OT Dabo doth protest too much
So here goes Dabo again. My favorite part is where he is worried about the players education. Now not everything he says is wrong, but a fair amount is pretty funny.
Didn't he claim he would retire if players started getting paid?
Just didn’t say when…all in the fine print
TLDR: man making $8.5M a year to coach a game with a rubber ball & 22 guys is worried that a few of those guys making 6 figures is the point at which college football is becoming “professionalized”. Hypocritical asshole
"started" LOL
Dabo is like the mob during prohibition. "Noooo, don't make it legal and level the playing field!"
Yes, and the gamecock fans here in Columbia have no problem reminding any local Clemson fans of this on the regular.
The guy doesn't make the playoff after beating Syracuse and Virginia tech for one year and he starts whining. Shocking
he said more than that - he talked about the inevitability of what will end up being a 40-50 member 'super conference' (my words, not his) because the bigger schools are simply on different ground than the P5 group, among others.
i will say this about times long past, back in my day there was something to be said about the old college model of going to play your sport and get an education. there was a measure of purity to that in many instances. i realize there were cheaters even then and of course as the money poured in the last 30 yrs everything got cattywampus beyond belief, but that more simple time had some value. i would guess that D-II ball is about as close as you get to that nowadays.
See, when you say things like this it doesn't sound like a self-preserving sanctimonious clown worried about slipping into oblivion having lost one of the best runs of QB play in the last few decades and two of the best coordinator/recruiters. You just sound like a normal nostalgic dude like the rest of us. Why can't people who are paid multiple millions of dollars a year hire someone like you to teach them to speak to the rest of us in a manner in which we might actually care or empathize with them?
i think that was a compliment, so thank you. if it wasn't, it was the smoothest sarcasm and kudos for the great writing. i will say that what i wrote was based on my personal experience playing (very little) at U of M and our own kids who are playing college football, with the younger ones very likely to follow in those footsteps. we are 'living it', so to speak. i was totally against playing the players when that came up years ago. my thinking on that has evolved. i still think we may have opened pandora's box, but i also think that there are tremendous equities involved that i support.
It is now difficult to say this without sounding sarcastic, but there was no sarcasm intended at all. Thank you for your kind words XM.
"I would guess that D-II ball is about as close as you get to that nowadays". . XM-Mt 1822
That ship has sailed, too. How far? Consider high school football in TX, IMG, etc. as indicators of the extent of money in all levels of the sport.
The bag men, donors, and sponsors are all still present. Add NIL, legalized gambling, CFP alliances, the NCAA profiteers, and media contracts to the mix. The word "education" is nowhere to be found, replaced by profit, greed, and winning at any cost.
i am unaware of, and have never heard of, D-II players getting any type of money to go to school X. i will make the assumption that is has happened at some point, somewhere, but even then it would be a trivial impact on D-II sports such as football, hoops, etc. i'd be genuinely curious if you could provide examples.
Think Div 3 my man.
what about it? what does that have to do with the topic other than there are no athletic scholarships and nobody gets 'paid to play' in D-III? please answer the question i posed re: is there proof of D-II having some big pay to play scandal like you hear about in D-I. i mean, i haven't heard of a single incidence, much less the truckload that is in D-I. please share if you have something.
I haven't watched much DIII football but I've seen a good amount of DIII baseball and it's very pure. The teams we've seen are as good, skill-wise, as a lot of DI teams but they lack the athleticism of DI players -- the speed, power and velocity. But the baseball itself can be exciting and very well-played. And there's no money or NIL, just students playing for their respective schools.
If you believe some of Seth’s work on Michigan and football history, this nostalgic past never actually existed.
seth is highly credible but i'm old, my time was before seth was probably even alive. and as i mentioned, i lived it, i didn't have to hear about it.
XM,
I believe you that you had that really cool experience. So did I.
But it’s dismissive after all of Seth’s work on WWII teams and the Yost years to simply claim that you played before he was born.
I would imagine the type of play you are referring to exists in DIII for sure. I don’t know enough about DII to know if it is or isn’t.
oh gracious, i think that's a missing part of the internet vs. in-person communication. nothing i wrote was meant in any way to dismiss what seth has posted (pretty sure i scanned it once however many months ago that was) and even my very first post on this topic today acknowledges that cheating existed way back when.
the true context of my comment was that in my era it was a relatively minor impact where in the last 20-30 years it has become increasingly out of control and rampant. go back to, for instance, rashan gary turning down $Xhundreds of thousands from clemson to come to michigan. that's insane (not in the sense of being untrue, but the numbers warp the mind). my recollection is that seth says that we might or in fact are participating in that type of pay-to-play scheme for some players. okay, that might've happened. i'd be very disappointed but i'd do my best to be objective about whatever the facts are/were. we're not likely to get a mgoblog front pager on 'how michigan bought players last year', and with NIL all of that has become much less relevant and important. nevertheless, i'd like to know the nitty-gritty about it. indeed, my comment has been 'if we're buying players, and we're the 'leaders and best', we ain't living up to our motto!'
