Meta: Remove the audio of Bo's voice from the podcast ads
Terrible story Ace reported. And so dispiriting. Finding out that a hero had feet of clay. Do we just erase Bo and pretend he didn't exist? Do we cancel all the good things he accomplished because of this horrendous failure?
I don't know. I just don't know...
I assumed this response would happen. Look, I don't really feel good about just deleting people from memory, and I don't think that's likely to happen for Bo no matter how many things his name is taken off of or how many quotes of his are dropped from places they are printed. We can even celebrate the concepts that he embodied with those words. "The team the team the team" is right. We should look out for our teammates.
He didn't.
It is not about cancelling him, it is about choosing not to revere him. He was a leader of an organization. Your first responsibility as a leader is to the people on your team. If you fail in that very basic responsibility, it is entirely appropriate to decide to no longer revere that person as a great leader. If as a university, we call ourselves “leaders and best”, we have an obligation to live up to it. There is little leading and definitely no “best”, in Bo’s handling of this situation.
The short answer is "yes"...on not praising his accomplishments. This failure is monumental and needs to be acknowledged.
Good things he accomplished? We’re not talking about Norman Borlaug; he was a fucking football coach. Get out of here with that hand-wringing like celebrating sports vs. supporting victims of sexual assault is a difficult moral choice.
I love Michigan football but I’d have the goddamn Big House itself torn to the ground if it gave the victims of this program any relief. If this is a tough call then there is something so seriously wrong with you that you should get your head examined.
I loved Bo and like all of you I am a lifelong Wolverine.
With that out of the way....well said Dragonchild!
100% agree. Football is fun to watch, but it doesn't actually matter. The fact that Bo's teams won football games is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
His accomplishments were in sports and obviously in the grand scheme of things, sports don't particularly matter when there was such an egregious violation of human rights happening under his watch.
Michigan should move past this celebration of Bo and recognize him for the more complicated character he was. You don't have to erase him entirely but you do have to consider the facts of who he was and what he did in this situation.
Of course all of that's easy for me to say, as someone who's never really celebrated him to begin with. I always thought he was overly praised for his accomplishments, so take my comments with a grain of salt.
Bo was known as a dickhead in his own time. I went to high school in A2 and knew plenty of people who worked at the U who hated him. He was, for many, a rigid anachronism in the 1980s. His "only a Michigan man" line was, at the time, taken for bombastic silliness by many. He's been sanitized in the period since, but he was known as a bully, as quite nuts on the admin side, and criticized--openly, even then--for his archaic football style, often seen as the reason why his teams failed when they strayed outside the B1G.
As opposed to the lovely entrenched “liberalism” of the kooky universities of today.
You mean leftism Salvatore right?
All this. My dad worked for him before he came to Michigan.
I suppose it's up to each individual how they choose to remember Bo and his legacy in light of everything we know now.
As for the University, they absolutely need to remove his name from administrative buildings, athletic department enshrinement, and all the other things that immortalized his name. That is pretty much a no-brainer.
No one can force the way a person thinks or feels about Bo, but the University has a moral obligation to the public to remove any glorification of his name.
No, we can see you don't. But your choice is a silly one. There are lots of other options.
Bo isn’t being “forgotten from history.” History doesn’t work that way. Plenty of bad or flawed people aren’t forgotten. But they are properly contextualized. And Bo should be contextualized as a very good but also somewhat overrated coach who had some fine qualities but was also kind of an asshole who looked the other way, opposed equal treatment for female athletes, and fired Ernie Harwell.
History isn't being erased. Bo's name and records will show up in record books and anthologies. But that should be it. There is no need to continue to honor him as a hero. Nor keep his name on buildings and other honorifics. Like statues, they aren't really history.
>Do we just erase Bo and pretend he didn't exist?
No, we acknowledge the terrible sexual abuse he condoned.
>Do we cancel all the good things he accomplished because of this horrendous failure?
Yes, forfeit all the bowls, conference titles and wins while he coached.
No way. You don’t get to cancel people 14 yrs after their death who have never had a chance to defend their actions. If I’m Schlissel, I issue an apology on behalf of the entire university and athletic dept and I shout from the rooftops that Bo’s name and statue are here to stay. Might also add that if/when UVA erases all references to Thomas Jefferson and Duke renames it’s university, then UM may take up the issue again.
Whataboutism. Classic.
Exactly, it’s “leaders and best” NOT “leaders unless...” you can point the finger at someone worse
Sounds like what Joepa supporters also said.
You don’t see a distinction between Bo and JoePa? Ace’s report lacks.
There is no distinction worth recognizing that would justify keeping his name on a building with his statue in front of it. Trying to argue there is is ludicrous.
What's the purpose of distinguishing between egregious human rights violations? Frankly, there is no reason to compare what is laid out in the Wilmer Hale report to any other instance of abuse, it isn't a competition. What happened is awful. The focus needs to be on the corrective action in support of the victims, and to make sure nothing like that ever happens again at the University. How other institutions handled horrific misconduct is really not a topic worth considering.
The only distinction that matters to you is that Bo coached the maize and blue, while Paterno coached at psu. Any ‘distinction’ is you trying to justify your rooting interests.
Blow me punk
Keep digging in and telling us how this is ‘better’ than paterno/sandusky, clown
Dude, that just earned you the Banhammer.
