An Interview with Demetrius Hart

The bright side of this is

1) that Michigan has a small class this year, so doesn't need to communicate this message to too many kids and
2) RR is at least getting a chance to tell the Michigan side of the story, which is all he can ask for.

Thanks, Tim..

You are so right in saying that the Freep isn't acting alone. I have heard second hand that Martin was not able to stop this from happening. That was one thing that Brandon was on the minute he hit the athletic offices...find who was leaking info to press/NCAA and stop it.
Having said that, I hope Demetrius comes in and has a great visit in A2. I hope the weather is warm and sunny and we can tell him and his mother that the violations are probably violations that are happening everywhere (doesn't make it any better) and that any potential sanctions will be minor or none at all.
More importantly, Demetrius needs to know that RR will be his coach, not just his recruiter.

You've been negged -- not by me. You have a right to your opinion.

But do not be sucked into all of the self-reporting, self-imposition of sanctions, etc. That's the way the NCAA works. They want schools to pay for their own investigations. They want schools to impose their own sanctions. They have a system set up to do that, and by any standards, going back to the July '09 audit memo, Michigan has been watching itself very carefully.

It isn't clear to me that you really beleive your own words about "an idiot reporter and an irresponsible newspaper." If you are serious, then you and I have a common viewpoint that we can celebrate together.

It IS important to keep up the drumbeat with resepect to the Free Press. A message like "the Free Press jihad" has to be kept up; keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it repetitive.

The fact remains:

Had that story never been written, there would have been no investigation. EOS.

Edit: weird, has anybody else lost their header on their comments? I have no header bar to type in a title type thing on my comments now. It was there a minute ago, now it's gone...

*sigh*

First of all, point of order, 'US' and 'OUR'? I am glad you are taking some responsibility in all this ;) I keed, I keed.

If you look at the situation without any regard for the circumstances from which it was born, you suffer a myopia of convenience which permits you to focus solely on the revelation of some rather moderate infractions and to fittingly ignore anything beyond that as inconsequential. Happily this absolves you from acknowledging the reality of cause and effect and seemingly to rationalize the opinion that ‘the end justifies the means’ with regard to the methods that initiated the self-admission and subsequent investigation. It doesn’t.

I get tired of people on this site that are apologists for the journalistic malpractice committed by a ‘newz’ organization that so clearly seeks to inflict continued harm on the Michigan football program. It doesn’t take Noam Chomsky to see the obvious double-standard applied in reporting on recent events concerning both UM and MSU football programs, nor the clear bias in evidence with regard to the slanted and agenda-focused coverage of the Free Press in denigrating Michigan specifically. And yet, we are supposed to hold them blameless on all accounts?

'This has nothing to do with the Freep'

...and the investigation that brought about these self-admitted infractions came from....(drum roll please)....a wholly biased, baseless (in terms of even the most minimal of journalistic standards), radically exaggerated, nearly completely inaccurate and sensationalized 'article' (I use the term in the loosest sense b/c it was written by an editorial writer with a self-professed bias against the subject, 'hit job' would be more apropos) that was published in....(drum roll again please).. the aforementioned ‘Freep’. Whether you think they are at fault in whole, in part, or not at all, to take the position that the Freep has ‘nothing’ to do with this is, at best, tenuous.

I actually hold them nearly 100% responsible. The other people I hold responsible are the compliance people that decided to suddenly stop doing their jobs, which pertain to, you know, compliance.

Quite simply, if the Free Press article had been properly investigated and sourced, and therefore based only on verifiable facts, we would not be here. Instead, they went to print with something that ignored any sense of integrity or principles with the goal of producing something as damaging as possible. The article took heresy from biased, anonymous sources and blew it completely out of proportion. It used the comments of a few non-biased sources completely out of context and failed to provide any framework at all as to the nature of the rules and regulations that were allegedly being broken. It explicitly omitted any shred of an opposing viewpoint or easily obtainable information that might provide a counter-point to their accusations. Had they employed even basic journalistic standards, more than likely the 'article' would never have been published because a 5% overage in practice time due to some stretching time misallocated as voluntary just wouldn't be a story, certainly not the headline grabber that they ended up fabricating. Remember that staff participating in 7-on-7s was not any part of the focus of the original article and the ‘Freep’ certainly wouldn't have included anything about RR's staff going above and beyond in trying to enforce class attendance in the summer, as this would have been antithetical to their acknowledged agenda.

And thus, here we are. ‘Nothing’ to do with it? Hardly.

Beyond the simple reality of cause and effect, there is also just the unfairness of trying to crucify a single program for failing to be perfect in complying with the arcane and complex rules that are nearly impossible to follow perfectly. The NCAA wholly admits on their own website that the rules and regulations are so complicated that most D-1 programs have trouble understanding them and following them to the letter and run afoul of them in one way or another. That is to say, if you go digging far enough into any major D-1 program you will find that many will have infringed upon these regulations in some like manner due to similar errors of interpretation and application, not as a result of a subversive and devious intent to gain a competitive advantage.

Before you go frothing at the mouth, I'm NOT saying everyone does it, so that makes it okay. I'm not and it's not. The point I am making is that a 5% margin on practice time between what is defined as voluntary v. involuntary is an error of definition and categorization, not an intentional and explicit attempt at 'bending/slash breaking guidelines' with malevolent intent or callous disregard for the welfare of the players. It is a minor problem of institution and bureaucracy that can be found anywhere you want to look. It is certainly not the hanging offense it was originally portrayed as by the Free Press.

