Tweet From Author of Athletic Article
Tweet (or whatever it’s called now) from author of the athletic article advertising for his article. This article is getting a lot of play because it originally said B10 provided “credible evidence” to MSU (now walked back to say B10 has been made aware of credible evidence) and because reference to “vast network” (I welcome my future t-shirt). But this tweet screams hack job/clickbait. I thought the athletic was better than that.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:19 PM ^
Don’t click the article if you agree clickbait. Also, it was the origins of the msu was thinking of not playing tidbit. Can’t really believe that to be honest. Tv contracts and all that legal hullabaloo.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:32 PM ^
That detail was incredible, literally. It costs buckets of money to back out of a game years in advance, if you find a replacement opponent. Flat out cancelling a game with 48 hours notice, and no chance of replacing the opponent? After the TV rights have already been sold? No chance outside of a pandemic or similar act of God.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:42 PM ^
The last thing msu needs right now is bad pub. If they pulled out of a game with their biggest rival 2 days before over some ticky tack bullcrap like this, especially with the season they’re having? They’d look like absolute schmucks
October 19th, 2023 at 10:58 PM ^
Note to self...they look like absolute schmucks for even thinking about it...and going public.
October 20th, 2023 at 12:47 AM ^
worth a shot when your school's best case scenario has always been "we look like schmucks"
October 20th, 2023 at 9:01 AM ^
Hey...stop offending schmucks! They look like Spartans says enough these days.
October 20th, 2023 at 8:38 AM ^
I might be incorrect but now it's looking like it was the big ten's idea and MSU just took 24 hours to decline it??
October 20th, 2023 at 6:31 AM ^
Mel Tucker should have pulled out of his right hand.
October 20th, 2023 at 9:04 AM ^
Mel Tucker raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear...ewww...never mind.
October 20th, 2023 at 10:38 AM ^
Well I believe they are legitimately concerned for the safety of their players, but we know it has nothing to do with stealing signs.
October 19th, 2023 at 11:13 PM ^
Others have brought this up and I agree: how does a team refuse to play a game based on unproven allegations? What if they turn out to be untrue? It just doesn’t make any sense in addition to the monetary side of it. It screams of MSU performative nonsense to get a headline in front of a game they are supremely overmatched in.
October 20th, 2023 at 12:11 AM ^
Just maybe out of spite they would consider cancelling a game in AA. But a home game? The idea is laughable. It just looks like they are trying to play the victim, which does make them look weak.
October 20th, 2023 at 6:08 AM ^
You're focusing on the threat, which is hot air. The focus should lie on the attempt to get the uncomfortable glare of the spotlight off of their mangy hides and to cast it on Michigan.
The readiness of so many to help them--to jump on this story on the basis of an allegation alone--is telling. We have got enemies, and a fair lot of them. Note them well now.
Brendan, with a crap tweet and in the midst of some shaky career sledding, better be damned sure he gets this right. No one is going to forgive his a** if he plays the fool for what, down the line, will look like a handful of clicks. Of unemployed and marginal writers, there are no end in the United States in 2023.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:20 PM ^
Sigh...Brendan used to be so good. Wrote some classic Beilein articles.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:21 PM ^
Thought the name was familiar.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:24 PM ^
Needs to proof his lazy shit before he dumps it on people. Too much golf and booze; guy's become a hack.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:31 PM ^
BQ has shown anti-Michigan bias in writing going back past 3-4 years. He's an Izzo devotee. Honestly his coverage is par for the course from national media.
October 20th, 2023 at 8:52 AM ^
Did he used to work at one of the recruiting sites? or am I thinking of someone else?
October 20th, 2023 at 10:43 AM ^
MLive
October 19th, 2023 at 10:36 PM ^
Though a small thing, his response to Juwan Howard having a "phone" on the sideline before doing any research to verify was disappointing. Could not agree more that he's fallen off.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:20 PM ^
I haven't clicked on any of these articles for this reason (clickbait). I'm just reading about it here and that's enough.
October 20th, 2023 at 9:04 AM ^
Not to mention the athletic and all pay sites are a joke. For 50 cents you can read the rest of the article. In todays world you could save a family whose house on fire and get no reads. Post something negative and the shit blows up. I told my kids years ago social media would ruin our country and it is.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:25 PM ^
To me, that article read like the author's main source was someone inside the MSU program. Now, someone at MSU wouldn't exaggerate the situation just to make Michigan look bad, would they?
In any case, maybe the author should have sought confirmation from a second source regarding the "vast network" and the "credible evidence" before publication.
October 20th, 2023 at 6:30 AM ^
Honestly in the world of '1st one to tweet it out wins' journalism is really taking a hit. You saw it earlier this week with the Gaza hospital misinformation. Everyone's rushing to get their story out to twitter first and no one bothers to take the time to fact check
October 20th, 2023 at 7:24 AM ^
That's an interesting thought. It was very weird right from the beginning that a guy who mostly covers golf and occasional college basketball (but on a national level) would be the one to write this story. I think it makes sense that he had a source, and based on what he wrote, it was probably a source from within MSU.
I love the idea of The Athletic, but it gets hard sometimes to maintain my subscription. Austin Meek is pretty good, but it's a far cry from having Quinn and Baumbgardner directly on the UM beat. Not to mention Stewart Mandel's bizarre and unprofessional coverage of anything Michigan or Harbaugh related.
