Horsefaces Everywhere Comment Count

Brian

I broke. Now I fisk everything.

Michael Weinreb, writerist who does not mind bashing head against same wall

1461712_21887[1]

Weinreb poops on Michigan in print approximately every six months with whatever logic is at hand. The latest is at Rolling Stone. Weinreb points out that Harbaugh is crazy, because that's a new insight, and then launches into his usual concern trolling act:

Not surprisingly, given that Harbaugh is an undeniably brilliant football coach, this strategy is working. The Wolverines lured the nation's No. 1 recruit, Rashan Gary, and one of the country's best recruiting classes. But there are two underlying questions to consider here:

Here we go.

The first is whether this can possibly be sustained, or whether Harbaugh will eventually burn himself out, as he did at Stanford and with the 49ers.

Anyone still parading this line out after the Jim Tomsula experience is either so braindead they're writing a 12,000 word article on Daniel Holtzclaw or simply dishonest. Harbaugh left Stanford for a job with the 49ers after a 12-1 season that completed the most stunning turnaround in recent NCAA history. Stanford did not want to lose him. They left everything more or less the same after he left.

Harbaugh left the 49ers after a year-long disinformation campaign by Jed York, who emphatically proved he was the problem over the past year. 49ers players fled San Francisco en masse after Harbaugh's departure. York hired a vastly unqualified yes-man who may literally have been Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force to run the team into the ground and fired him after just one year. Harbaugh's final 8-8 season was an injury-riddled mess; in his absence Colin Kaepernick evaporated and the team barely crossed midfield in most games. If you're still on Team York in 2016, you have issues.

What happens, say, if Michigan beats Ohio State and qualifies for the College Football Playoff next season and a top-tier NFL job looms on the horizon?

Like they did two years ago? Like they did this year? I don't think Harbaugh's guaranteed to retire in Ann Arbor but if he wasn't deeply interested in a run of significance at Michigan he wouldn't be here in the first place. Meanwhile this worry boils down to "what if Harbaugh is good at his job?" Heaven forfend.

What happens if Harbaugh doesn't get something he specifically demands from the Michigan administration?

This has already happened. It will continue to happen. Harbaugh may not have many filters but neither is he a literal child who will pout and leave the first time he's told there are limits, which, again, has happened repeatedly already. This is a guy who has turned around four separate football programs. One of them was under Jed York. He is used to not getting what he wants. Meanwhile find me an NFL team without an owner.

What happens if the academics in Ann Arbor began complaining about the bills coming due?

Michigan's athletic department is self-sufficient. Again, you'd have to be an idiot or deeply disingenuous to even bring this up.

And the second question surrounding Harbaugh is what all of this might mean for college football.

Nothing? Other than Michigan might be good?

Maybe, by essentially professionalizing the recruiting process, Harbaugh is dispensing with the pretense that college football is still an amateur sport.

This is the sentence that finally broke me. For one, the idea that Harbaugh is "professionalizing" the recruiting process makes zero sense. All he's done is recruit a little harder within the rules and his weirdness has made that viral. No part of that is professionalizing anything.

Meanwhile, the SEC and ACC are tossing six figures at recruits. Nobody cares about this. Michigan's athletic director publicly and repeatedly asserted that Rashan Gary turned down money to sign with Michigan, and the media reaction was absolutely nothing. Again, I am all for the professionalization of something that is already de facto professionalized, but pretending like it's Harbaugh shaking the NCAA's foundational concept is the work of an idiot, a liar, or a lying idiot. None of this has anything to do with money.

But here's the thing: If you read beyond the headline of Sankey's complaint, he has a legitimate point. A Pac-12 study last year revealed that athletes in the conference spent an average of 50 hours a week on their sport and were often "too exhausted to study effectively." I have no idea if Sankey and his member schools are serious about exploring this idea, but this is the sort of concept on which the Big Ten should be leading the way.

He does not have anything approximating a point. Michigan isn't adding time. They are moving it. They are in fact moving it away from finals, for as much as that matters. They are moving practice time to a point where there is no studying to do.

In reality, it doesn't matter either way. The players will put in the time, both in the Big Ten and SEC. A little money, a flight or two, doesn't matter. It'll help Michigan recruit, the players will get a bit of a tan, nobody will be negatively affected, end of story.

