WTKA Roundtable 6/9/2022: Raw Team Fight
Things discussed:
- Baseball gets robbed: L'ville got six outs in the 8th inning to come back. NCAA is so committed to amateurism they're using local fanboys as umps. Craig lays out his grand conspiracy.
- Michigan losing on bad officiating, for some reason, is always couch-burning affair in East Lansing.
- Keeping Eric 'Fire' Bakich: No argument he's the perfect guy for Michigan, but Michigan is in a mid-major conference.
- Seth: $1.3 million/year in college baseball is Saban to LSU. If Clemson is going to throw money at him to build a rival to UNC, the only way to match that is to commit to changing the paradigm.
- Sam: Can Michigan Kim Barnes-Arico this? Seth: The difference is you can build a national contender at Michigan in the current WBB landscape; you can't do that with a Big Ten baseball team when you only get three weeks to play home games and 12 scholarships to spread around the roster.
- The system has to change, and Michigan has to lead. Baseball/softball right now is set up for UCF to have more advantages than Michigan or Notre Dame. The early season tournaments and May tournament are terrible for baseball—even teams in the lower Midlands are screwed by January baseball.
- Where is Kevin Warren? He should be livid. He should be pulling the Big Ten out of the NCAA.
- If you let Bakich go, you're conceding you're mid-major. Guess what: We are, unless we change that now. Let's have BASEBALL in this country!
- CJ Carr to Notre Dame: Michigan lost their momentum by losing both coordinators and Courtney Morgan, and having Harbaugh put proof to the rivals' constant refrain that he doesn't want to be here. The turnover is a feature of the program, and it holds them back.
- Courtney Morgan is a bigger loss than CJ Carr; this makes Dante Moore more likely.
- Seth questions whether Mike Hart and Denard Robinson are able to do their jobs, but takes it back: How can they when they haven't been in those positions?
- Michigan's back-end recruiting was excellent in 2022, though Sam points out a lot of those wins (Dent, Spurlock, Berry) were Courtney Morgan; front-end recruiting is where they're falling behind.
- Morgan: Wasn't just money. DeBoer was a close friend who made him his right hand man; he wasn't going to be Harbaugh's right hand man.
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment Two is here. You can watch the video here:
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- What's with the theme music?
Kevin Warren, Adolf Hitler, and T.J. Duckett walk into a replay booth.
There might be very good reasons for the BIG to withdraw from the NCAA in baseball, but the chances of it happening are exceedingly remote.
I haven't listened yet, but if Michigan (and boosters) wanted to, couldn't you leverage "NIL" (the Arkansas or A&M version) to offset the scholarship limitations of baseball? Get Wilpon to create some sort of NIL scheme so we can add some top players without having to use scholarships.
I think the out-of-the-box ideas surrounding baseball and the NCAA are interesting, but they are nuclear option for a sport that doesn't move the needle to the rich guys in suits. I think there needs to be change, but it might need to start smaller.
If the BIG withdrew from the NCAA in order to start play later in the season, who would they play out of conference if no other major conferences followed suit?
My guess is you wouldnt do it unless you knew other conferences would do it.... off the top of head you might be able to pull the PAC 12 and maybe the BIG 12
Pac 12 and MAC would come. Northeastern schools where baseball is really popular.
Isn't the BTN and the new negotiation with fox the leverage to do this?
Fox still has btn and fs1 and other FSN to program thru the summer.
If the b1g, the MAC, and 10 or 12 northeastern schools left to have their own wood bat baseball league and their own softball league, it would seem to offer a lot of on campus entertainment and TV programming opportunities for both. I don't even know that you need the PAC as those are longer trips and programming that is later at night when MLB is on for fox and the rsn's. Maybe the Missouri Valley, which does have some good baseball and a lot of college towns..
As far as michigan and bakich, I definitely hope that he stays. But to play devils advocate, Maloney did not leave a junk program behind and the world series run was on the arms of 3 in state second round pitchers, 2 from the same town of 35000. This year definitely argues against that point and in no way do I want to lose bakich
If he were to leave, the place to look is a few hours north. Jordan Bischel at cmu has made the last 3 ncaa tourneys.. at cmu. And the guy killed it at lower levels with world series appearances at multiple places. That's the guy that you want if bakich leaves.
The phrase "midlands" keeps cropping up in articles. Did Seth move to England and not mention it or is he just reading too much Business Insider?
I can't think of Texas as Plains and Midwest includes Great Lakes.
Sounds like a discouraging podcast to listen to.