October 20th, 2023 at 8:43 AM ^
Their feature stories profiling people are very good to me, but the rest I do my best to avoid. All the football Xs and Os you can get here. Honestly I don't even read Austin Meek, feels like just another guy covering Michigan for the most part.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:28 PM ^
I don't know if I'd accuse BQ of click bait per se. He's been a legit journalist for too long to deliberately publish trash; he doesn't need the exposure. My read was that he got a "scoop" from too few or too biased sources, and rushed to be the first to publish.
There's certainly a significant delta between "vast network, credible evidence" and "call into question."
October 19th, 2023 at 10:35 PM ^
Just like Juwan Howard was using a "cellphone" during a game in 2021.
Same guy who ran to report that.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:38 PM ^
I did not realize that had been him. That is disappointing to say the least. Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern.
October 20th, 2023 at 1:17 AM ^
Hear that clicking sound? Get better flip-flops
October 20th, 2023 at 11:22 AM ^
October 19th, 2023 at 10:28 PM ^
We are living in an era of clickbait, likes and views. That’s the only thing that matters now
My dislike for humans grows every single day
October 19th, 2023 at 10:35 PM ^
I hate to say this, and to be so cynical, but the words of George Carlin gain relevance every day. As a species, humans are circling the drain and each day the circles get a little smaller and a little faster.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:44 PM ^
Love Carlin!
I’ve been down a rabbit hole of Carlin and people nowadays say that he was ahead of his time. I say that the people back then didn’t, listen or do anything to stop anything/ anyone.
It’s fascinating and scary what he said back then but can be said today
October 20th, 2023 at 12:41 AM ^
“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be good manners”
-George Carlin
October 20th, 2023 at 8:17 AM ^
October 19th, 2023 at 10:50 PM ^
And some places accelerating… eg the US House of Representatives.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:37 PM ^
News organizations have always competed on the basis of being the first to publish. The problem is that cycle has sped up, at some expense of truth. Not that long ago, the papers would have had the overnight hours to get their story straight before running prints for the early edition. And they had to be more careful because they couldn't make edits after the ink got on the paper. Nowadays, getting a kernel of truth out there 2 minutes before your competition is too valuable to pass up.
October 20th, 2023 at 8:47 AM ^
It also doesn't help that social media platforms are built on top of algorithms programmed explicitly to maximize engagement and view-time. To wit, Facebook being told directly in 2017 that their platform was driving a genocide in Myanmar and, rather than pausing it or turning it off in Myanmar to cool things down instead saying, "BUT OUR ENGAGEMENT NUMBERS" and letting people be slaughtered because of viral misinformation and stoking of hate that... wait for it... made them money by driving engagement on their platform. Because every time someone watches a xenophobic video advocating the death of another group of people, Facebook is still getting that ad revenue. (Read the book The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher or seek out any of his reporting on social media. It's grim AF.)
Algorithms have no moral compass, and when they use machine learning to fine tune them the machines "learn" that what keeps people engaged on the platforms is extremist sensational bullshit and so they just keep feeding people more and more of it, pushing them further and further to extremes.
Everyone is feeding the same beast.
October 20th, 2023 at 9:48 AM ^
At some expense of the truth? A kernel of truth? What the fuck does truth have to do with any of this? Truth has become that which confirms preconceived notions.
October 19th, 2023 at 11:02 PM ^
People are the worst.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:30 PM ^
The announcers in the JMU / Marshall game are ripping the NCAA to shreds for not letting JMU be in a bowl game. Love it.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:34 PM ^
And people seriously think Michigan would face an actual bowl ban? That the TV networks would just let the NCAA set that pile of their (future) money on fire? As if.
October 20th, 2023 at 10:54 AM ^
Oh, I totally see the NCAA forfeiting our last two seasons and implementing a bowl ban. It just feels like they have it in for us, but not Kansas, Tennessee, et al.
If it turns out our intelligence guy was using open source information like TV broadcasts or even fan videos, and there was no vast network, the University should consider defamation lawsuits against the NCAA and the B1G.
October 19th, 2023 at 11:19 PM ^
Yet the HT show was them talking about how much advantage UM got (HUGE), but not actually alleging UM did anything wrong.
October 19th, 2023 at 11:23 PM ^
The NCAA continues to deepen its insignificance with every petty chase after a burger or signal stealing allegation. We are all thoroughly aware of the financial gifts given to sec players long before the NIL era with zero investigation. Instead they pursue tattoos at OSU, burgers bought by Harbaugh, or maybe Caleb Williams’ painted nails will be the next investigation.
I’ve not seen a more irrelevant governing body than the ncaa
October 19th, 2023 at 10:32 PM ^
This is the same brendan quinn who did absolute no investigation into the sexual assaults that izzo never handled or answered for while he was covering that shithole program.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:34 PM ^
The list of "breaking news" stories that turned out to be pure trash or wild exaggerations is too long to list.
For me, the burden of proof is on the party making the allegations. I would be surprised, however, if this wasn't a nothing burger based on how forcefully Harbaugh and his attorney have pushed back.
October 19th, 2023 at 10:36 PM ^
Won’t work. They’ll get trucked anyway
October 19th, 2023 at 10:38 PM ^
Not just evidence, but "credible" evidence. Well, that changes everything. /s
So far, the only thing being reported is purported video that Michigan somehow knew what play was coming.
What does that prove exactly?
Maybe we guessed right? Maybe a disgruntled coach on the other team tipped us off? Maybe the opposing team has a "tell" when they line up in a certain formation? Seems like pretty weak sauce.
Most likely, the conference (based on the call from the NCAA) simply let MSU know there has been a complaint/allegation so they have the opportunity to change their signs (which they should be doing anyway).