But Weinreb don't care. In six or nine or twelve months we'll get another of these. It's tradition. The man simply cannot be dissuaded no matter how bad these pieces look in retrospect. Remember this one?

I would worry that Harbaugh is doing this for the money (a reported $48 million over six years, which would make him the sport’s highest-paid coach) or out of some misguided sense of obligation to his alma mater, and that he is not prepared to play the game within the game by embracing the salesmanship of the job, the one key aspect college coaching demands that pro football doesn’t (see: Belichick, Bill).

"Worry" dispelled, worry about the opposite, rinse, repeat. Keep paternoing that chicken.

Greg Sankey, malfunctioning corporate robot

635711909477933646-Greg-Sankey-SEC[1]

This is his feeble attempt to justify banning satellite camps:

“That had nothing to do with a particular program, just a concern of, wait, we have agreed to a recruiting structure,” he said.

We did, and it allows for coaches to act as guests for remote camps. You banned satellite camps amongst yourselves, but that's your business.

“… Are we going to allow the recruiting and the pressure on young people, the earlier recruiting, the bringing in boosters to practices to watch when you’re on these satellite camp tours?"

This is a non-sequitur, and particularly hilarious/infuriating coming from the SEC commissioner. Harbaugh shows up at camps. If players want to show up where Harbaugh is, they do so. If they don't want to go, they don't go.

Nothing about a satellite camp accelerates recruiting, and lol the SEC commissioner is talking about boosters. Greg Sankey is ON IT, guys. He'll get right to the bottom of this "booster" business, once and for all.

“Over and over I have sat in AFCA (American Football Coaches Association) meetings and heard football coaches say we don’t want football recruiting to go the way men’s basketball has gone, meaning, let’s try to anchor to the best we can our football recruiting in the scholastic environment. It’s around education, it’s around people who are supervised by administrators and school boards. That seems a healthy approach for recruiting, not going out to create other opportunities.”

…to be around football coaches in a camp environment that you have decided is perfectly fine as long as it is in a different geographical region. This is a complaint against 7-on-7 and Nike camps and Rivals camps and the like inartfully repurposed against Harbaugh.

Sankey is actually making an argument in favor of satellite camps, which bring NCAA compliance along with them and expose players directly to coaches without the intermediaries that infest basketball recruiting. This is the best argument he has against satellite camps: one in favor of them.

Mark Emmert, figurehead

...because he has lawsuits to deal with.

That's what "not prohibited" means. It means it is okay if you do it. I looked this up.

Maybe flatulent twit Mark Emmert should concentrate on enforcing the zillions of rules on the books currently that are being flouted more and more dramatically with every limp-wristed NCAA enforcement action.

Pat Narduzzi, personal foul enthusiast

SPRING-BREAK.JPEG-0f39c[1]

going pro in something other than beer bonging

Behold the dumbest "think of the children" ever:

If I was a high school player, and you’re telling me I couldn’t go to Cancun or Daytona on spring break, I’d be kind of like, ‘Are you serious?’

Think of the casual sex and drunken falling off of balconies. This is the fake-ass concern people opposed to Harbaugh have come up with: college football players are being denied a week of drinking at 9 AM. A Notre Dame recruit died over spring break in 2010. A few years later we're fighting for the sanctity of waking up in vomit that may or may not be yours.

You'll note that the ACC and SEC are trying to ban satellite camps, too, but they don't talk about that over and over again in public, because they don't have even a fake-ass pearl to clutch there. There is zero reason for satellite camps to be banned; doing that in fact hurts various kids trying to get noticed. Think of the children! Why won't anyone think of the children?

Horsefaces

All of these men are horseface. It has been decreed.

Comments

bronxblue

February 19th, 2016 at 2:19 PM ^

Weinbreb was terrible during the PSU debacle as well.

Excuse my french, but none of the people complaining about Harbaugh give a shit about the athletes as people. They just don't like that someone might be breaking up the racket they've set up.

BuckNekked

February 19th, 2016 at 2:21 PM ^

You need incredibly think skin and a self-assuredness few possess to operate as Harbaugh does. A lesser being would be ground to dust by the constant barrage from every direction. It doesnt seem as if Jim is even knocked off balance.

