Dr Anderson Fallout Continues - New SI Story w/ Jarrod Bunch
https://www.si.com/college/2021/06/25/jarrod-bunch-michigan-toughness-and-devotion-daily-cover
Small excerpt:
Michigan’s board of regents released a statement in March saying, in part, “We are sorry for the pain caused by the failures of our beloved University.” But the school has not settled the case. And Bunch doesn’t know what to think. All these years, he believed he had a good relationship with the university, that it was proud of him and saw him as one of its own.
“It's clouding my judgment,” he says. “Instead of like, Look, we know this was wrong, let’s finish it, get this done, so everybody can be whole and we can start repairing our relationship, they’re fighting the s---.” (A Michigan spokesperson says the school is “actively engaged in a confidential, court-guided mediation process with the survivors of Dr. Anderson's abuse.”)
This, he says, is why he is sharing his story. He says, “The truth is the truth.” Bunch did not want to have this conversation with his brother. Horn has not told some of his own family members. Neither man enjoys sharing this truth, but Bunch thinks it is important to do it at least once because he owes it to other players who spoke up recently, like little-remembered Gilvanni Johnson or Daniel Kwiatkowski. It is easy for some to dismiss Johnson and Kwiatkowski as bitter because they didn’t achieve college stardom. But what do you say about Jarrod Bunch?
“Four Big Ten championships, man,” he says. “Captain of the football team. Drafted in the first round. Was it the best? No. But what’s my complaint?”
Bunch goes off on a rant about his alma mater … and then he asks that it not be put in the story. He’s worried that he sounds like he hates Michigan—that his words might even be used against the school in recruiting.
Jarrod Bunch doesn’t want to hate Michigan. He wants to love Michigan again. But he wants to know that the school loves him, too.
well I was wrong and can see why people didn't come forward.
it was Bo and the culture he built and allowed.
now that a former captain has come out with this it is no longer in dispute in my mind.
burn it down.
Pay them all and cut football's budget by the amount the school has to pay.
Michigan is just like all the rest, no integrity, no moral compass.
just trying to hide the truth like all the other corrupt scum like penn state and msu
disgusting someone didn't bust that fat doctor in the mouth and end this back when he started abusing young men.
Manuel's resignation should be on the president's desk today for trying to hide all of this
Bunch was a personal favorite of mine. This was hard to read and you can tell he held back a lot as the end of the story he talks about a rant against Michigan that he had to ask the writer not to print.
Yeah, it's clear Bo knew and it was part of the culture at Michigan, a tool to toughen the players up.
I'd stop short of calling it "a tool" but it's becoming more clear that it was a known to happen at Michigan. These players are so familiar to us and that makes it personal. The school needs to be transparent and come clean with what they have discovered.
Rumors that the school put an absolutely insulting settlement offer on the board. So you can expect a steady stream of this until the matter gets settled.
I am sure the plaintiffs’ lawyers had nothing to do with that rumor. How much money should the university take from current and future employees, students, and athletes to account for things that happened 20 or more years ago that did not involve any of the current administration anyway? The poster above seems to feel it is a great outrage that we did not agree to pay whatever the victims demanded immediately regardless of the ramifications for the future of the university.
Of course, he cares more than anyone else because he wants to burn it down……
Irrelevant. Legal liabilities are legal liabilities. UM 20 years ago is UM today for purposes of this scenario. Acts happened back then, but you pay now, regardless of impact to current and future employees, students, etc. I'm not saying UM pays whatever the plaintiffs want, but I am saying "that happened 20 years ago" does not drive down the price of poker today.
I am not arguing that the university should not settle. I also think the current administration has an obligation to protect the university’s interest and by extension the interest of current and future employees, students. etc. by negotiating the lowest settlement they can. The argument that they are in the wrong and not taking responsibility by using this approach is flawed.
Also I think the time passed and the burden of the costs being placed on individuals who were not responsible is a useful point in the negotiation and potentially with a jury.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
Divorce all this from any moral question on the shame that the university should feel. The smarter play is to make everyone whole and stop this stream of stories from respected alumni who have been wounded. There is no dollar amount of savings on a settlement worth these kinds of stories to your reputation.
"Make everyone whole." I have no idea what that means in the context of this. So there is some amount of money that can be paid after which everyone is satisfied and we all just get on with things? And the victims sing a happy tune of justice achieved and the media praises Michigan's enlightened handling of this horror show? Let's just aim the mighty Michigan money cannon at the problem?
What should have been done months ago is put the chair of the Board of Regents, Schlissel and Warde on a private plane to visit every last person who has come forward, acknowledge what has happened, apologize on behalf of the entire University community and ask forgiveness. And only once that has been undertaken ought we discuss how we can best compensate them.
For heaven's sake, can we please show these people some respect and basic human decency?
Yeah, it's clear Bo knew and it was part of the culture at Michigan, a tool to toughen the players up
People are bipolar on this. It doesn't have to be all of one or the other. I don't think Anderson groping players was part of Bo's coaching playbook.
