Pat Caputo, in the Oakland Press; on Michigan. And, uh, accuracy.
Here's a mildly amusing link.
Pat Caputo is a guy whom I consider to be mostly mild-mannered, and reasonable, and yet on radio he is often forced into the role of being a screaming lunatic, like most of his sportstalk radio colleagues and competitors.
This link is to one of his recent columns on the aftermath of the Michigan Response and Ceremonial Wrist Slap. The column is sort of meh. Caputo is no Michigan apologist (he knows as well as anybody that "Michigan controversy" = "good business" for newspaper sports sections and sportstalk radio). Nor is Caputo much of a fire-breathing Michigan hater. What he is, I think, is a good barometer of the lazy middle; and I think he's actually a good barometer of mainstream sports opinionating in the Metro Detroit area.
I'll leave it to you to judge the column. But have a look at the Comments following the column. And the Editorial correction that precedes the column. The first sentence of the sixth paragrapch had originally been written by Caputo as, ""They didn’t pay players, like the Wolverines’ basketball program did during the Ed Martin scandal."
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2010/05/25/sports/columns/doc4bfc66c7a8b4d234193414.txt
...Chuck? If not, he should be invited to join us here.
lololol. Slow news day.
~oops. put in the right 'reply' place...~
I heard Caputo defending that quoted line in his article on the radio.
He argued that while technically incorrect, that he stands behind his comments since the University knew what was going on but chose to do nothing. He argued the difference is semantics.
That was his argument. I leave it to you to accept or laugh at or whatever.
The University didn't know "what was going on." If Steve Fischer, or Bill Frieder had known that Ed Martin had been laundering money, evading taxes and paying players, they'd have been banned forever from the NCAA, and probably indicted along with Martin and Chris Webber. The University didn't know what Ed Martin was doing.
The University was technically liable, vicariously, for Ed Martin, because although he had never attended Michigan, was not an alum, was not a coach, or a former player, or a former-anything, he was a "booster." Under the sweeping NCAA definition of "booster."
And Michigan was ultimately alleged to have been wrongly inattentive to Ed Martin's activites. Of course, Mitch Albom of the Free Press was practically living with Webber and the other Fab Five at the time. And he didn't know anything, either. It was a sorry situation, but one in which Michigan had done nothing actively wrong. Michigan's sin was that it hadn't been a good enough cop.
And the real point wasn't so much to debate Ed Martin, which is an all-around sorry spectacle and an embarassment. The real point was to give Pat Caputo a lesson on accuracy, and the perniciousness of lazy, slanted reporting. Caputo's editors agreed with me on the correction.
First off, Martin had a longstanding relationship with members of the Michigan coaching staff.
http://www.michigandaily.com/content/ed-martin-revealed-his-long-and-in…
Second, your argument would apply much more directly to the case at USC, where the people alleged to have given gifts to Bush and his family were not boosters and had zero connection to the school or the program, yet no one bats an eye when someone around here says, "SC pays its players."
First, that old Michigan Daily link supplies a good summary of the relevant events. And proves my original point, that Pat Caputo was wildly out of line when he originally wrote that the Michigan basketball program "had paid players during the Ed Martin era."
I said, I had no desire to substantively re-debate the details of the Ed Martin affair, who I agree was a scumbag.
Second, the only "argument" that I had made was the hypothetical and cheeky argument that Pat Caputo had "committed a major bylaw violation" of a fictional "NCAA." Looking at some of the posts above, I am more generous toward Pat Caputo than most. My gripe alwasy was, and remains, that Pat Caputo has a real blind spot when it comes to covering for the Free Press Jihadi, Rosenberg and Snyder. And so I was having fun tweaking Caputo over his own press errors.
Caputo is a really uninformed sports broadcaster. I listen to his station all the time, and he is very poor at what he does. The only thing I consider him an expert in is hockey. When he talks other sports, he really doesn't have much of a clue, especially when it comes to Michigan. I wouldn't take anything he says about Michigan as an informed opinion, but rather an uniformed opinion.
Actually, I'd say he knows baseball pretty well. I always am satisfied with a baseball analysis from him.
On the other hand, he views on college athletics, specifically M and MSU, are garbage.
That is, of course, unless he does the improbable at this stage — turns around the Wolverines’ football fortunes this fall.
And I consider this to be garbage.
Funny because yesterday on the radio he said he expected M to get 7 or 8 wins. Is that not turning around Wolverines' football fortunes?
Sometimes I wonder if certain sports writers don't say things (like above) just because it seems to be what other local writers are saying and they just want to fit in.
Was I nieve to assume that wasnt true?
Actually, I'd say he knows baseball pretty well. I always am satisfied with a baseball analysis from him.
I was going to say that, but I don't consider myself very knowledgeable on baseball to cast an opinion on that.
I don't really care what anyone says about us anymore, I just can't wait until September when we shut everyone up that feels they have to talk about the program.