Does Everyone Pay Players?

This would get out if it was true. When you have 100 plus players on a team it's hard to keep silent.

Remember MSU's Jehuu Caulcrick's thoughts on this?...

Jehuu Caulcrick ‏@JehuuCaulcrick 
I don't understand y everyone is making a big deal over Arian Foster saying he got money while he was in college. News flash We all did.

If Caulcrick played at Michigan, this would have been all over the Free Press, News, ESPN, CNN, hell maybe the State of the Union address.

What gave Cam Newton's father the idea that he could get $180K from Miss.St. in the first place? Youngstown St. was penalized by NCAA for lack of institutional control when Tessel was Head Coach there.Specifically the QB was caught with a new car supplied by a local dealer.Anyone remember Terelle Pryors 'test drives?" Troy Smith? Only stain on Michigan's rep has been  in Basketball thanks to Ed Martin.You might also google "SEC bagmen"

There are allegations going all the way back to the 60's & 70's Wooden led UCLA teams. The SWC basically imploded because of rampant cheating in the 70's and 80's. Divsion III schools misuse scholarships to attract athletes just so they can win. 

It's pretty simple. Athletes, coaches and fans like to win. There is a big enough percentage who are willing to bend or break the rules that cheating is fairly common across the board and it is not some new fangled idea. 

I can't speak for what is happening now, nor what happens in 99% of a typical UM Athlete's experience but...

I was a manager at a popular establishment in AA for 5 years during the RR and Hoke years. The owner has a few establishments like this in town, and is a big supporter of Michigan Athletics. Certain players were given impermissible benefits regularly. In my time there, I never witnessed or was a part of anything large (house, car, etc.), but meals, jobs, money, etc. were regularly provided free of charge to some athletes.  

Again, I have no clue what goes on currently, nor to what extent this happens elsewhere around our athletic programs / AA. But it happened, and I was a part of it. I think it is likely on a significantly smaller level than some of the biggest offenders in College Football, but it happens. 

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/52705/MICHIGAN-BASEBALL-HEADED-FOR-P… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Michigan_basketball_scandal

In reality, this stuff has been cleaned up a ton, first as a result of the internet, and then again as a result of social media. It was way worse twenty years ago than it is today, and it's not even close. 

Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?

Lol Devin Gardner bought my friend a dress on a credit card from a booster, of course they get paid.  Do you all really think a bunch of top recruits are saying no to thousands of dollars at schools like fsu, clemson, bama, that are putting players in the nfl at a higher rate and winning more because they just love michigan that much? Ok.

I don't know anything about getting paid but I always heard stories when i was in college of a lot of their academics being taken care of. Papers being written for them... stuff like that.

is all of the so called cheating/ paying off of players that's going on.

If this were true than every single 4-5 star kid who never made it to the NFL (and there's a ton of them) would come out with a tell-all book and cash in on the earnings that he's lost out on. 

There's no way this is going crazy like most say and that over 1,000+ or so graduating seniors EVERY YEAR are all just keeping this a big secret from society.

I bet if you could ask Jim Harbaugh for an honest answer on this question he'd say something so very small that it would barely be measureable. This is a guy who's talked to probably close to tens of thousands of former CFB players and coaches and I'm sure he'd have a very good idea.

With that said I don't think for a minute he'd want to get involved in a sport if there was even 1/10 of the cheating and corruption going on that people claim.

I wonder why, if this practice is actually going on, more former players who are busts don't come forward and say 'they paid me'.  A few instances of this pop up now and then but I'm surprised its not more commonplace.  I imagine there must be a handful of disgruntled oversigned SEC players whose careers didn't pan out that must have been paid.  

From a basketball perspective, I think this goes on and I know a lot of mgobloggers believe Beilein's recruiting suffers because he won't do it.  I think the antidote to that is recruiting the sons of former pros, which Beilein has had success with.  GRIII, Hardaway, Horford and Dawkins all worked out (well, maybe not Dawkins just yet).  Although some of them fell through the recruiting cracks, I assume their parents didn't feel the need to shop them around to crooked programs because they were already well off from years in the NBA.  If Beilein can't recruit dirty with the big boys he should zero in on these guys and go after them hard.  What former NBA players currently have kids coming up in high school?  

and is known for being a great dad and doing good community stuff.

Dwight Howard has five under far different circumstances and Scott Skiles has six.....we probably shouldn't waste time recruiting the Skiles kids though......

Eh, I've seen a RB around campus in a new Camaro with dealer plates, and certainly pretty much every player seems to have his own scooter - doubt any of that is paid for. Can't imagine they pay for many meals, either, and I believe people when I hear about players taking other benefits too. If you somehow think Michigan is the only big time school that doesn't do this, you're deluding yourself. As another poster said, do you really think big time recruits would pick living as a poor student at Michigan over living it up at other schools just because they love our team and ideals so so much? Come on.

That having been said, I absolutely think that certain schools make a practice of paying players more than others. Some certainly seem to make salary a selling point to recruits (Ole Miss, Clemson, Auburn, etc) - I think with us it's more of a "we'll play ball and you won't miss out, but we're not getting into a bidding war either."

Is this thread really happening?

Judging by our lack of big men in basketball, I'd say that we aren't paying players. But maybe we should. Just kidding. Sorta.

It happens at UM and all big schools. A buddy of mine was offered a half scholarship at Minnesota under Lou Holtz. Lou Holtz took 3 hundred dollars out of his pocket handed it to the senior hosting my friend and told him "get him drunk, get him laid and have him back here by 8 am." My buddy ended up going to a D2 school where he got more PT than he would have gotten at Minnesota but this type of thing is common throughout recruiting.

I'm of the opinion that the better the program, the less they need to pay players. Elite players like Reggie bush, others? Yeah it happens at some frequency, but it's isolated to players who are sure bets for the pros because people want a return on investment. That's not to say players don't benefit from connections at restaurants or wherever. I'm a nobody, but even I had friends in places in college who hooked me up with free stuff and food when I was in college. Football players are more famous on campus and have friends, it's par for the course. But outright payments? I think that's rare. Individual players on a team are rarely in a position to impact the outcome of a football game (like say basketball players) and therefore few are worth paying a lot of money. Schools that can't attract top end talent because they have something to offer (i.e. SMU) have to resort to paying stars to come. Michigan will attract 3-4 stars with frequency. It's not worth paying because someone else is always willing to come.

I do not, for one minute, believe that Michigan knowingly allows their players to participate in any form of activity leading to some sort of compensation that is against the rules.

Hackett and Harbaugh would never go for that shit.  The basketball program several decades ago got caught doing what the Jones' do and that should have been a lesson learned.

Ole Miss may have to bribe players but that's because they've got nothing else to offer.