I read Junction Boys and they wrote about large sums of cash given to players in the 1950’s. The book talked about how Bear Bryant got A&M put on probation. It wasn’t because they were cheating, everyone did. It was because he was going into others teams ‘territories’ and it pissed them off so they went after A&M.
I’ve said it before and will keep saying it, college football has always been corrupt and dirty. It’s no different now then it was sixty years ago, if not longer.
The difference today is that college football is a prominent popular sport nationally. College football was very regional for a long time. Kids didnt venture to far from home and played locally for the most part.
I think Dabo is right that the next big move will be a Power 5 "Premier League" of 40-50 schools that break away from the NCAA. What Michigan needs is different from Eastern Michigan and even more different than say Grand Valley State (D2) and Kalamazoo (D3).
This belief that it was better "back in the day" needs to be retired. 100 years ago players could play at Notre Dame one week and Northwestern the next. As recently as 30 years ago, kids could be holed up in hotel rooms for weeks before signing day. NCAA regulations are byzantine and often unfair, but they have regulated some of the worst issues of the past.
doubleB, do you have personal experience that lets you assert that 'better in the day' is not true? remember, i was talking my era, 80's, and i am referring to the generalization (maybe not so true in SEC country and some other places) that pay-to-play was nothing like it is now or has become since the '80's,
and as to your comment re: kids holed up in hotel rooms, what are you talking about and how does that relate to U of M? did you live that 'holed up' or just read it somewhere?
We are heading to a semi pro type league of probably 40 teams. IMO it’s sad to see. I also like the old days when kids cared about an education. Played the game because it helped them attain said education and because they loved the game and their school. Now it’s just about getting paid
You mean some kids right? And really just a small percentage probably fit your comment that “it’s just about getting paid”. It feels pretty degrading to the kids who go to school and play a sport full-time for our entertainment. Do you know how many hours they put on their craft and school? More than most full-time corporate professionals. More than most other college students. Definitely more than me when I went to school.
I know the family of a kid on the Michigan team right now who plays because he loves the team and the school. He is extremely grateful for the education and knows he will need it later in life. He is all academic. Makes a little NIL but he is not playing just to get paid.
April 10th, 2022 at 10:12 AM ^
I just think it's so infantilizing that because a player does a commercial or a shoe deal they all of a sudden decide learning isn't for them. Trying to put myself back in my 18-22 year old self, I wouldn't have been any less keen on learning about math history and science if I made 100k to shoot a few commercials. If anything the process of signing contracts getting advised by lawyers and dealing with the expectation to perform well in exchange for a huge monetary payment would have accelerated my growth and maturity.
well said, xm.
its so hard to say this without sounding like a sour, hypocritical old fart - particularly since i love some of the trappings of big-time college sports - but i’m not sure that the new model, with so much money going in so many directions, doesn’t just make the bad parts way, WAY worse, and the good parts just marginally or not at all better.
one of the reasons i love college football more than the nfl is the connection i can make, however tenuous, with the players. i went to ann arbor. when i go back i’m walking the same sidewalks i drunkenly stumbled down 35 years ago. that’s a meaningful thing to me.
i liked watching devante jones and mike smith and chaundee brown a lot - they all three represented u of m really well, and i’m glad they came here. but i can’t say i connected with them as much as (or in the same way) as, say, the wagners or x. it’s just different - not better or worse, per se, just different
Thumbs up for "cattywampus". Totally underused word.
The most important thing I took from your comment is that I need to use the word "cattywampus" more often.
Could not agree more XM. I’m afraid those days are gone.
Everything scales relatively, XM. My time was the '70s and I was friends with many of the starters on Bo's mid-70s teams. They were quite down to earth, approachable, and fun to hang with. I'm pretty damn sure they got special treatment in a small scale way from the local merchants, but I never saw any of them waving wads of cash. We were all living on a shoestring, that was part of what made them fun to be with. I wouldn't say they were as committed to getting a degree as droids like me, but that reflects the natural variation you see from people from all walks of life. Has money spoiled some of that? When hasn't money turned some heads around? But, I'll bet there are still lots of student-athletes in all levels who are just as fun to share the college experience with as the student-athletes we knew from back in the day.
By the same token, programs like Grand Valley State in DII and Mt. Union or St. Johns in DIII have to be doing something extra, recruiting-wise, to sustain their decades-long succes. Don't think money got left out of that equation, either, but just with fewer zeros.
This may well simply be a blind hog finding a nut but, here, Dabo is correct. The fact is that college sports are already heavily regulated (the proper enforcement is another matter) and a few more regulations related to recruiting could nurture a much healthier state of affairs in this matter.
Translation: Dabo's framework got him consistent playoff appearances in a setting of significant imperfection for college football. The ground has shifted a bit to a different setting of significant imperfection, not necessarily in his favor. He'd prefer that it shift back to the prior setting of significant imperfection.
tl;dr: His resources are threatened.
