SEC bag men.
http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/10/5594348/college-foot…
I'll admit this part made me pause a little bit.
It's also how lame duck coaching staffs are created. If a majority of bag men want a particular coach out and an A.D. or president won't make a move, they'll just dry up funds.
Excuse me while I look at the recruiting fall off under Rodriguez and tug at my collar.
Just under RR? Um...
But yes, that made me pause, too.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:30 PM ^
three distinct fall offs over the last 10 years, though I think the first two blended together. Maybe Carr didn't stop recruiting, maybe the money slowed around 2005 and then dried up circa 2009. It was then turned back on after NSD 2011, only to have been slowed back down sometime last fall.
I have a hard time believing that any major program is completely clean. I would like to think that Michigan is "as clean as it can be," but I don't know what that means and I have no evidence about it, other than the fact that Michigan hasn't been that good and maybe maybe that's because they aren't as corrupt as a certain rival.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:25 PM ^
A more interesting read would be a comparison of the SEC guys vs. "boosters" in other conferences.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:36 PM ^
"College majors like Exercise Science and General Education have long been assailed by critics as crip-course degrees, but shadow boosters see them as a vital way to perpetuate the cycle. If a player finishes out his eligibility and has no feasible future in the pros, he might return home and become a nearby high school coach. It doesn't matter if it's junior high or seven-on-seven camps; each means a new brand ambassador for the program."
As others have mentioned, there is not much if anything shocking about this, but it was a very illuminating read all the same just due to the detail. That part above, though, was something I hadn't really thought about before - it makes sense in a strange sort of way, however, that former student athletes would be the most convenient pool of "outside sales representatives" basically.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:53 PM ^
April 10th, 2014 at 12:54 PM ^
I'd swore he was referring to LT.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:38 PM ^
that they took a break while the Michael Oher investigation and movie were on everyone's tongue. Now that things have quieted around Tupelo the game is back on.
April 10th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^
Makes the whole Nevin Shapiro incident seem like child's play
Isn't the general consensus that OSU operates this way the most in the Big Ten?
The "bonus" for not visiting a school was very telling. Seems to happen to UM a lot. Who was that RB that was supposed to visit UM last year but ended up not coming? Webb basically reported that he was on the flight but it never happened? Anyone remember the name and the school he ended up at?
Leonard Fournette. He went to LSU.
Actually, I have an alternate hypothesis: The reason Michigan was able to get in on a lot of these recruits was that they were known not to be a legitimate threat in this landscape. So no need to discourage guys from taking interest in them, unlike SEC rivals.
attached to these stories or rumors? I understand reporters wanting to protect their sources, but anyone involved in recruting hears these stories and yet nothing ever comes of it. Why are people so afraid to expose this crap?
In this case, if the reporter names names the story doesn't happen and he learns (and reports) nothing. All that he gets is a small smidgen of information, which he might report, which is then flatly denied. If he gets too specific he is threatened with lawsuits. Or he winds up harming his own reputation by "spreading rumors" without proper sourcing.
This reporter didn't want to go to the incredible legwork it would take to really make this a publishable story. His route was "easier," but still worthwhile.
And that is not a bash. I think reporting a real story that really named names and uncovered real corruption would be huge. It would also take almost Watergate-level reporting and effort with no guarantee of success. I don't blame the guy for reporting the way he did.
quite flashy & don't gd if you know,he's the bagman. His name...WWWes
it lessens my interest in the game. If you lump this in a category of "Pervasive General Influence of Money on the Game," the whoredom involved in sneaking State Farm ads into the stadium should be included, too. . . Ads, naming rights, TV rights--all increase the stakes and compound the pressure to buy athletes. . . and athletes continue to see too little of the return. (To me the "they're already being paid" argument holds little water--that's why the NLRB sees them as employees; the question is whether they have a right to bargain collectively, and why shouldn't they?) The way that both education and 95% of schools are also elbowed off the path. . .
Treadwell to Ole Miss.....like we weren't suspicious of that particular incident.
Honestly though so what if OSU does this? I bet a lot of fans would take the winning if UofM was to do a little more of this as long as its never known publically. I have no feeling either way. I am at the point where college athletics hasn't been collegiate in a long time so I wouldn't mind some more winning. Thinking big programs are 100% clean is just naive.
I don't think Michigan dishes out thousands of dollars, but I would bet some people got some interviews/jobs because their son/nephew/grandson is a UofM athlete.
I wish the article talked about this. Great point. Not every kid is "country poor" and an education and relationship actually means something (may be fewer kids but there are still some out there).
Among many interesting tidbits, one near the top caught me the hardest: even if they did start paying the players, this shit would go on, because they're so much better at it than any university is equipped to be.
