Brandon = Tuiasosopo?

That's a fact Jack!

You've just been catfished.

I just want to know how a woman gets that sort of job with a consulting agency

Ugh. This is worse that I thought. I thought it was an off the cuff mention to reporters. Instead, it was part of his formal presentation about leadership.

To carry out this campaign is one thing, it serves a defensible pedagogical purpose that can benefit athletes unfamiliar with being in the public eye. But to carry out this campaign, and then to go out at a leadership conference and tell the audience of the naivete or moral failures (depending on how you want to interpret "wholly inappropriate") of the student-athletes under his purview frankly sucks. 

...Pete Cunninghamd of A2.com has more complete info. In fact, there was no Catfishing at all.

According to Ablauf, the athletic department had 180 Communications give a presentation to the men's and women's basketball teams and the football team in the fall of 2011. A female employee of 180 Communications -- described by Brandon and Michigan coach Brady Hoke as attractive -- had friended several of the athletes on Facebook and followed them on Twitter in the weeks before the presentation to gain access to their public posts. Ablauf said the employee of 180 Communications then gathered several of the posts, some of which were directed to her, to show how easily someone could access their information and use it against them.

"She showed them things that could be misconstrued that weren’t appropriate for public consumption," Ablauf said. "It was a very powerful message of how to use media and social media."

Ablauf said the 180 Communications Inc. employee did not contact the athletes and bait them into saying anything, which is being widely reported. He said her interaction with the athletes was limited to making a friend request or following them and gathered what was public from there.

"She didn’t communicate or maintain a relationship. She asked to be liked or followed," Ablauf said. "I think people jumped to that conclusion because that's what's in the news right now with the Te'o thing and that’s inaccurate."

Ablauf said the department expanded the presentation to include every Michigan sports team in 2012 in order to get out a message about personal branding, interaction with the media and the dangers of social media.

"What we’re tryng to do at Michigan is not teach them just about their four years at Michigan. Future employers look at what they post on Facebook and Twitter," Ablauf said. "You have a lifetime to build a reputation and in a or poor tweet or post that can really hurt what you've worked for and employers can access that very easily."

Lenzi of the Blade told me in a tweet exchange that they taped the presentation and Q&A. It will be interesting to see how DAB characterized the effort in his talk and if he ever used the term Catfishing.