WTKA Roundtable 3/31/2022: Amis de la Liberté
Things discussed:
- Villanova game: Hunter Dickinson, hit the shots you always hit. What are you gonna do?
- Hoops future: guys we like in the portal, Frankie was the difference between a first round exit and a Sweet 16 team.
- Not looking good for getting back either Diabate or Dickinson, so now what? Can Jett give them the three they need? Can Bufkin grow his game dramatically over the offseason?
- Portal is full of Just a Shooters. Michigan needs to get one. Can we be a weird lineup? What does Terrance Williams at the five look like? What does Tarris Reed look like?
- Hockey/Frozen Four: The first one or two Quinnipiac goals were flukes but then they were controlling play. Brian is bored by the pulling the goalie conversation because the percentages don’t change that much. Denver is going to be as talented as Michigan, play like Michigan, doesn’t have the goaltending of Michigan.
- Football invites Kaepernick to the Spring Game: The perpetual whiners whined when they put George Jewett on the team too. Any effect of an outcry is drowned out by the good it does. Wear your heart on your sleeve.
- $42 million scoreboard? Makes a talking point but it’s just all part of the Kafkaesque hell of David Brandon: He built the scoreboards with parts that can’t be replaced, so they’re going to end up spending $42 million to keep the scoreboards functional anyways.
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is available here. And you can watch the video here:
The Usual Links:
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link (right-click/save as)
- What's with the theme music?
If you endured Dave Brandon getting fired by a blogger you’re not going to get your knickers in a twist long-term about Colin Kaepernick.
March 31st, 2022 at 12:42 PM ^
Really? Comparing Kaepernick to George Jewett?
March 31st, 2022 at 12:55 PM ^
I believe what he compared was the reactions to them. So, yeah...🤷♂️
Specifically those who wrote the school saying they could no longer support the team.
I understand your point in a broader context. However I still think it’s wrong to compare someone like George Jewett to Colin Kaepernick. A lot of the devisiveness of Kaepernick was brought on by himself. Where George Jewett did not bring that on himself. He was a pioneer much like Jackie Robinson, and I don’t feel that Kaepernick deserves the same amount of credit. Just my opinion.
You're still misunderstanding that they weren't comparing the two in the first place.
Comparing “perpetual whiners” as being equivalent in both situations has me balking at the comparison nonetheless. One set of whining has a little bit more legitimacy than the other. Or a lot depending on what you believe.
Then you have to compare the levels of recognition: one has a trophy named after him in perpetuity and one is being asked to speak to the team and named an honorary captain for a spring game.
Further, he's a former player of Harbaugh's and he has mentioned his support for him multiple times. It's not like this is out of the blue. And it must be understood that Kaepernick does represent an important social justice hero to some (we can obviously agree that not everyone sees him in that light).
It’s weird that you claim Kaep brought divisiveness on himself and Jewett didn’t…unless you’re an expert on what people were saying about Jewett at that time and how he responded to it. It wasn’t the social media age, so trying to say Jewett just kept his head down and didn’t stir up any issues doesn’t seem like a valid comparison.
Why are you so bothered by this? It's one man's opinion, not a direct comparison so why make such a big deal...
I'm guessing because it is really tiring watching people salting the ground on this whole thing by saying "There's only ONE reason you could possibly have to object to this.", in order to cut off debate and ad hominem you to death. All this is for the crime of thinking its not a great idea to bring in a divisive figure who has no ties to the University in as as honorary Captain for the Spring Game.
I'm a roll my eyes and move on person and recognize its being done for publicity and recruiting, which is part of the reason Harbaugh was hired. So no water off my back, no matter how much I dislike Kaepernick.
You're honestly stipulating that racism plays no role in the backlash toward Kap? That's bonkers to me. I'd like to sit down sometime and compare citations on this one.
No role, no.
The main role, I'm also saying no.
My main concern is with saying that anyone saying ANYTHING negative about him is just coming from a place of racism is a poor framing and a disingenuous way to use the magic word to cut off discussion.
Many of the arguments for why it isn't about racism are also disingenuous.
Yes. Being a "person of color", I can unequivocally tell you that racism plays absolutely no role in my dislike for Kaepernick.
Why is he divisive and to whom? He's not divisive to any sane person as the lines exposed by his actions were already there. You can't heal what you don't acknowledge.
And hes certainly not divisive to the primary audience of this...the players and recruits who will most certainly love this move.
Harbaugh knows what he's doing...hell this might just guarantee that he too will never get invited back into the club.
Boy, you live in some sort of silo when you can't even ascertain why things he has said are offensive.
There is only one reason you would object to this. Any other top level NFL quarterback ex player of a head coach would be welcomed with open arms. If you object to Harbaugh inviting Kaepernick being an honorary captain. It says far more about you than it does about him.
didn't realize they had a hawt take segment on the round table.
