Surprise; Albom writes a nuanced, non-accusatory column on yesterday's news
So Mitch weighs in with an column revealing some actual nuance and not a lot of finger pointing at M over yesterday's story. No link, but a couple of quotes:
"But how big a bruise? If you read only headlines, you'd see "Michigan Admits to Four Major Violations" and think, "Wow! Big news!"
But, these are NCAA violations, not criminal ones. And an NCAA violation can be picking up the tab for a hot dog."
"So let's put this in perspective. While Michigan is flogging itself for too many practices, and the NCAA may flog it further for too many practices, those same parties are in the middle of trying to create a new super conference so they can add even MORE football to the schedule and make even MORE money from it, while not paying the kids a dime.
In light of that, punishments over practice look ridiculous. College football is a business that thinks nothing of flying student-athletes all over the country for highly rated TV night games -- inevitably affecting their study time -- yet wants to clobber teams over an average of 40 minutes of practice a week (which is roughly what Michigan's claim of 65 extra hours over two years comes out to)."
"Besides, as NCAA violations go, I'm sorry, but this is not an atom bomb. It's not cash in a suitcase. It's not falsifying grades. It's not phony jobs. It's not point-shaving.
If Michigan's self-imposed sanctions are accepted by the NCAA, then how will the program change? A few less practice hours? A few less quality-control people?
Meanwhile, Brandon vehemently declared his support of Rodriguez. So if critics wanted a new coach out of this controversy, they failed.
Funny. If the Wolverines had won titles in 2008 and 2009, too much practice would have seemed an unfair edge for Rodriguez -- yet he would have been more popular.
Instead, you have a losing program, a chastised coach, angry fans, defensive alumni and, despite explanations from the athletic director, a lot of people still wondering how big a deal this is.
So much for closure."
So while he does mention the Ed Martin thing to make the point that we haven't been virgins before, this is an actual column filled with perspective, IME.
So a guy who works at that newspaper actually writes a nuanced column; who has some kind of perspective. At bare minimum, isn't that what we should expect from a newspaper?
This is what Mitch Album does. Say what you want about him but 90% of the stuff he writes has a positive spin on it. Its usually sappy grandma crap, but at least its different from the current tone of most sports writes. Ever article is negative, and more often than not these columnists are trying to be moral police (aka drew sharp).
Instead of making some assining statement and using bad facts to support it, (see the article Michigan is the new Michigan state from yesterday) Albom simply takes the level headed view and adds some whimsical prose. Though his stories generally don't move me much, I respect Albom. Sports are not about the latest scandall or tearing players down. Its about having fun and enjoying a GAME.
I don't have any particular problem with what he wrote - I just thought it was kind of thin, lame, and totally non-original.
Stop reading the FREEP.
First of all, you may have cut and pasted too much of the article. Fair use guidlines are being pushed here.
However, Album historically is no fan of the NCAA. Even when he was writing Fab Five, he was asking questions why some of the rules existed and what was the point of them.
He saw the discrepancy with the NCAA and the Universiy making money off these players without allowing them even to have off season jobs, while chasing more dollars at the expense of the players.
article came out, informed about the countable hours issue and the shoddy Free Press reporting in general and was treated with an attack on his credibility and general disdain.
Now it sounds like the Albom flipped, so I'm not impressed.
Brian was on Albom's WJR show. And Albom sort of asked Brian, disdainfully, what his real job was. (Brian was painfully polite, replying that he ran the largest collegiate sports blog in the country.)
I don't know if Albom flipped, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Albom read Jon Chait's column. And yeah, with respect to Albom and his authorship of "The Fab Five," that is one of the biggest jokes in the sordid history of Free Press sports reporting. It goes like this; "How the fuck was Michigan's Athletic Department obligated to know about Ed Martin's misdeeds, when Mitch Albom, a reporter who was practically living with Chris Webber, never knew about them?"
No, rest assured; there's some singe-marks still visible on Mitch Albom as a result of the confluence of college sports and the NCAA.