 

This piece should be submitted to the publisher exactly as it is in rebuttal to this incredibly disingenuous hit piece disguised as enlightened concern.

dragonchild

February 19th, 2016 at 2:37 PM ^

I'm like Harbaugh without the talent.  Seriously, when he's on the sideline it's like I'm looking in a mirror.  I'm hyper-intense, hot-tempered, capricious, with a fondness for quotes and a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, except I don't bring back high-profile football programs from the dead; I work in tech support.  So when I do something odd it's neither half as clever nor a tenth as productive.  So this isn't to brag so much as I've got the same curse but without the superpower.

Anyway, at some point I realized I was a twit who was going to shock and offend people despite my best efforts because I don't really "think outside the box" so much as I can't stay IN the box if I tried because hell if I know where the box even is.  If you're a genius like Harbaugh it's that same obliviousness to conformity that can lead to mad innovation, but either way this mentality is like a freakshow for pearl-clutchers.  All you really can do with this sort of personality is sustain that best effort and, if you're satisfied enough that you're at least behaving ethically, try not to give a shit because anyone that demands more than your best is by definition beyond your control.

It's not without its price.  I have a thin skin but that doesn't really help.  So I have no idea if it bothers him, but knowing me, I'd bet Harbaugh's been through enough to know that it's just how he is.

schreibee

February 20th, 2016 at 8:27 AM ^

Here's our (Michigan's) basic problem, and all these other conference's and their commisioners are aware of it:

We (Michigan) are going to play by the "rules" to the very best of our abilities, even if we don't like or agree with them - because they are the "rules."

They are not. It has been their distinct advantage for many years now, and they don't want to lose any part of that advantage.

So when Harbaugh comes in and finds "loopholes" and non-prohibited activities that others are not utilizing, they can only cry "Think of the kids!" As Brian so ably pointed out, they're so dumb that in an effort to demonize out-of-state camps and practices, they inadvertantly make an argument in favor of them.

And, again, they don't care. They don't care that they cheat; that they're stupid; that they do a disservice to the very young men they claim to want to protect. We care if our program is accused of things of this nature. They do not.

"If you ain't cheatin' you ain't tryin" is the official un-official motto of the SEC and all these others. Ask their alum and fans. They will proudly admit it.

That is our burden. Our finest minds are spending their resources and time (and ours as we're reading and replying) on sputtering indignity, when they don't care anyway. They only care about retaining any form of perceived advantage they hold over those who do care.

His Dudeness

February 19th, 2016 at 2:24 PM ^

Would you please write a piece like this for a national mag of relevence ? I feel like the snowball against harbaugh is halfway down the hill and getting larger by the day. Someone needs to be our Atlas.

schreibee

February 19th, 2016 at 3:49 PM ^

Mixed Mythical Metaphor

Atlas holds up the sky... Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill.

But maybe, just maybe, if they switched jobs for a bit they'd discover some loopholes in the  "rules" that would give them an advantage in performing their tasks - which would then get the others in the mythological realm to scream "unfair!"

You're a genius! That's exactly what Harbaugh IS doing!

turd ferguson

February 19th, 2016 at 2:35 PM ^

Can we add Jim Delaney to this list for not saying a damn word?  Would it kill the Big Ten commissioner to actually advocate for his programs every now and then?  Sankey and Swofford are guilty of using stupid, manipulative logic, but at least they're willing to fight for the programs in their conferences.  

Unless I've missed his response, Delaney is opting for complete silence when the other commissioners are chirping - probably successfully - and the Big Ten has the better case to make publicly.  

The first thing he should have done was tweet something like, "I would welcome a discussion with the NCAA and SEC about recruiting ethics and rule compliance."

wahooverine

February 19th, 2016 at 2:40 PM ^

This needs to tweeted out and spread across internet land. Especially directly to that hack Weinreb.  It misses me off that the narrative here is so anti-Harbaugh and Michigan.  If anything it should be a positive narrative in light of Brian's points about having a productive spring break and freeing time for finals, and raise questions about the SEC and NCAA.  How is the side of evil winning the narrative here?

 

 

trueblueintexas

February 19th, 2016 at 2:44 PM ^

There are a few times a year when all colleges are in sync regarding time off. Labor Day weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, and the two weeks surrounding Christmas. All other times colleges are not aligned due to differing semester schedules. AND YET...the NCAA, coaches, and AD's didn't hesitate for a second when it came to expanding the football season to encompass Labor Day weekend, Thanksgiving weekend and expanding bowl season to cover all of Christmas break. As a fan, I say "GREAT!!!", but if the powers that be really want to talk about letting student athletes live a life more aligned with non-student athletes, then do it. 

