Comments Re. athletes on mgoblog
feel free to neg me if you think that my opinion takes away from you saying whatever you want to say but I think that people should try and be a little more careful about what they post on the board regarding athletes...
I was reading a thread about Mathis making the Army AA game followed by people arguing about whether or not we want him. If you think we're better off without a kid, try to refrain posting your judgments about a kid on the board. I'm sure Michigan recruits follow this board and the negative you say can play a role in changing someone's mind. In the end, whether you like it or not, the coaches have done enough research to offer a kid and in the end it should be the kids choice whether to come to Michigan or not. Saying that we don't need a kid puts puts our fan-base in a bad light and might make some recruits with serious interest in us look away...
November 12th, 2009 at 4:19 PM ^
In the end, it IS the kid's choice whether he wants to come to the school or not. If he's good enough, he will. If his confidence is hurt by me (or any other random poster on a message board), then honestly, he probably doesn't have the confidence to succeed at a position that requires self-confidence.
This is what fans do at every level. Kids discuss in high school who the best players are. We discuss it here. They'll be talked about in the NFL in the exact same manner.
Whether it's right or wrong, it's a train that's impossible to stop.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:22 PM ^
Ari Fleischer. "People need to watch what they say."
If a player isn't confident enough in his abilities and flinches or disavows his committment because of what a bunch of fans post on a blog, I question his guts anyway. Shouldn't the natural reaction be "fuck those idiots on MGoblog, they'll be chanting my name after I become an All-American" vs. "Oh, my god, those Michigan fans are mean. I don't want to go there."
Just my two cents. And we sometimes are idiots here, me included.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:25 PM ^
What fun is anonymous blogging under the guise of a screen name if you can't say things anonymously that you would never say under your own name or to the persons face. /sarcasm
November 12th, 2009 at 5:38 PM ^
Wait, that isn't your face? You aren't J Leman? I'm CRUSHED! CRUSHED I tells ya!
November 12th, 2009 at 4:28 PM ^
by any material on this blog can you imagine the mental state they would be in after Barwis was done with them?
November 12th, 2009 at 4:36 PM ^
Isn't that the point, though? I mean, isn't a bit self-indulgent for anonymous posters ripping/criticizing/offending recruits to compare themselves to an actual coach who, I don't know, has a bit more experience trying to... coach? Motivate, etc.?
I've just always thought that was a lame comparison. "Hey, I may be a prick in what I post about the kid, but hell, he'll get it worse from the staff." Maybe. But kids don't view the staff the same as the fan base, yeah?
Not saying you're ripping any kids. Just don't think anonymous posters should use the fact that the UM coaching staff 'coaches the kids hard' as an excuse to laugh off various prickish comments from the fan base.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:43 PM ^
I think it was meant as a joke. I tend to agree with you, but there is a reason why "fan" comes from "fanantical," right? Fanbases, across the board, are always going to skew toward the illogical and, at times, idiotic. I guess I just count on the sane and logical portion of the fanbase to point out how off base the prickish comments are, when needed.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:54 PM ^
Totally agree. Frankly, I should be clear - I'm commenting in general, not just to Mgoboaders, but the trash that I'm more likely to read on other sites as well.
And there is certainly a self-correcting mechanism within the on-line fan base, better among UM fans than most, I'd say.
I shouldn't take Section 37's comments literally, and I certainly don't have a prob with S37's posts - they were more a jumping off point for an argument I've seen, in general, justifying the "whatever, if a kid is offended by this, he's not tough enough anyway, bler bler." But that's not what S37 was saying.
And spider - straw man. I don't think most people are suggesting that recruits break down into tears when they read a message board. But it doesn't seem unreasonable that if the kid is doing quick and dirty due diligence on a fan base (hey - maybe that's not the best place to do it, on the internet, but these aren't Fortune 500 companies doing due diligence on a merger - they're 17 year olds, often times that live 100s of miles away from Ann Arbor, trying to get a lay of the land), said kid could easily conclude that the fan base is semi-prickish. I'd be happy to lecture all potential recruits about sample size, if you'd like, but it seems better and more realistic to just remind our fellow fan bases of that prickish-impression-risk, self-policing DC-Blue-style.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:35 PM ^
between analyzing a recruits performance and questioning whether he will be an asset for the team and just bashing someone. I don't think asking whether we need another short CB after one was struggling just a couple weeks ago on the field currently is a bad thing. The key is constructive criticism and not just ignorant, baseless slander.