You could feel Mitch's condescending manner through the speaker during that show.
Does any reporter do as much self-promotion as Album?
sounds like a poor day for Mitch on the research side of things.
Until there is a full retraction and formal apology from the Freep (I'm not holding my breath), I'm never reading that paper again.
I am never reading that paper or their on-line articles again.
Nothing more. In as much as I would love to believe this is some amount of contrition on the part of the Freep and Albom, I can't. I don't think the bitch-slap by the U in the form of denials of interviews (MSC yesterday and DB on Monday) was missed by the Freep's editorial board. Someone at that paper knows they've blown it big-time and is feeling a bit red-assed.
I think they believe the got the essence of their horrible column right, that they made mistakes but that they brought light to "major violations." And they are used to public figures refusing to talk to them, in their mentality MSC is just being defensive. They'll never admit the failure.
They'll vigorously defend that piece to the death. Newspapers typically don't apologize; rather they make factual corrections that are often a day late and a dollar short (placed somewhat inconspicuously on inside pages) and then are quickly forgotten, if ever noticed by the readership. Here they most likely believe they got the facts correct, and believe the investigation bore that out. In some ways this is true, but as has been well documented here and other places, their failing to distinguish between countable vs. non-countable hours, failing to approach anyone who even faintly may have offered a different perspective to the stories their sources were giving them, etc., wouldn't pass the sniff test from most legit journalists.
The paper-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned basically commited the most egregious journalistic crime: Attempting to point an accusatory finger in an expose that turned out to be virtually entirely false. There's a name for that, yellow journalism.
So where is any analysis or defense by paper-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned ? What about the so-called-but-never-really-was-one "journalist" coming out and explaining himself?
It fraking stinks. No one should be reading or quoting from paper-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned .
By the way: Quoting Albom at length is legitimate, it's "fair use" because it's for criticism and commentary and not commercial gain. Besides, even without a link, there was direct reference to where the article came from (paper-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned) so it's not thievery.
Dude...this isn't Harry Potter
...but I haven't read him since I started boycotting the Freep. Albom is good, but he is not good enough for me to ever give the freep as much as a penny by clicking onto one of their links, or making their numbers better by clicking onto a print version.
What makes him think the players aren't getting paid? Last I heard they were getting $30,000 a year in the form of scholarships to pay for school, food, and living expenses. For 18-21 year-old kids with no college degree, I say that pretty damn good.
now i cant get the image of that creepy troll mike lupica out of my head.
Albom is the only reporter at the Free Press to completely fabricate a story that had absolutely no basis in fact.
As much as I despise Mitch Albom for being a hack and writing bad books (Tuesdays, Seven People, etc.), it is nice to see a mainstream (and Detroit!) columnist come out and actually say that this is small potatoes. Even better was the acknowledgement that the reports of Michigan's corruption were greatly exaggerated when compared to the final results. It's not perfect and I'm not actually going to go read it, but it's better than nothing.
This is nothing more than a game of "Good Cop, Bad Cop" by the Freep. Nobody should fall for it.
He is wrong about 40 minutes of practice time per week, I think. The 40 minutes is the 2 x penalty on what M is giving back, correct? 20 minutes was the actual overage revealed during the investigation.
Glad to see you are perpetuating the substantial research skills and in-depth knowledge of the situation so often on display by Freep writers.
So much for nuances Mitch.
um, not only that, but you aren't allowed to practice year-round, so using 104 weeks as your divisor is a little disingenuous.
but, whatevs. if a guy who writes for the freep wants to fudge numbers to make it look like less of an offense, i guess i won't complain. maybe it evens out the original claim. slightly.
It is no fault of his that the Freep is a sorry newspaper. Yes, he does some sappy stuff, and he very rarely is negative. But his articles (and books) are well written and thought-out. Anyone who has followed his career over the years can tell that he is a decent human being, and actually cares about both the people he is writing about, and the audience he is writing to.
he dressed him up in a green sweater and put him in the stands at a Final Four game. When Mateen wasn't even in the same city.