Michigan still CAN take the higher moral ground
After reading Sharp's shitpiece where he claims that our program is off the high moral plane, or "High moral ground lost", well, I disagree with every fiber of my being. Tireless work is often seen in entities that will not accept mediocrity, and the line always gets toed because to be better than its peers, it has to do more than its peers....
...FURTHERMORE...
These "violations" are not of the same species, such as Belichick filming the other teams when told not to on several occasions and gaining a huge competitive advantage. This also isn't paying off a recruit to come to the program. Heck, these "violations" are not even in the same genus.
These "violations" are products of an entity doing what all entities of greatness do.... they push the boundary as far as possible, and this implies pushing into the gray area, because it is in fact, gray.
It is this writer's opinion that the burden falls on the NCAA to further clearly define the areas so there is no gray, such as earmark stretching time as countable practice, among other stipulations, especially when it is involving the reputation of the most righteous program it has ever had. Until then, it is punishing a program that has acted in good faith for 100+ years, especially when the accuser was a media newspaper who has a vested interest to distort the facts.
Sometimes I like taking the lower moral ground. We can all wade through the shit together as a single Unit.
Why are you still reading Drew Sharp? I mean, I'm not one of the FREEP MUST DIE DIE DIE people, but Drew Sharp was terribad long before the rest of the sports section decided to Jihad.
His job is the same as Hat guy's in print, or Bleacher Report on the internet, or Mike Valenti in radio: make controversial points to get people talking about him which raises his profile, leading to more readers/callers/pagehits.
I mean, these guys were the original version of internet trolls. Stop feeding them.
I could care less about having the moral high ground. The more high ground is littered with douche bags and snobs.
Why do we have to proclaim our moral authority?
Didn't we lose that during the basketball scandal?
Why can't we just be humble, and follow the rules without proclaiming we stand on some sort of mythical, moral high ground?
the moral high ground is what Notre Dame uses to justify losing games. It's pretentious and arrogant to believe you are morally superrior to anybody.
More importantly, why is anyone still reading Sharp/ Rosenberg? Why? Is there news that you just can't get on MGo?
Sorry, Double Post
twice.
To follow up on a time honored board tradition:
Since you could care less then you do care about the moral high ground. I think you mean to say you could not care less.
/pickiness
That said, +1 for the general idea that we do not need to take the moral high ground, which we probably lost many years ago anyway.
I agreed with you until your last paragraph. As Brian's post yesterday showed, the football side of compliance seems to have barely done its job. When that happens, you're going to commit violations even if you don't intend to because the rules are tricky and sometimes hard to follow. That's why you hire an ethical coach (as it seems we did), and then you hire people to help him out and make sure he doesn't accidentally make a mistake. The people watching out and protecting the program and the coach from accidentally making mistakes were hapless, so we committed violations and now we've been punished for them.
The infractions weren't major (except in technical terms). Correspondingly, the punishment isn't major and it won't impact us a great deal. It's fairly appropriate for the infractions.
To directly disagree with your argument, if an organization, great or not, frequently pushes into "gray areas," they're going to get their hands slapped in response on occasion for breaking rules. You're praising Michigan for going into gray areas and upset that we got our hand slapped for doing so--one typically goes with the other. I would rather we just made sure we explicitly follow the rules--we can push boundaries but we should be clear that those boundaries still remain safe. If you disagree with me, fine--but don't be surprised if that causes us to have to deal with more of this in the future.
Furthermore, stretching really isn't a gray area, it's counted against practice time if it's required, which it was here. Not knowing the law never is a defense against it, particularly when the NCAA is set up to answer your questions if you're not sure about something. What's more ridiculous is that, according to Brian's post yesterday, we didn't think stretching counted because Mike Barwis told a compliance officer that it didn't. Mike Barwis is many wonderful things, but he's not a bigger expert in compliance than our compliance officer; there's absolutely no excuse for a compliance officer not looking it up on his own.
Zoo... yours was a very well written post.... my compliments...
Regarding a gray area, its gray because it obviously haven't been clearly made black-and-white and/or enforced with teeth, and that falls on the authoritative body to clarify, especially when the majority of NCAA programs operate in that area in which we've been slapped. When the majority are doing this, then it truly falls on the NCAA to rectify it.