If a recruit comes to Michigan and thinks everyone is going to clap, cheer, and smile no matter how they perform than they are simply mistaken. That goes for just about every major school in the country.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:43 PM ^
If a kid can not handle some criticism, then it is best they do not come to your program. If a message board brings tears to a players eyes, what do you think the coaches will do with this player at practice?
November 12th, 2009 at 4:49 PM ^
I just cannot imagine a recruit being influenced by anything you or I type of this blog. I would certainly hope their opinion of UM and the coaching staff would be influenced more by recruiting trips and campus visits rather than a blog entry. Maybe I have underestimated the affect of some of these posts on the psyche of a 17 or 18 year old?
November 12th, 2009 at 5:13 PM ^
thus far in most respects, except the following recurring counter-point: "sheesh, if the kid's confidence is shattered by our criticism, he wouldn't make it anyway!"
I think that's pretty far afield from the OP's concerns, which I understood to be about having a recruit torn between two or three schools (as most are), and being turned off by an overtly unwelcoming fan base at one of the schools. I think there's a dilemma there that doesn't involve the player's confidence.
I'm not sure where I come out on how these circumstances (could/should) affect MGoPosting (I think the easy answer is Magnus's: it's a train that cannot be stopped), but I wouldn't mind seeing more cogent points that don't fall into a straw man about the kid's confidence/mental state.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:17 PM ^
If a kid cannot handle criticism, he will not make it anywhere. This makes perfect sense to me. Becasue some kid hears fans speaking the truth, he shouldn't get all "scared" as you seem to infer that he will.
November 12th, 2009 at 8:45 PM ^
This is not about recruits handling criticism. The choice facing these kids is not "Where can I prove the greatest number of people wrong?" - it's "Where do I want to spend the next four years of my life?"
All else being equal, choosing to attend the school where the student/alumni base is already excited for his arrival, over and above the school where the fanbase is either indifferent or hostile, would display a markedly sound mental state.
I do not mean to imply (and I certainly do not infer) that a Michigan lock who wants nothing more than to play for U of M will be "scared" away by something he reads on a message board. You're right, if that kid does, he likely lacks the mental integrity of a four-year starter. But I don't think we're talking about that kid. I think we're talking about the kid we're doing our best to convince to join a struggling team, who for whatever reason has not yet been sold.
November 12th, 2009 at 4:54 PM ^
thank you for repeating what craig roh's dad said. in my opinion, a very supportive, optimistic fan base is very important to a recruit. the best way to determine that...aside from going to an actual game...is looking at message boards. scout.com is probably much more available to casually interested recruits, but still, we should watch what we say here.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:01 PM ^
I totally disagree with the whole "we should watch what we say" theory, which seems very Soviet-like to me (insert WLA joke here). Instead, I subscribe to the marketplace of ideas approach. That is, the idiotic posters of idiotic comments and threads have every right to do it, but the community at large (or Brian himself, in the case of a full scale MGoBlog melt down of epic proporations) can step in and point out how truly insipid those dumb, attacking posts are.
My bottom line is this: Everyone generally has a right to post their opinion, no matter how much I disagree or how much in bad taste it is, with the caveat that everyone else gets to point out how much they disagree with it and how stupid they think it is.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:43 PM ^
is it that a post defending the posting rights of others is getting negged.
Best. Loss. Of. Points. Ever. (and most ironic, too).
November 12th, 2009 at 4:54 PM ^
just because you can say something doesn't mean it's right
November 12th, 2009 at 4:57 PM ^
i like how mgoblog is slowly influencing which players our football team gets. soon we will be the coaches.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:32 PM ^
that adds a whole new dynamic to CiL
November 12th, 2009 at 4:59 PM ^
I can agree with the fact that we should be careful about what we post - along the lines of what Papa-Roh said. At the same time though, I think athletes, too, ought to be careful about what the post, on say ... facebook.
If you think fans should post responsibly because the players might read it, then I think it follows that the players ought to make their postings responsibly, too, since the fans might read them.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:06 PM ^
I think I speak for most of us when I say this:
When we say we don't want a certain player (Mathis, in this case), we USUALLY also say we want someone else (Grimes and/or Christian, in this case).
So if Mathis's psyche is such that he's offended by random message board posts, wouldn't it make sense that an equally sensitive Christian/Grimes would be flattered by our posts?
November 13th, 2009 at 9:24 AM ^
and never assume that you "speak for most people".
November 12th, 2009 at 5:22 PM ^
While I agree that people don't need to be disparaging recruits we've never seen play a college down, the things written here are nothing compared to what these kids will have to deal with as college football players.