On a seperate note, I agree with cutting back the 50 hours/week investment it is expected the student athletes put in. But it is the same dumbasses who are complaining about Harbaugh who have let that number swell to 50 hours/week. I would love to see the actual breakdown of that number. My bet is the SEC & part of the ACC are pulling that number up while the B1G and part of the PAC12 & Big12 are pulling that number down. 

Esterhaus

February 19th, 2016 at 3:51 PM ^

 
I spent this weekend with an investment banker who is neighbors of and longtime friends with Jed York. Naturally I introduced the subject of one James Joseph Harbaugh. After a series of polite conversations, mostly, I am left with the conclusion these folks still fail to appreciate Jim, his merits and who he is as a coach and a man. 
 
Could be a coastal bias thing or self-delusion or simply toeing a self-protectionary line, I dunno but what I do know is that they haven't changed position a single iota. Jim's record will have to destroy Weinreb claims by brute force, as it will.
 
BTW, no joke, me and mine have become Ed Sheeran's parents inadvertently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35593156/the-grammys-didnt-know-who-ed-sheerans-parents-were-during-awards-show.  Nothing whatsoever to do with Michigan but another anecdote.  (yes, I am ugly as sin.)

In reply to by Pepto Bismol

Esterhaus

February 19th, 2016 at 5:23 PM ^

 

Had no say in the matter. When Ed came back from photos the first time, and I was seated between Ed and "Weekend," another Grammy winner, it became instantly clear the misattribution was not operating in my favor. (Taylor Swift can shoot laser beams from her eyeballs, trust me OUCH.) I suppose my request for parental royalties did not improve our standing. We knew better and comported ourselves as best we could. I personally find this a minor event yet one that reinforces the fact the broadcast is ACTUALLY LIVE. No matter, we've kept this anonymous for the most part - the talent deserves unfettered recognition without sidestories. The business is tough enough, but I had thought to share on a drinking Friday. Cheers all, it's RoughStock Rye for me tonight.

Get the music to the people. Peace out.

CoachW

February 19th, 2016 at 3:35 PM ^

I was at the satellite camp in Dallas last summer and before the camp even began an NCAA compliance guy talked to the entire group for 10 minutes about how the coaches can't talk about recruiting or anything related to it or Michigan.  Then the camp host came out and talked for another 10 minutes and said it all again.  

 

99% of those kids were not M caliber football players but they each got instruction and encouragement from the staff all the same.  Truly a horrible thing for those kids to have to endure (/s, obviously).

Wolvie3758

February 19th, 2016 at 4:11 PM ^

as we speak Harbaugh is concocting new and glorious ways to stick it to Mark Emmert and the Corrupt NCAA and Mr Skanky and the SEC and ACC ..The nerve of the SEC where CHEATING is almost REQUIRED just boils my blood..This is a league that has CONSISTENTLY cheated for decades...My message to Mr Skanky is this..People in glass conferences shouldnt throw stones...God these people make me SICK...How in the hell does the SEC commissioner lead the NCAA Infractions committee? Thats the same as putting IRAN in charge of the UN commission on Human Rights...GOOD LORD

turtleboy

February 19th, 2016 at 4:37 PM ^

"I mean: come on" -summary of all the arguments against, and criticisms of Harbaugh.

Honestly I'm just sad that these men are paid, supposed intellectuals, and they can't even come up with a convincing comeback. All they can do is stammer and barf.

jbwolves87

February 19th, 2016 at 4:37 PM ^

articles written by this moron, I was laughing out loud most of the time. Add on the fact that you write this and I encourage these idiots to continue what they are doing because I want to continuing reading you blast them with facts.  Great job, enjoyed all of it

jbwolves87

February 19th, 2016 at 4:37 PM ^

articles written by this moron, I was laughing out loud most of the time. Add on the fact that you write this and I encourage these idiots to continue what they are doing because I want to continuing reading you blast them with facts.  Great job, enjoyed all of it

jbwolves87

February 19th, 2016 at 4:37 PM ^

articles written by this moron, I was laughing out loud most of the time. Add on the fact that you write this and I encourage these idiots to continue what they are doing because I want to continuing reading you blast them with facts.  Great job, enjoyed all of it