potential hires. That is on the athletic department.
November 12th, 2023 at 8:49 PM ^
What makes you believe that l, for example, Rutgers and OSU didn’t create those sheet by using in-person scouting? Maybe it is the only way 😉
November 12th, 2023 at 4:36 PM ^
All of this is spot on, but also, the hypocrisy here is so rampant and is why I think the common feeling around here is that UM will come out of this looking like the good guy. That a guy who took "intro to logic" can articulate the merits of our case this well portends well for the army of lawyers we are unleashing on the B1G.
November 12th, 2023 at 7:00 PM ^
Based on the widespread PR damage, the fact that we did actually violate a rule, and the residual animosity towards Michigan as an institution, there is little chance we come out looking like the good guy here. Best that we can hope for is to contain the damage by not drawing the process out, continuing to win to show the insignificance of any advantage gained, and to be vigilant in outing transgressions of others that we knew about but maybe kept quiet on to show that at least we aren’t the worst house in the neighborhood and that we expect consistency in enforcement from here on out that is backed up by the threat of further legal action or the disruption of existing governance structures.