Probably, Bo figured Anderson knew more than he did about conducting physicals and took his word over other peoples', figuring that the complaining players were just being crybabies. Of course he was dead wrong about that, and shouldn't have a football building named for him.
100% this. Once we all stop idolizing people in this country, we will stop being shocked when our “heroes” turn out to be flawed like everyone else. And then maybe our “bipolar” (or maybe “borderline” is better) approach to our sports personalities will cease. Also: Michigan and nearly every school has many more unethical people whose names (ahem, Taubman) “grace” its buildings. They just happened to donate a shit ton of money. Moral: almost no one deserves a statue or a building.
No denying that this is all disappointing info regarding Bo, but less surprising when you consider the era and its context and that he was a man just trying to win football games. Sorta like finding out that our greatest children’s book author, Dr. Seuss, was exceptionally racist toward Blacks and Asians. Or that Benjamin Franklin was a womanizer. Or that Thomas Jefferson not only owned slaves but fathered children with them.
But, whatever one thinks of UM’s approach to the legal settlements, I don’t think UM has run away from or denied their failings (cough, cough, MSU and PSU).
why
do you
write all of your
sentences
like this?
why
is your avatar humping a dog and giving a thumbs up?
Am I missing something? What did Warde do to hide this?
As far as I can tell the university is handling this fairly well. There’s still time to fuck it up but I haven’t seen any Engler type shenanigans so far.
There was some talk that Warde violated policy by not forwarding the letter he received to the Office of Institutional Equity like policy dictates. While that is true, Warde did send the letter to the Office of General Counsel the day it was received and it was then forwarded to the correct office. OIE then reached out to the person who sent the letter about 6 weeks after the letter arrived.
Warde's detractors place a great deal of emphasis on the fact that he sent the letter to the wrong department. TBH, calling the lawyers and asking what I should do doesn't seem crazy to me, especially since everyone made sure it got to the right spot in a relatively timely basis. However, I am not an expert on this process, so I don't know if there is some reason why this would be a huge issue by itself.
This is a huge in going case and eventually everything will come out and restitution paid. But while investigations are on going you don’t publicize everything going on. Legal situations are sticky. It’s not they are hiding they are prudently doing what they should do legally
I just read the article and I'd give it a good score. Damn shame that it was written by that weasel Rosenberg, which I suspected when I saw "SI" in the link. (Yes, it still bothers me that he slandered Michigan football twelve years ago.)
Of course Rosenberg would be the last man at SI. Maven fired all of the talent with their idiotic 'pivot to video' and left a burning crater.
I can't help but think that a lot of this is because of that old school mentality of men need to be tough and not complain. I'm sure that attitude was taken to extremes under Bo. A shame that his priority was toughening them up as opposed to taking care of them and so many seemed to have suffered as a result.
I just keep wondering, what the hell was Bo thinking?
What was in Bo's past that gave him the idea that building a football factory meant creating this particular concept of team?
Rosenberg shows how experiences can change lives. Bo didn't invent this mentality. Neither did Paterno. There's this concept, often attributed to Nietzsche from his quote, "what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." Somehow, this idea made its way into sports coaching, as have many quotes and ideas related to war.
Bo did this because he thought it would build a better football team. I don't know why that translated to covering up obvious sexual abuse from a team doctor, but it did. And given Bo's place in coaching royalty, athletes like Bunch trusted and were hurt.
It's hard to hear Bunch's words, but this concept must be thoroughly dismantled and the coaching world must change enough that it is no longer possible in sports. I hope we're past that point now, but the biggest story in the Canton (Ohio) area lately is a coaching staff for a successful high school football program fired for forcing a kid to eat an entire pizza while his teammates watched because he skipped a "voluntary" workout (there's also an additional piece related to pepperoni and religious dietary restrictions, but I'm not sure it's relevant).
There are a lot of coaches out there who have some potentially criminal ideas of how teams are built. And I'm sure they would never see their own actions as abusive. That's why we appreciate Bunch coming forward. His story will help change the culture.
The player was Muslim and not allowed to eat pork.
He isn't Islamic (Black Hebrew Israelite). Not to defend the coaches, but they claim they offered him alternative foods (some say he chose to remove the pepperoni from the pizza instead, though that would still be forbidden under their dietary rules - pork and pork residue). His lawyer claims the family stopped eating pork several years ago, but there are pictures of the kid at a pork BBQ eating contest from a year or so ago. It's all far too lawyered-up and emotional to get a strong sense of who is telling the truth. The coaches have been fired from their day jobs with the schools as well - forced eating, regardless of religion, is probably a technique that doesn't belong under the wide umbrella of "team building."
As long as I live, I never want to hear "The Team, the Team, the Team" again.
Hard to read and sad. I remember Bunch very well. I became a fan in 1969, so it has been hard for me to read this stuff about Bo. It's frustrating that he isn't here to be questioned. One thing I don't think is true is that the University is stalling or fighting. They seem to have acknowledged the wrongdoing, and are trying to determine how to compensate individuals. It's a very tangled web that will take some time to work through. Plaintiffs' lawyers will continue to apply pressure by keeping the issue front and center, and I think Michigan is probably just as anxious to get the whole thing in the rear view mirror. I wish Anderson were still around, so he could be publicly flogged.