March 31st, 2022 at 12:55 PM ^
Diabate not likely staying??? really? wtf are people telling kids these days. how on earth does he think that going up a level will develop his game. i guess he can train in the G league if he hates school. but nobody on this team is NBA ready - though i get why dickinson will likely go
I believe the point about school is not whether a student-athlete "hates" it - the point is, as we proudly point out at every opportunity, Michigan student-athletes actually attend it.
And that inhibits game development. They can get paid to do nothing but work on their game. Now maybe Michigan's NIL game can one day exceed a G League or 2nd round NBA paycheck, but Michigan will still insist the players are also students.
I can't agree more. Diabate has difficulty catching a bounce pass. Even for a freshman, he was at best a decent player for his class. Does he have potential ? Yes. But it isn't all that certain to me that he will ever develop the skills and hands to be an NBA player.
March 31st, 2022 at 11:10 PM ^
HD is 99% outta here. Diabate, I think is a 50/50.
All three (Houstan as well) will probably go through the evaluation process with Houstan and Diabate being told they would raise their draft $tock considerably with another year in school and a checklist of things to work on.
While I think he should stay, people said the same thing about Jordan Poole, DJ Wilson, and even Franz Wagner who all were drafted in the 1st. There is the G-League route that would allow them to get paid to play basketball and not go to school. I do not understand why people are always shocked when players want to take the next step.
Franz was the best wing defender in the draft. He had an elite NBA skill, so him leaving made a ton of sense.
Hunter is on one draft board at #85. He's very unlikely to get drafted. If he's leaving, it's for G-league or overseas. That's fine if that's what he wants.
Then why go to college at all? Just play basketball.
Brining in Kapernick does NOTHING but bring in and create NEGATIVITY....please leave your politics OUT of sports ...Everyones always trying to show show WOKE they are...lol
Bringing in a QB who accomplished everything the players dream of, to speak with the team, and for his old head coach to show him respect is political? I do not and will never agree with how he chooses to protest. I am FAR from "woke" as you call it.
I also realize that what I find entirely disrespectful must have a valid reason for why someone is doing it. So maybe I should listen to him and see why he is doing something I find rude and disrespectful? Perhaps I could even help bridge the divide with open-mindedness and not being judgemental?
(Mods if I went too political, sorry)
Nothing wrong whatsoever with your post, 'TruBluMich'.
As for the guy who falls back on screaming WOKE about things he has a grievance over, he's the one going too political.
Seems like you're the one bringing in negativity, my friend.
WHAT’S with YOUR random CAPITALIZATION of SOME words BUT not OTHERS???????????????????
Stop. Stating. Systemic. Racism. Is....POLITICS.
I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but I'm already concerned about some of these basketball takes....
- TWill at center? You mean the 6'6" guy who couldn't rebound or defend very well at PF is going to play center....in the B10? Maybe that was just a joke.
- Frankie was indeed a savior with Jones hurt and at least calmed some nerves about next year.....but we also latched on to a couple of good Brandon Johns performances in the tournament last year against ideal matchups and projected him to be fine. Frankie still has a long way to go....
- Which brings me to the comments about "just a shooter". While that would be nice and probably help, I think you have to at least try to get an on-ball creator at the 2 rather than just a stand-still jump shooter. I think we need someone to take some pressure off our young PGs. Maybe such a player doesn't exist and a shooter is an acceptable substitute....but creation and defense should be considered.
- For all the angst about our shooting this year, which is relevant of course, we still finished as a top-25 offense. If we return Caleb, add Jett, expand TWIll's role, possible give some minutes to Tschetter - our net shooting improves. We need on-ball playmaking though, especially without Hunter. We also could use defense, which is why we struggled this year.
TWill is this teams version of the backup quarterback that in fans' minds can be brought in and solve any problem immediately.
Not really. You have an apple vs orange view.
All very good points. TWill at the 5 wasn't a joke but it was taken out of context. I'm not saying that's your starter. I'm suggesting if Michigan is saddled with a gumpy portal big after losing HD and MD, could TW grow his role to be a 5-out option. Gives opponents something else to prepare for, and he might survive against other small centers. Tschetter could grow into that role too.
I'm not a fan or critic of Kaepernick- he's a famous pro football QB who played for Harbaugh and made it a Super Bowl.
IMHO bringing him in is a good idea.
I do think that the NFL is a meritocracy and if a team thought they would win more games with Kaepernick then he would be playing in the NFL.
I do wish he and others who want to see more opportunity for minorities would focus more energy on the biggest root cause which is very poor public schools.
I do think that the NFL is a meritocracy and if a team thought they would win more games with Kaepernick then he would be playing in the NFL.
I think it's a tad more nuanced than that. I don't disagree at all that you could do better than him for an NFL QB because he's far from perfect as a player. That said, the fact that luminaries such as Nathan Peterman, among others, saw time on an NFL roster before Kaep did is pretty strong proof that he was tacitly blackballed by the whole league. If you want to argue that he's not good enough to outweigh the controversy he brings, that's a fair and defensible point but that comes with the implicit acknowledgement that the political baggage had an outsized impact.
It's difficult to say that the political baggage is outsized when you acknowledge in your post that he's not good enough to outweigh the controversy he brings.