We've been under the assumption that if you could pay players, say, a % of their jersey sales, Michigan wins because our fans can buy so many more jerseys. But these guys figured out a player's dad needed his tractor fixed, and got the tractor fixed. How the hell do you compete with that?
I actually haven't held that assumption. A stipend is a nice way to cover the "real costs" of attendance, and perhaps it helps take care of some of the corrupt "$50 handshakes" around the edges that can get kids into, say, gambling problems.
But this stuff can and will still happen. There's a lot of cash available. The only way this gets interdicted (and I am not advocating this move) is to allow players to make as much money outside of the sport as they want, out of endorsements and such. That would introduce new semi-legitimate ways to funnel money to players, and a system of guaranteed endorsement deals and soft jobs would pop up. In that system, Michigan and Michigan State players could expect dealership and corporate sponsorships from Ford and GM and other such arrangements, while every Oregon player would become a paid Nike spokesman.
So....I got $200. Anybody else down? I say we go out and get us the best players money can buy. Seriously, hit me up.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:59 PM ^
The description of the attempted tape recorded "sting" by a rival and some recruit seems like BS to me. You're telling me some recruit who is good enough to warrant a $70k payment for signing is willing to tape record himself asking for money to signe with a school?
I have a feeling that this reporter found someone that probably is shady and provides improper benefits, but the "bag man" started to like the sound of his own voice and started making shit up.
Two quotes from the article perfectly capture why this is such a hard issue. On the one hand,
"It's 2014. Who's left to tell that would get angry? Who's left that would object to seeing these kids getting some money?"
However, on the other hand,
"If we could take a vote for these kids to make a real salary every season, I would vote for it. $40,000 or something. Goes back to mama, buys them a car, lets them go live like normal people after they work their asses off for us. But let's be honest, that ain't gonna stop all this. If everyone gets $40,000, someone would still be trying to give 'em 40 extra on the side."
It seems to me there is no reasonable moral objection to every member of a football team that puts 100K+ fannies in the seats for home games getting a scholarship plus $40K/year. But, here are the practical concerns with that:
(1) Title IX: can the University afford to give every scholarship athlete another $40k/year? If you think you can get away with paying only the male, revenue sports athletes an extra $40K, you are not being realistic. Personally, I think we could come up with a stipend that you can give to all the scholarship athletes that won't force Universities to drop every men's sport that isn't basketball or football. But, this will be a lot more expensive that the kind of money the bagmen are tossing around.
(2) As the bagman points out, that will not stop people from pursuing an extra $40 under the table. We should temper our expectations that a player stipend will level the playing field between the cheaters and the non-cheaters.
April 10th, 2014 at 11:47 PM ^
athletes? Why not everyone that makes the team? Bad enough that walk-ons still have to pay for their education, doubly insulting that they have to watch their teammates pocket $40K in walking around money.
you guys really should refrain from commenting holier than thou on the SB Nation article. Watch the Fab Five 30 for 30, and google how Woodson allegedly took over ten thousand from an agent while still eligible ... we have our own dirt (or suggestions of it) whether we like it or not.
I believe (hope) most schools in the B1G try to do the right thing and chase down the off books characters. That doesn't mean they don't exist, and I am guessing the Robin Hood-like activity that goes on with athletic kids on poor side of town has a different ethos: giving someone's mom or sister a job, or shoes, or money to go out in exchange for staying off the streets while continuing to participate in sports is considered a good thing.
While we are at it - we hired Jalen Rose's HS coach when Jalen committed - so we can't wag fingers at State either.
If you come at it from a "my opinion is this type of thing shouldn't happen" - then OK. I your approach is the SEC cheats and we are above that kind of thing - people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ...
While we're at it - just with Detroit's mayors and Chicago's politics as examples, I don't think the Midwest has any higher moral ground than the South anyway.
families business.
"While still eligible" meant signing with an agent a bit early, right at the tail end of his career, and wouldn't have meant anything to his need for a job before that.
I have a vague memory of the details only because I was on the Michigan Daily when the allegation came out. In 2001 they were investigating a shady agent who misused players' money or something and it appeared Woodson had a relationship with him going back to summer 1997. The agent said he'd loaned Woodson $10k or $14k (the former is what the rumor always says, the latter is from my memory) after the Ohio State game that year. Woodson flatly denied it.
The university investigated and found nothing and since this was the same athletic department then in the middle of committing seppuku over Ed Martin that was good enough for most. I didn't know the Daily reporter who covered it at the time so I didn't know details. Mostly I remember being asked my opinion of it by Heather Kamins, then news editor, future EIC, because I was always "the guy who likes sports" guy in the room.