They've always known of the wrongdoing and have covered it up for decades.
What about - "Those who stay will be Champions!"???
I had a Those Who Stay banner on my wall for the past decade. It's currently at the bottom of my trash bin.
Well, this hasn't be true for 15+ years for Michigan Football so it's time to retire that one too.
/We're a basketball school now anyway. Coach Juwan Howard can make this program into anything he wants. If he wins a National Championship or two, he can be the BMOC.
Maybe we could have a Michigan football slogan fire sale. Surely there is a mushroom farm out there somewhere that would option, "Those who stay will be champignons."
Man, every one of these stories is hard to hear.
I have no idea what can adequately compensate the survivors but I hope they get it.
There are about 100 former players, coaches, and staff who should be required to personally apologize to every survivor.
It has become apparent that the pride we all took in our football program came at a very large, personal price for many, many young men.
Heartbreaking story -- thanks for sharing. What Bunch describes adds some clarity to how this could have gone on so long without any action. The last line quoted by the OP (about Bunch wanting to know that Michigan loves him too) is powerful.
John Bacon shared on Twitter the other day a piece from his personal website on the issue (which haven't seen shared here but maybe missed):
https://johnubacon.com/2021/06/dr-andersons-abuse-and-um-athletics-what-we-know-and-dont-know/
Like many others, I wanted to believe that Bo wasn't aware of Anderson. I read John U. Bacon's thoughts a few days ago, and agreed with him that we can't actually know what Bo knew. This article puts that possibility to bed. Bo knew. He used it as a tool. John U. Bacon is nothing but a propagandist for the football team. Take down the statue. Bo may have been a great man outside of football, but his coaches used Anderson as a tool. They used the possibility of sexual assault as a tool, and implemented that tool for some alleged benefit of toughening up players.
Throughout, Schembechler tells his players they’d better stay out of the training room—that’s for guys who didn’t train their bodies to get callous. Occasionally, when a player struggles or loafs, somebody will ask: “Are you trying to go see Anderson again, or what?”
Bunch says now, “If you weren't playing hard enough, or if you were missing assignments or whatever, it was that you were trying to get out of it because you wanted to go see Anderson. That was the whole atmosphere. It wasn’t like a whisper. A coach might say it.”
I wasn't sure if this meant visit to Anderson was being as a tool of fear, or if it was typical of coaches who accuse players who are loafing of wanting to get out of practice by seeing the doctor. I know the article implies the former, but why would a player "want" to see Anderson to be abused?
I took it as a threat: "You're missing a lot of blocks out there...you want to go see Anderson again?"
I suppose your take is correct. It fits with what Bunch was saying. I just don't trust Rosenberg to be completely above board.
I took it that way and also as kind of an insult "Oh you aren't tough out there you must be the kind of guy who likes what Anderson does in his checkups huh"
I also read it as this sort of toxic masculinity/homophobic angle.
JUB seems to be working his brain and his pen overtime to try to spin a tale that gets Bo off the hook. I also find it very distahsteful that he spends so much time, in the beginning of the article, poking holes in Matt Schembechler' story. Anderson abused his patients. This is known. Why is it so important to believe that he didn't abuse Matt Schembechler? It just knocks one victim off a long list of victims.
It sounds to me like JUB really wants to believe this isn't true super bad and is only going to concede things that have already been proven to the point that he can no longer deny them. But anything he can possibly disbelieve even to the point of making bizarre arguments about what people say or hear he will happily do that.
People are not all good or all bad. Very bad people can still do good things. Good people still do bad things. Bo did a bad thing. Endless stories of good things he also did doesn't change that. At all. Those stories of good things Bo did mean nothing regarding his mistakes in not dealing with this situation because they are not stories about how he stopped someone from sexually abusing his football players. Because he didn't do that.
The error was in deifying Bo. Because he won some football games and made people feel good.
Interesting that you blame Manuel for hiding "all of this". I didn't realize he was the ruler of the university.
The Chicago Blackhawks now have their own sexual abuse scandal:
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/2021/06/25/chicago-blackhawk-lawsuit-sexual-assault-bradley-aldrich/5342651001/
This is so fucked. I'm sure most hockey fans can figure out who John Doe is in this case due to his outspokenness lately on such issues as well as mental health and how the NHL doesn't do nearly as much as it should.
It's really not that difficult, if you're told of something like this or something that Anderson was doing, report it, report it as high up as you can and if nothing happens, report it to the authorities.
Easy to say now. Maybe not so easy 30+ years ago when there was no social media and it was a lot easier to sweep things under the rug.
Double post
Thanks for sharing the article.
I would be stunned if this somehow doesn't envelope Moeller and Carr.
It has to, how can it not. What about Harbaugh and all the others who signed the letter that Bo did not know this. Come on people be fucking honest!!!
Wow that is a tough read, but good for Jarrod Bunch to come out and tell this story. It would have been much easier for him to say nothing.