Let's try a test to see if the cause were removed, the result would be similar, or the same.

Let me provide you an alternate scenario where the Free Press retains their journalistic integrity and let's speculate what might happen had that occurred. Let’s re-write the original article to do the following:
A. Name anonymous sources and therefore reveal their potential for having a bias
B. Present the comments of the current M players in the appropriate context to the conversations from which they were gleaned
C. Ask a few players from other teams the same questions (remember that the comments from current M players were obtained at the Big 10 media days in Chicago, so players were certainly available and I'm sure would have responded in similar fashion had they been asked, 'are you working hard getting ready for the season?'
D. Ask athletes from other sports what their schedules look like and whether or not they have intimate knowledge of the rules that govern the time they contribute to their sport
E. Limit speculation as to the nature and extent of the infractions, or in other words remove all exaggeration and only state overages that are verifiable, rather than resort to the hyperbolic 'limits could be exceeded by up to 10 or 20 hours per week' type of conjecture that turned out to be so off-base
F. Present even a cursory understanding of the rules that you are accusing the program of exceeding

All this could easily have been achieved in the span of a few days of investigation, most of it within a few minutes. This is what a responsible news source without an agenda would have done. Instead, the Freep deliberately lied and restricted themselves to furthering an anti-Rodriguez agenda.

The resulting story equals something like 'Widespread Practice Compliance Issues throughout NCAA/Big10/Michigan Athletics', or 'Michigan Football May Be Over Practicing by 5%'. The former, at most, would result in some posturing by the NCAA about compliance and some additional rigor on the part of programs throughout the NCAA. The latter would result in a statement from UM that they are now aware of the misallocation of the stretching time and will be making changes to address the issue and furthermore they would likely have proactively notified the NCAA about the overages and the reforms being made with a received a hearty nod of approval.

Neither story, IMO, results in even so much as a hint of any kind of sanctions for M football, nor does it end up attempting to drag the reputation of the program through the mud.

Do I hold the lying, deliberately slanted Free Press responsible? Yes, absolutely. I just don't understand why any other Michigan fan doesn't. I understand that those with an agenda against Rich Rodriguez have been quick to enjoin this as yet another indictment of his character and don’t want to hear or accept anything that would possibly divest them of their belief that he is the Devil incarnate, but does that really necessitate giving the Free Press a pass on starting this whole mess? No way.

Let's conduct a quick test in objectivity.

Suppose I dug around in the past and write a piece that:
-lifted player quotes from old newspaper articles and twisted them around to support my position
-interviewed past players and used their words out of context in furthering my intention to slander Bo Schembechler
-interviewed a few ex-Michigan players that quit/left the team during the early days of the Schembechler regime, chosen because they would anonymously support my agenda by stating that rules were broken
-failed to ask the same question of players on any other team, and deliberately omitted any quotes from players on other teams that might serve to indicate that the problem is widespread, or not a problem at all
-Made hugely exaggerated claims of rules infractions based on the above 'evidence' that indicate Bo went over the allotted time by somewhere between 25% and 50%.
-Demonstrated in the article that I clearly do not have even the most basic understanding of the rules that govern practice time at that point

Given that situation, would you think it fair of me to print an article titled 'Those Who Stay Will Be Cheaters!' in a major news outlet in an effort to smear Bo Schembechler? What if an NCAA investigation resulted and it was revealed that Bo did actually exceed the limits by more like 5% due to an error in the categorization of stretching time? Imagine that Michigan would have to vacate all wins in '69 and '70 as a result, would you hold me blameless and defend me saying that it was due to Bo's ACTIONS? No, I would be a douchebag to do that, and more importantly I would be wrong and completely at fault.

If you think that would be unfair to Bo, then you aren't being objective and you are letting some other agenda against the current coach have an undue influence on your opinion.

Also, as long as we are talking about ACTIONS….in my opinion, the compliance people are the ones that should be holding the bag for this, you know, the ones that are actually supposed to know this stuff and are charged with, you know, compliance. The same people that seemed perfectly knowledgeable of the University processes and methods for documenting and adhering to the guidelines under Carr suddenly decided that IN-ACTION was the way to go. At very best RR shares only a modicum of the responsibility and for an embattled coach who is out there giving it is all trying to get our program back to where it should be, I would hope he is not spending his time dotting I's and crossing T's and micro-managing a bunch of adults who seemingly knew how to do their jobs not too long ago.

Yes, I type fast and had a lot of free time today.

I knew it! I had you pegged for a boy band fan.

If it will get us top recruits, is it bad that I give him permission to be down with my mom!?!?!?!

Guys? Thoughts?.......What?

I would need a couple of cigars.

Exactly. I think that once the self imposed sanctions come out and the final ruling from the NCAA comes down, we won't have any major loss of scholarships or post-season ban. Then, when we have a resurgent year (I am predicting 9-3 assuming no new injuries and that Molk, Forcier and Martin are 100%) Hart and a bunch of other top 100 recruits will be jumping on board. I think we will get a top ten class once its clear we are back and Rodriguez isn't going anywhere.