Man I hope so.
an upnorth vacationing tough guy
I'm am not knowledge on the full circumstances with both Bo and JoePa's story, but to me they are basically the same story. Both knew of the abuse, had the power to end it, and both failed to act. The only distinction I see between the two is that JoePa lived long enough for the allegations to come to light
The thing that just gets me with this shit is Bo preached about being a leader of men, about it being more than just football, etc. etc. There's a whole damn book about it. Yet, when it came to actual things that mattered the most, his leadership was the most absent. Maybe that's an indictment on the sport as a whole especially back then, but to me when you look at that abject failure of leadership in the most critical moment, that puts a whole new spin on the way I see Bo now. And it is deeply upsetting. I hate hate hate the sort of preachy leaders who don't practice what they preach and commonly look away at bad behavior. That is not great leadership, it's cowardly. And it is rampant among football coaches, who only look out for their own interests but pretend that they are doing something more than that.
That doesn't mean we need to "cancel" Bo out of existence (oh my God I hate that word now, thanks Republicans!), but I'm certainly done revering him the way I used to. And I hope the university acts accordingly.
Completely agree. And what could be more fundamental to leadership than protecting those who you lead.
The lacking is not in Ace’s report
The lacking is not in Ace’s report
I always knew it to be the case, but this is just sad confirmation that there are at least some Michigan fans out there (undoubtedly there are countless) who almost certainly came out of the woodworks to shit all over PSU for what happened there, claimed the moral superiority high ground about being the leaders and best and how this would never happen at Michigan. But in actuality, those fans are no different than those PSU fans.
You, my friend, are no better than a JoePa apologist. The only difference here is Michigan is your team and you are trying to justify/rationalize how this is different because you can't stand the idea of not keeping the football team on a pedestal.
Enjoy Bolivia.
>If I’m Schlissel, I issue an apology on behalf of the entire university and athletic dept and I shout from the rooftops that Bo’s name and statue are here to stay.
Yeah, maybe for dumb bullshit like having boosters pay poor kids to go to school; I'd gladly take the L and tell the NCAA to pound sand. For sexual assault? Nah; that sort of infraction justifies the sort of measures the school took against the basketball program.
If I’m Schlissel, I issue an apology
But he won't because then it's game over for the lawyers.
The following email went out from Schlissel Tuesday afternoon (emphasis mine):
To All Members of the Campus Community:
The University of Michigan offers its heartfelt apology for the abuse perpetrated by the late Robert Anderson (deceased in 2008).
Today, we received WilmerHale’s 240-page report at the same time it was released publicly. The report is available on the U-M Board of Regents website. We will thoughtfully and diligently review and assess the report’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations; and we will work to regain the trust of survivors and to assure that we foster a safe environment for our students, our employees, and our community.
The University of Michigan Board of Regents
Mark S. Schlissel, President
So, depending on how big of an apology you mean, it seems like Schlissel has already issued at least one public apology on behalf of the University.
Thanks for posting but not an apology. Too much wiggle room.
I bet you a paycheck this came only after rounds of reviews with internal counsel.
The University of Michigan offers its heartfelt apology for the abuse perpetrated by the late Robert Anderson
This would be an apology: U of M apologizes for the lapse of leadership and systemic abuse experienced by student athletes while Dr. Anderson was employed here.
Something something "leaders and best" something something...
So, this is not how contrition works, of course, and it is eerily similar to some of the more moderate responses to the Sandusky news when it initially broke at Penn State.
There are plenty of people whose actions we condemn today even though they are long dead. Some of us even have a few of those in our own families perhaps. We have successfully learned the hard lessons and moved on from these people, and the same rules, if they are to mean anything, must apply to Bo Schembechler.
You cannot blot his name from Michigan lore obviously, but you can cease to recognize him as some infallible master of things football in Ann Arbor. He wasn't then and these revelations should show that he absolutely was not the stand-up person that some seem to believe that he was. Further, any assessment of the man must include the information contained in this report, and for the complicity alone, the name needs to be removed from prominent locations and other places of honor across campus, for it is clear he is the sort of person no one should honor so.
Also, putting the responsibility on other institutions to first recognize their own cultural shortcomings is simply bizarre and one of the weirdest examples of "whataboutism" I have seen recently.
I don't really get this response. If I accept your point that an apology by Schlissel is all that is needed, which I don't, there is no need to take it a step further and declare that statues and building names won't change. That pretty much makes any apology completely insincere.
You can’t possibly think that moral judgment is impossible if a person wasn’t alive to offer a defense. Like, you can’t possibly be that stupid.
Aaaaaand off to Bolivia for you.
Boliviated (or worse) just for expressing an opinion? Granted, his wasn't particularly a popular (or rational) one, but he was negged appropriately. Yet, that comment contained no profanity, insult, attack, the nebulous "misinformation", or anything else that egregiously violates the board rules... it was just a hot-take.
Are we to the point now that expressing an unpopular opinion gets one revoked from having their voice heard at all?
Look at my points and your question will be answered. After Ace’s Purdue basketball game post-game write up was devoted entirely to his opinion that everyone involved in both athletic departments was incompetent and negligent for allowing the game to happen (and basically boiling down to “this entire season shouldn’t be happening”)without allowing time for anyone involved to explain the situation, I made a post regarding how disappointed I was that he then proceeded to immediately throw a Twitter party about Michigan moving up on Kenpom. It was an extremely unpopular opinion apparently, despite it seeming like pretty big hypocrisy to me. Aaaaaand I guess it was unpopular enough to nuke my account, as the moderator action tread post by Seth literally just linked the post, which did not cuss, flame, or misinform, and said I’d be going to Bolivia. This is how they moderate here. If they don’t like your views, the actual moderators themselves will try to drive you off the site despite no forum rules being broken. And I guess it worked, I hardly visit anymore. But it’s still pretty crappy if you ask me.
Yes, this board has been for a long time.
"Are we to the point now that expressing an unpopular opinion gets one revoked from having their voice heard at all?"
On this blog?
Yes.
prepare to be sad