That doesn't even consider the fact that he essentially sabotaged his own 'comeback' as he had a scheduled training session specifically set up for him, and he basically ghosted it, then continued to complain that he was being black balled.
He scored a huge contract with Nike as a result, so maybe it was all just a ploy to get paid, but he's controversial largely because he's made himself so, so it isn't surprising that NFL teams don't want to bring him in as a back up and have to deal with all the BS that would come along with it.
All that said, Harbaugh can and will do what he wants, he had a similar situation when he chose to show the team American Sniper and a bunch of students and alumni whined about it(this would have been a much better comparison rather than George Jewett, IMO). Harbaugh didn't care then, and he doesn't seem to care now, and as long as the team isn't negatively effected, as a fan, I really couldn't care less.
The point is though that it *was* baggage that precluded him from getting a training camp flyer over QBs that were worse by almost every statistical measure, even though no one in the NFL would publically admit to such. And that doesn't track when the league doesn't seem to have a problem taking on similarly talented players who've done far far worse things.
As for his failed audition, that is what it is. You're right that he wasnt serious about making a comeback, but I suspect the NFL wasn't either. At that point he was 3 years out of the league and no one in their right mind is taking him on
Sure but you have to weigh production against the negatives. If some other QB is brought in who doesn't produce as much but doesn't have the associated negatives then that other QB is worth more.
We can argue about whether the equation used was balanced correctly, but the basic equation is pretty easy to see especially for a guy who lost his job the season before and was essentially replacement level.
I don't think the comeback was ever taken seriously by either side; the NFL threw it together with little warning or notice, didn't have a list of teams attending, and (as noted) Kaepernick hadn't heard from any team for 2 years about coming in for a tryout. They apparently sent him the contract and demanded he sign it (with the waiver) within 2 hours. And then the contract language proposed in the whole process seemed a bit dubious and atypical. There were negotiations but they fell through, which tends to happen when neither side really trusts the other.
Also, Kaepernick had signed that big Nike contract the year before the tryout, so whatever happened with this tryout didn't play a role in that happening.
As for whether or not he's a good enough QB to play now (we don't honestly know but based on the backups I saw this season he can't be that much worse), when he was originally blackballed he absolutely was still an NFL-caliber QB. There was analysis and everything showing he was, at worst, a league-average QB, and probably better given the fact Chip Kelly was QB and absolutely lost as an HC.
I don't particularly care about Kaepernick as a player and while I'm happy Harbaugh is having him speak to the team I'd be fine with any number of other people. But it's been made pretty clear over the intervening years that NFL brass and teams have a very dubious view of morality and what they'll "tolerate", and the fact that Kaepernick's outspoken nature about social justice and systemic racism pissed off a group of people, a not-insignificant number of them being bad-faith actors, the NFL values versus a group they care less about, say, sexual assault survivors, is a big reason he hasn't played over the last 5 years and not because he wasn't capable of doing so.
Peterman was on a rookie deal, hardly an even comparison. Even now he's making less than $3M which is less than most backups.
Peterman is a good example. Another is Washington in 2018 after both Alex Smith and backup Colt McCoy went down. They were 6-6 at the time and still in playoff contention. They went with an obviously washed up Mark Sanchez and Josh Johnson, who hadn't played in a regular season game since 2013 and at that point hadn't won an NFL game in his career. Washington ended up 7-9 and missed the playoffs.
Would Kaepernick have put them in the playoffs? Hell if I know, but they would have had a better chance than with Sanchez and Johnson.
When is the cyber truck coming out, dude?
The NFL is a "meritocracy" in the sense that NFL teams will try to maximize performance while minimizing cost, which is why you see so few guys get second contracts or get cut despite still being productive.
As for Kaepernick specifically, there were dozens of QBs signed over the years for backup (and even some starting roles) that were demonstrably worse than him. But teams saw him as a headache because of his outspoken nature so they didn't sign him.
Also, as a parent with two kids in a big city's public school I'm surprised to learn that they are getting an inferior education but I'll take your word on that.
Can you tell me more about meritocracy in the NFL while I review Jim Sorgi's pro-football-reference page?
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SorgJi00.htm
Not sure I would paint public schools with such a broad brush. Many are actually very good and better then most private schools with the influx of money. Schools many times are what people make of them and the effort they put into their education
March 31st, 2022 at 10:13 PM ^
I agree. There are many very good public schools. One problem, though, is the wide variance in public school quality. I would also argue that an underfunding of public schools is one of the factors at play here. Parent Teachers Organizations (PTOs) do a lot of fundraising and pour that donated money into their schools.
In my children's school district, the difference between two elementary schools only 10 miles apart was $100,000 in donations. As a result, that one school has an entire computer lab that the other school doesn't have. And that was just from one year of donations.
How many Black head coaches are in the league and how many mediocre White ones are there. You are naïve in thinking it is a pure meritocracy nothing ever is.
How many Black head coaches are in the league and how many mediocre White ones are there. You are naïve in thinking it is a pure meritocracy nothing ever is.
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