Hail to the Vi…

April 14th, 2021 at 6:05 PM ^

Agreed, I'm not sure this is necessarily a bad thing for the program. I'm sure this comes off as arm chair quarterbacking, but I kind of got the sense Dudek might have been out of his depth at a place like Michigan. 

Michigan's, at times, inexplicable recruiting strategy and organization has been discussed ad nauseum; and while that is not all on Dudek, it's kind of the role of the recruiting coordinator to align and organize recruiting efforts and manage the recruiting board. I did not get the sense that was getting done at the level you would expect for a place like Michigan (granted, I am just a dude on the internet). I think this move probably indicates we have upgraded.

BigBlue07

April 15th, 2021 at 2:41 AM ^

Top ten classes are good if you get the right players (blue chip) to come to your program. Dudek’s motto was that we don’t need the 5 stars if they don’t fit. News flash Dudek the top 4 recruiting class with most blue chip players have made the playoff consistently. I understand looking for diamond in the rough players but don’t make your mantra off that. Great job closing the 21 class but too little to late. This is Michigan and it’s recruiting needs to be agressive like Ohio St and the Alabama’s of the world. Coach’s have verbally said that blue chip players they thought Michigan would be in on they weren’t. The need for a new recruiting coordinator that matches the vibe of this younger staff. 

East German Judge

April 14th, 2021 at 6:04 PM ^

Welcome back Gif Master!

BTW, you aren't a former law enforcement officer who moved to a farm in Northern Michigan where you raised a large family, including two black boys that you adopted, then got kicked off MGoBlog for posting Covid disinformation and posing as a black guy but came back under this user name???

901 P

April 14th, 2021 at 8:24 PM ^

Quite a bit. I missed it at first, but caught some of the details in the mod action sticky, but those posts have now disappeared. Obviously a pretty divisive and polarizing topic on the board. Best I can understand, some of the site administrators took issue with COVID-related posts by a certain very active longtime user known for Friday drinking threads and a rustic lifestyle in the UP. Site admins also were apparently surprised to learn that said poster was a white guy, when felt that he was presenting himself as Black. Other board users seemed divided on this point: some were shocked to find out that the poster in question was not who he implied he was, while others said that he had never actually claimed he was Black, and if you were paying attention you would have known he was white. And of course this poster's politics tended to run contrary to the folks who run this site. 

I hope in posting this summary I am not crossing any lines--I just know what it feels like to be off the site for a day or two when something big happens, and then have no clue what's going on. 

Wendyk5

April 14th, 2021 at 9:19 PM ^

Count me as someone who thought he presented himself as black, believed him, and then started to think he was full of sh** when politics started creeping on to the board and we got to hear his take. Also, he claimed to be so many things: a former Michigan hockey player, a farmer, a homeschooler, a homesteader, a former member of law enforcement, a father of many, many kids, super religious......Don't get me wrong, I found him to be entertaining but then it started to seem extreme and outlandish. I remember telling my husband about him and at some point saying, "This guy is full of sh**."

NotADuck

April 14th, 2021 at 9:58 PM ^

I also thought he was black but that had more to do with making an assumption based on his profile picture than anything else.  In retrospect that was a bit ignorant but I'll take it and learn from it.

I don't believe he was/is full of shit.  It is completely possible for a man to have been all those things you mentioned at different points in his life.  He could have played hockey in his youth, moved out to the west coast and became a member of law enforcement, then moved back to his home state later in life to raise a family.  Possibly did so after realizing he didn't enjoy the job or city life or any number of reasons.

Listen, I'm not saying I know for sure that he was telling the truth or not.  All I'm saying is before we make assumptions about somebody we don't know, lets give them the benefit of the doubt until we have concrete evidence to prove otherwise.  AKA, the "innocent until proven guilty" approach.

Plus there are some pretty prominent members of the blog who seemed to know him personally and never had a bad thing to say about him.  I believe mgrowold and rob f were among them.  I never knew him but judging by his diaries, board posts, and the way he handled himself and others on here, I bet he's a pretty nice guy.  He was a net positive for the blog and, in my opinion, was banned unjustly.

I worry for the future of this blog if having an opinion different from the moderators/general public gets you banned.  Especially if there were no past infractions.

TIMMMAAY

April 15th, 2021 at 5:10 PM ^

I posted this in the thread that got taken down; I distinctly remember at least two occasions where he "confirmed" being black without directly saying the words. One of them was something to the effect of not being oblivious to the racial components of the rioting in Minneapolis because of the whole "Xtramelanin" thing. To me that confirmed that he was in fact a black man who held political views completely at odds with his own interests (or what in my mind should be his interest). I can't recall the other time specifically, but I do remember at least two times that I saw. 

So yes, I also think he's at least partially full of shit. Unfortunately. Liked him as a poster for a long time... then not. 

MJ14

April 14th, 2021 at 11:55 PM ^

I truly appreciate you filling me in. Work has been extremely busy so I haven’t been on here a lot over the last month so I seemed to have missed a bunch of threads. I saw some of the moderator sticky stuff and then I saw some people posting about it. I have clearly missed out on a lot of personal information about him. I didn’t realize he had adopted any children, nor did I ever realize that he might be trying to present himself as a black male? I feel like I have been around the blog for a long time. Since the beginning almost and a member for quite a while. But I missed all of that about him. I was just honestly surprised to see he had been banned and then to have all this stuff come out. It’s crazy what missing a week or so here or there can cause you to miss.
 

 

Gulogulo37

April 15th, 2021 at 4:31 AM ^

"I didn’t realize he had adopted any children, nor did I ever realize that he might be trying to present himself as a black male?"

Not really sure how you square these things. I think the obvious thing was he had 2 dark-skinned (so, not half-white, half-black) black kids because he mentioned his kids a lot and he has a photo of them as his avatar. But if you didn't think he was black you must have then thought they were adopted, right? Apparently some people knew he was white, which OK, I missed that. I'm not in the drinking threads and as much of the how's your life going threads, but so many people here act like it was clear he was white, and assume everyone knew this, but it certainly wasn't to many of us, and for very obvious reasons. I think it's fair to say if I asked any person who doesn't use the mgoboard to look at 99% of XM's posts and guess his race, they'd guess he was black, despite the plethora of right-wing talking points that now make a lot more sense!

Wendyk5

April 15th, 2021 at 10:06 AM ^

Yeah, I've been around here as long as you have and interacted with him quite a bit. I didn't assume he was black because of his avatar; it was because of things he said. I know people misrepresent themselves on the internet all the time, but this one was a head scratcher to me because of all the personal details. It takes a lot of effort to create such a well-developed persona and keep it going. His politics tipped me off -- it just didn't all add up. And the voice in which he wrote posts changed. His "Mates...." voice, which he used on drinking and various OT threads, became someone else when he got political. Certainly a fascinating turn of events. 

MJ14

April 15th, 2021 at 12:48 PM ^

I knew he had kids, but didn’t realize a few of them at least were black. I don’t really pay attention to avatars, nor did I know that his avatar was of him or his children. So hopefully that helps explain my confusion. His username obviously makes a little more sense now. I don’t know I guess I just didn’t follow his posts as much as I thought. But I am never in the drinking threads because I don’t drink a lick. Never found anything good. So I usually avoid those, which seems to be where he shared a lot more stuff. Either way, just surprised he was gone and didn’t know what happened at all. I couldn’t tell you the race of 99% of the board so it seems I know less about some people than I think!