And I did not intend to praise our program for pushing into gray areas.
Does anyone else think that a program like osu, with 42 secondary violations average per year, should be punished more than what happened to UM?
Calling a recruit too many times, or during a dead period, making sure a recruit receives special discounted rates at a hotel as well as receiving free food, only to be paid back AFTER that recruit has signed with that school just seems like a bigger deal than punishing a player for skipping class.
I guess what I'm asking is whether or not the NCAA could come down on a program like osu who may have ended up getting a recruit based on secondary violations? If, in fact, osu has landed a few recruits because of the violations, seems to me that they've gained a competitive advantage.
for going about defining violations in the dumbest way possible. If you look at their bylaws, they define what constitutes a secondary violation and then almost literally say "everything else is a major violation." It's an extraordinarily ass-backwards way of making rules, and of course Brian pointed out in another recent issue with practice time (USF, I believe), the NCAA itself called its own guidelines "vague" and "hard to follow." It's like the guy in charge of writing these bylaws was busy playing Halo with Brad Labadie when the deadline passed and random pieces of notes were just slapped together.
I have said this elsewhere, but I think it is appropriate for repeating, especially in this thread. Thanks to the investigation, UM is now running the cleanest program in the BCS. There is such a high level of scrutiny that there is absolutely no wiggle room like most programs have.
So, if running the cleanest program in the BCS counts as "taking higher moral ground," then it has already been done.
Drew Sharp is the stupidest sports writer I have ever witnessed. Just thinking about the name gives me a sad face. :(
What ever happened to we rape we pillage? Win if you can, lose if you must, but cheat all the time. Cheating is only cheating if you get caught, otherwise it is just aggressive play. This is the unofficial code that every team plays by. If a set of referees decided that they would call no holding no matter how obvious, who wouldn't hold? I think what we need is a level playing field, and we have not had such in the last couple of years by experience of both the players and the coaches with the players. The least penalized team is usually a very poor team, middle of the road is better. Truly taking the moral high ground would be only giving football scholarships to players that qualify for full academic rides. After all, it is a University with a football program, not a football team with a school, right? The moral high ground is an excuse to not excel...I dont want anything to do with it. I'm not saying we should be Miami Fla, but I am saying being a saint will not win football games against the BCS elite.
I like to take the high ground but when Drew Sharp is being a idiot like usual it really pushes my boundaries.
I'd love to take a higher moral ground if it has a high moral cliff to push Sharp, Rosenberg, and Snyder off of.
Most Michigan fans are more accustomed to the high arrogant ground, which is why they whine and cry when an article comes out not espousing the greatness of Michigan.
Gordie, to borrow a quote from Don Corleone... 'thats a complete falsehood'.... here is the definition of arrogance:...an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions...
Our beloved football program has EARNED everything it has and has dominated for more than 100 years, which justifies every attitude of superiority, because quite frankly, it is true based on all evidence.
M fans generally are not overbearing about it however they will guard the fort at all costs in defense, which can be construed as arrogance but it is not. For instance, of my four close high school friends, all of them applied here but did not get in, and all except me, went to MSU. And in every chance they could get, it'd be constant unsolicited ripping of our program. And yet, in their eyes I'd possess a pre-existing guilt, of being "arrogant" because I went to M. The only thing that would effectively shut them up is to ask... "did you apply to M?" and followed by "would you have went to M if you got in?"
And regarding the latter half of the defintion, I fail to see where M fans derive that attitude from 'presumptuous claims'.
Gino, I don't even know what to make of this post/thread, but it did make me laugh.
These "violations" are products of an entity doing what all entities of greatness do....
The Michigan football team is my favorite team in any sport, your characterization of M football as a great "entity" is just bizarre to me, you probably don't believe your own bullshit but need something to prop up the worthless point your'e trying to make.
BTW I do find your manner in this post slightly overbearing, and your "claims" of Michigan's moral superiority in the face of breaking rules quite "presumptuous".
Michigan screwed up, got exposed because of petty jealousies and infighting, hardly the stuff of high moral ground legends.
