Ollie Gordon fluff piece - tampering is now so common it can be discussed casually in public

It's not the NCAA's fault.

As soon as they try to enforce anything these schools get real dumb and claim to not know the rules and sue the NCAA.

Whether it's the NCAA or not, someone is going to have to govern this mess, but the "playing dumb" by all these schools is a real joke.

Michigan is the old lady in the car in the right lane going 56 MPH in a 55 zone while literally every other school is the drunk who fly by in the left lane at over 100 tossing beer cans in the road and shooting AR-15s out the window.

Cops pull over and fine the old lady because they know she wont make a fuss, who will pay her fine and wont make the cop have to potentially use force to bring her in.

This would be funny if it was happening to any other school.  I know my OSU friends find it so.

Michigan doesn't need to burn anything down, or even sue anyone.  We just need to ignore the NCAA fully and completely and do whatever the fuck we want.

No Coke.  Pepsi.

I thought he was on Ohio State, since OSU was mentioned and as a Michigan fan there is only one OSU in my mind. And having never heard of him (obviously cuz he's NOT on Ohio State) my thought was he can't be that good. 

If there's any mascot out there that deserves extra special attention and some TLC - it's the Beavers...

I live in Georgia and South Carolina will NEVER be USC. 

When I thought he was from Ohio State, the only OSU I think of as a Michigan fan, and I had never heard of him of course my mind said how good can he be? I would have heard of an Ohio State player even if they were middling. 

I see now he is from Oklahoma State. 

If there is really anyone left that is still shocked that programs are operating outside the rules, then I've got some real bad news in the form of a history lesson in the sport of college football.

tl;dr version is it has been happening since literally the dawn of the sport. Tampering, paying players, forging documents, increasing emphasis on the commercialization of the sport, etc. has been a part of college football since the late 1800s. There is no older tradition in college football than corruption.

If the person blowing up his phone was a coach/institutional staffer it's tampering.

If the person was a player on another team, it is not.

Rule breaking only counts (and is only provably true) when other teams' coaches whine in anonymous Athletic articles. Anything else is hearsay and rumor. 

If the NCAA had any teeth or standing in the court of public opinion, they'd probably still like to go after Texas or Ole Miss for stuff like that. But Texas and Ole Miss have figured out that if you tell the NCAA to "f**k off," or if you're in a state with a sympathetic AG who threatens the NCAA with lawsuits (as many states in the South are), then the NCAA realizes it has no recourse and has to back off. 

They know they're losing power and respect by the day, so their only option left, in order to still provide the perception of having power and respect, is to go after schools that still let them. Michigan is unquestionably one of those schools. Whether its still an antiquated mindset across the administration of "We're Michigan and we're better than this," or Warde doesn't have the gall to stand up for his university, I couldn't definitively say.

The NCAA can go after Michigan, lay down sanctions, and then proceed to puff out its chest, stand up and tell the world "See? We still matter." They can say they went after big bad Michigan, punished them, and give this perception that they hauled in the big fish and still know how to take care of business. 

Then - you buy a couple of already committed prospects a couple of cheeseburgers - when the entire campus is shut down because of Covid - and, you could be given a life sentence.   OR - there's an alleged violation of advanced scouting - but, no one can clearly state whether or not a rule has actually been broken because of how its written.

Context is also important in a story. The purchasing of cheeseburgers was not the Level I violation. The NCAA is alleging that Harbaugh lied or mislead the investigators about purchasing the cheeseburgers. 

The Big Ten and the University were notified by the NCAA that they are investigating the allegation of advanced scouting by the University staff. That investigation has not been completed.