I remember hearing stories of Navarre getting a pitcher of beer dumped on his head at Rick's following the OSU loss in 2001 (an extreme example, for sure).
November 12th, 2009 at 5:35 PM ^
I agree. And that happened to me... when I was wearing my michigan gear... at penn state... at a bar... I guess that's life sometimes?
November 12th, 2009 at 6:35 PM ^
After "the" game in '06, I was at a Cal bar in DC with some friends, obviously I had a maize Michigan shirt. I went to the bathroom and when I came out the entire bar pointed at me and started chanting "over rated". I think they were kidding, but that still sucked.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:39 PM ^
being overrated this year.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:15 PM ^
The players get into the facebook thing. I really think that recruits have thicker skin than we think. I'm sure that it is like this on other blog sites. I think that we will not influence a kid either possitively or negatively.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:23 PM ^
I think the issue is - why are we saying anything about Mathis? What's our basis of knowledge here? We know he's a pretty good player at Cass Tech. Now there's this conversation about his tolerance for criticism, and HE HASN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING. It's this discussion we've cut from whole cloth and are now arguing over, and it's not based in a single identifiable event.
And what level of expertise does anyone here have to claim that "we don't want Mathis"? Magnus is a coach, so I'll give him that, but I can't break down film - I'd wager most of the people here can't either. Then we get "insiders" like MGoObes up above with their oblique, ephemeral posts about "he had his chance" and shit. Most of us are unqualified to comment on him from a football standpoint and have no basis of knowledge to claim to know his motivations, or anything. So why say anything? What does it contribute?
November 12th, 2009 at 5:24 PM ^
I don't think the discussion is about Mathis. It's just a thread that was spawned from a discussion about Mathis. Hopefully nobody is questioning Mathis's mental state due to this thread.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:37 PM ^
to think that people are going to "watch what they say" on a college football blog is a tad ludicrous, wouldn't you agree?
It's like asking people to stop having conversation (however asinine) at sports bars while watching the game. Or to stop making comments during the live blog. Or to not opine about policy decisions made by Congress. Most people are really unqualified to comment on the actual policy ramifications of healthcare legislation, or the latest foreign policy appropriations bill, because they really know nothing about the details of the issue and haven't taken the time to research and understand it. It doesn't stop them from doing it.
Instead of telling people to "watch what they say" I think the emphasis should be on "educate yourself before you make an unsupported statement." In that sense, we're in total agreement, I guess. I just think the notion of suggesting or expecting posters on a college football blog to pre-censor themselves is borderline insane.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:47 PM ^
I'm not sure I disagree with what you're saying, but I don't think I appreciate any real distinction between telling people to "educate yourself before you make an unsupported statement" (which you endorse) v. "watch what you say" or "pre-censor your [dumb] comments" (which you think is insane).
Not sure the latter is insane - but no doubt the former is more specific, and hence, I agree.
November 12th, 2009 at 5:53 PM ^
that I don't think anyone should be prevented or discouraged from voicing a blanket opinion like "Rich Rod should be fired." Go ahead, shout from the mountaintops.
But don't get pissy when people counter it with their own opinion, butressed by facts, etc.
But whatever, I feel like I am back in my First Amendment class in the Law School. I should just start typing in ALL CAPS.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:44 PM ^
If I don't have the basis to form an educated opinion regarding a players charactor or even if I do, when still a young college player, it's not really OK to judge and engage in a personal like attack. Mine was not a good post and should have been negged as it was.
November 12th, 2009 at 6:06 PM ^
zohizzle = zoltan? could it be?!
November 12th, 2009 at 7:52 PM ^
If someone is offered, I think that implies that Mich would be honored to have them. To intimate anything else needs to be backed up with some credibility. Posting on MGoBlog is fun because many people take it seriously. As MGoBlog (to Brian's credit) becomes more popular - it is demanding more serious posting.
If someone spews opinion as fact or worse yet their opinion as that of the fan base on whole it's lame. With some recruits comments have be interpreted to speak to the priorities of the coaching staff. That is a line that shouldn't be crossed. Why get into the coach/recruit mindset? It's already a crazy relationship.
If people spew we need to question it (and yes neg it - though neg banging has become a lot less prevalent with the voting stats - this is a good use for it - as this is trollish behavior.)
November 12th, 2009 at 8:23 PM ^
You can be critical without being nasty, is that so difficult to understand? If Roh misses a tackle, pointing it out is a fact, no bigee. But to make personal insults of Roh, because he misses a tackle is unwarranted IMHO.