I do not share Seth's skepticism on baseball. I think we can be better than a mid major without exiting the NCAA. I do agree that it's very hard, but a unicorn like Bakich can do it
Isn't what we've really seen that he can do it one season in three or four but the barriers to better--as enumerated here--are just too high? Also, haven't listened, but I would hate to lose Bakich.
What's up with the 12 scholarships? Obviously, you can't sustain success if that's fewer than other schools. Is that an NCAA limitation that they'd get out of if they left the NCAA. Is it a choice Michigan has to make to balance Title 9 (i.e. to get more they'd have cut a men's sport/scholarships elsewhere)?
The Big Ten is obviously a mid-major baseball conference. But yes, an elite coach like Bakich could make Michigan into a Gonzaga (basketball) type program. They'd certainly need scholarship parity and/or substantial NIL.
Big ten baseball would never get a good recruit again if they played in the summer. The wood bat leagues are where guys with pro potential go to play and big ten baseball isn't going to be a higher level of competition. Its a dumb argument.
Also the reason Warren doesn't complain is probably because big ten AD's don't care. College baseball is a major sport in parts of this country. Michigan just isn't in that part.
I think having B1G be "wood bat league with school" in the summer might be a draw, especially if you can have the players benefit from NIL deals and access to B1G level facilities that you don't have in Woonsocket, Rhode Island or Pig's Knuckle, NC.. But you'd never get the players through admissions in that situation anyway, so who cares.
If it happened to OSU Warren would complain. He hates Harbaugh and Michigan, and he personally rigged the football game against Staee last year.
"College baseball is a major sport in parts of this country. Michigan just isn't in that part."
And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't get why it's a big deal that the Big Ten is a mid-major in baseball. Who cares? I'd personally rather see the school put the resources into the lacrosse program.
Well, significantly fewer people care about LAX. Great sport, but not (yet) even close to the level of interest as even college baseball has (i.e. far more people tuned into Michigan baseball playing in the regional than people would tune in/care about the LAX team playing in an equivalent stage of a LAX tournament).
Far more people watch college baseball overall than college lacrosse at this point. College Baseball World Series games attract usually about 2M viewers which is about 5-10x what LAX attracts (~200k-400k)
So if you're basing it on what people care about, you personally might want them to put more resources into LAX, but that's not the consensus if people are voting with their time. You could make an argument that the two sports are going in the opposite directions in terms of interest so you might be able to project that people will care more about LAX in the future. But there's a long way to go.
It's weird to me that they took so long to put Mike Hart, the ultimate Carr guy, on CJ.
Overall, the comments on Hart and Shoelace were a bit discouraging. I'm actually not as down on recruiting as some (probably at a 5 panic level) but that sounded kind of ominous.
Seems like we have some ace recruiters, Moore, JayBaugh, Clink, Bellamy and Elston. Not sure about Weiss, Helow and Minter. I've been assuming that Newsome will be an outstanding recruiter but maybe I'm wrong.
Hold me Seth!!
Harbaugh can't have been oblivious to their relative lack of experience. Either they gear up or they don't, I guess.
Overall, I think we'll be fine. There was so much change and doubt with Harbaugh almost leaving, that getting into any sort of recruiting momentum was difficult. Let's give Hart, Denard and others a chance to show their chops under some sense of equilibrium in the program.
With that, I do think losing CJ Carr is embarrassing. I will never fault CJ for picking any school and I wish him well. But the fact that Michigan can't close on the most legacy of legacy of recruits shows there issues with our recruiting department.
The fact that a former coach's grandson doesn't go to the school where the grandfather coached. . . just isn't really so awful. Every other person in the world understands that there could be a million reasons why it might not happen. And we don't know CJ's.
I think it's far too early to judge Mike Hart and Denard's recruiting chops, esp. for offensive players. Comparing them to Courtney Morgan is also apples and oranges because he didn't have to deal with the negative recruiting associated with Harbaugh almost leaving. That negative recruiting (Harbaugh almost left and if he does leave he will take Weiss with him, thereby giving you no stability on offense; you have no stability on defense because of a 1st year DC) will keep getting pounded against all members of the recruiting staff until there's a clear path for succession and winning on the field.
The situation with Harbaugh almost leaving is not going to go away unless there's winning on the field. It's an unsustainable situation long term and I don't blame recruits for holding it against UM. The team looked good and hungry in the spring so next season can be good, in which case we'll know if Harbaugh really wants to leave or not (if he has another good year and doesn't leave, that will probably settle recruits).