So the coaches making ungodly amounts of money, off of the backs of kids and having the ability to recruit kids on private planes and helicopters, and being able to leave their current jobs at the drop of a hat didn't give off a professional feel, but kids making money off of NIL does? OK. I would be curious what the graduation rate and GPA of Clemson players is. Hypocrite.
For real. What says 'professionalization' more than multi-million dollar contracts for coaches and billions of dollars in conference TV deals?
I wanna see him dance on a small stage with the kid - BK style!
The writer did a great job cleaning up Dabo's actual words "When schools like Clemson and Ol Miss are offering 6 figure signing bonuses and all Bama has to do is give away used cars and promises of NFL riches to get guys, we need a new system".
I read what he said and I wholeheartedly agree with Dabo. Something has to change before the college game gets ruined.
Pretty reasonable take imo.
I think I threw-up in my mouth a little bit when I read his comments. I can't get over the fact that his players were obviously getting paid by bagmen in the pre-NIL/transfer portal era when I read the following passages:
"a lack of uniformity will lead to a complete restructuring in college athletics" (Oh, so certain teams getting away with blatant cheating with the NCAA covering for them because they're marquee programs was uniform.)
"Alabama has different problems than Middle Tennessee" (No kidding, Middle Tennessee had to worry about getting hammered when Alabama got caught.)
"There's no rules, no guidance, no nothing. It's out of control. It's not sustainable. It's an absolute mess and a train wreck, and the kids are going to be the ones who suffer in the end. There are going to be a lot of kids that end up with no degrees and make decisions based on the wrong things." (And which programs worked the hardest to make a mockery of the old rules? And, I'm sure no player ever in the old system made a football decision about college football and disregarded education, including [checks notes] Dexter Manley.)
"Swinney emphasized that he is not against NIL but remains adamantly against the professionalization of college athletics and anything that rises to the level of pay-for-play." (No stop! You're killing me! My stomach muscles will be sore for a week.)
"My transfer portal is right there in that locker room because if I'm constantly going out every year and adding guys from the transfer portal, I'm telling all those guys in that locker room that I don't believe in them, that I don't think they can play," (Translation from the weasel-speak: I'm mad that players no longer have to put up with my schtick if they want to play. I'm not God-Emperor anymore. See also Urban Meyer and place kickers.)
"Alabama has different problems than Middle Tennessee" (No kidding, Middle Tennessee had to worry about getting hammered when Alabama got caught.)
jerry tarkanian nailed it when he said that “the ncaa got so mad at kentucky they gave cleveland state two more years’ probation.”
Clemson has been the "elite" team I most expect to fall back to the pack these past couple of years. The ACC being really bad for a couple of years gave them some room but their 2020 team wasn't all that good and benefitted from Lawrence playing like a #1 overall pick. Last year they took a step back and even that might have been a bit "lucky" as they went 5-2 in one-score games. They've had some stability in the coaching staff but are now having pretty significant turnover with Venables and Elliott both leaving, and it remains to be seen how they'll handle that. They recruit well but that can only buttress you so much and it feels like some of that might have been due to various under-the-table dealings that can now be done more in the open and with a more level playing field, which could hurt Dabo.
So yeah, him whining about all of this is the standard-issue stance of hypocrites like him, so I'm not surprised.
I like that he doesn't rely a ton on the portal. I prefer to have players come to Michigan and stay as opposed to being recruited over at the last second. He's also right that NIL is out of control. I get that he's an easy person to dismiss, but that doesn't mean he's always wrong.
1. Screw Dabo and his stupid southern preacher “holier than thou” act.
2. The Power5 just needs to break off at this point in almost all sports.
3. I wish the NFL would finally just make a D-League and a drafting approach somewhat similar to the MLB
There would be 3 potential drafts for a player:
-The first would be for players fresh out of high school - I would assume most elite 4-5 stars would go this route, such as your Adrian Petersons, Trevor Lawrences, etc.
-Players who aren’t taken right out of high school then get to go to college for 2 years before being eligible again for the draft after their sophomore year. Basically, your young studs who were overlooked in the initial draft who blew up early in their college careers would end up here, like Lamar Jackson, Mark Ingram, Tim Tebow, Manziel or Jamies Winston or (bad examples but you get the point).
-Players who don’t get drafted after their sophomore year then don’t become eligible until after their senior and RS senior years. This is where your late bloomers would declare, like your Joe Burrowes and Carson Palmers and others who needed all 4-5 years to develop into something special.
I think this would bring back college football to some semblance of normalcy, amateurism, and playing for your school’s pride that left the sport a while back, while allowing truly elite prospects the opportunity to bypass college and go straight into NFL training and preparation without having to play school.
Obviously, this would never happen though.
Google Hall of Famers from Clemson.
Name 5 NFL players from Clemson without looking (all time).
Paper Tigers had their run and done.