I think there is a silver lining to the cloud of Harbaugh's dalliance with the NFL, in that it got put out in the open and gives him and the program an opportunity to rebut the innuendo. Had he not gone and interviewed with the Vikings, does anyone really think the rumor-mongering by rival coaches would have stopped, or even abated? As it turned out, he was upfront (with recruits who asked him anyway, and with his players, and presumably with his AD, all of whom are the only people who actually deserve the information), and he wasn't issuing false denials in the press.
Of course it doesn't help recruiting, but it does rip off the band-aid, and he can point to the episode as a demonstration that he's a straight shooter. My prediction is that if indeed this causes a hit in recruiting, it's a short-term one, and one that may rebound in his favor in the longer term.
The rumor would still persist and negative recruiting will still continue. Harbaugh's open flirtation with the NFL did not help Michigan at all. There is a reason why coaches keeps denying it and lying about it until they got the job.
No. I get what you're saying and that's ideally how it should be playing right now but it's not.
It's more a case of proving the other coaches right while you lied in the past than it is being up front and honest now that you made up your mind.
Why? Well, in the past he fought off those allegations with fervent denial. Then he very clearly tries to leave and in the end couldn't find a job in The NFL. It wasn't his lack of desire but no team pulling the trigger. The one team that looked to do that ultimately pulled back *after* Jim went all-out to get the job. He had to call back to Michigan to ask if he was still wanted at Michigan, that's how gone and out the door he was.
Maybe it plays better for kids beyond 3-4 years from now? I doubt it but it may. The 23-25 kids are being told and shown the facts of the story and it has done a TON of damage. It did more damage than any year he has had here, be it 2020 or whatever other. It's really bad locally (SE Michigan) in particular.
Agree that this is a no. The fact that now recruits have zero confidence that he or the staff will be around for their four years is all that matters. Being a straight shooter about leaving doesn't really matter. Some level of certainty / stability is what a recruits counts on. I can't imagine they care that he's upfront about being a flake.
Now that the announcement is out, Carr told the news media that he loves Michigan but he never wanted to go to a school close to home. As I speculated in the posts last week, like most kids he just doesn’t wanna go to college 15 minutes from where he grew up. Michigan staff probably knew that. End of story.
What Carr tells the news media and what the actual reasons behind the choice of ND aren't necessarily the same thing.
So you want to call CJ and the rest of the Carr family liars just so you can fit whatever it is you want to your narrative and perhaps point a finger. Lloyd, is one of the most respected and honorable coaches not just at Michigan but among the NCAA over the last 30 years. SMH
Not wanting to go to school 10 minutes from your house is such an obvious and simple answer, of course it’s going to be rejected by people who prefer a conspiracy.
And because his grandfather is such a respected member of the Michigan football community, it would make sense that he wouldn't say something like "ND recruited me harder and wanted me more" to the media.
I have zero idea what the actual reasons behind his decision are, but he has zero incentive to say anything like the above considering who is grandfather is.
Or he could have simply decided not to answer...
Why even suggest that he might not be telling the truth...OF COURSE that is always possible. Who knows...without personal knowledge all we have to go by is his word.
So he goes to college 2 hours away instead? What’s the difference?
ND is undoubtedly close to home still. Very close to be exact.
Not it’s not.
I went to Michigan and it was an hour from my house. That was definitely far enough away so that I was going “away” to school. It’s far enough where I don’t have the option to live at home. It’s far enough where my parents aren’t running into me on campus or at a restaurant. It’s far enough where my HS friends aren’t showing up and my parents aren’t showing up.It’s far enough where you have a certain independence and you’re in a new community.
My kids do not want to go to school to an excellent university in our town. We’re in the neighborhood all the time. They want to go someplace new. A new experience.
CJ Carr has said exactly that. Why can’t people except things on face value and why do they need to make up some kind of conspiracy about bad recruiting or the Carr family or anything else. That’s a big problem beyond this little incident.
HUGE difference between 15 minutes up the road and three hours away (it's three, not two) in another state.
ND is not that close to home, unless you're talking about a global scale. Your parents and friends can't just stop by unannounced. But most importantly, Ann Arbor is home with all his familiar things around. And South Bend isn't home.
If you want the adventure of navigating your own life in a place that isn't already home and that isn't institutionally tied to your family, South Bend gets the job done. I would argue that once you get out of the Ann Arbor area and the Carr sphere of influence, there's much less of difference between South Bend and let's say Gainesville, FL to CJ Carr than there is between Ann Arbor and South Bend.
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