The Wolverine Blog refutes Brian's DD story
Dorsey never even filled out a standard college application, which all athletes are supposed to do to be considered. Long story short, there was no mix-up. Three felonies aside, strictly for academics, the director of admissions, Coleman, and Brandon all agreed that Dorsey had no place at Michigan. Rod never checked with anyone before offering a scholarship and having him sign a letter of intent. He just did it and then expected admissions to let him in. I feel sorry for the kid, but this was Rod’s fault, not admissions.
http://www.thewolverineblog.com/2010/06/10/we-may-all-be-somewhat-wrong…
Judge it as you wish.
blerg
I distinctly remember talk on GBW that RR had to get the greenlight to even offer DD, and there was more talk before accepting the LOI from him.
This just made my day.
stop...laughing.
thank you for that.
Is it even possible to get a 12 on your ACT? Holy shit.
A girl at my high school got a 13. She kept up a game where she wouldn't tell anyone what she got, until she got drunk, told her best friend, and the entire school knew about it a week later.
Oh yeah, I dated her for a while and we still talk. Street smarts are strong with her, but the book smarts? No chance.
At least there's no smokey room cabal in the Admissions Dept to get RR fired. On the other hand, it's another log to throw on the "RR doesn't know what he's doing" fire. I don't know whether to be happy it's not an administrative screw up, or sad our coach thinks someone with a 1.9 GPA and a 12 on his ACT could ever get in to UM...athletic ability or not.
Ugh
Your views have been turned upside down now that you've seen an email forward from someone who is dating the sister of the au pair of the Provost?
"If that's true"
I do not automatically believe everything I see/hear/read, but if what's stated in the article is true we all owe the admissions department a big mea culpa. I don't think we'll ever get the full story. DD isn't here, no one will ever really know why. Maybe it all works out for the best and we can snag a kid transferring from USC and use DD's vacated schollie to do it.
If it's true you fucked my girlfriend you probably have the clap.
I just wanted to say I qualified that statement with, "if it's true."
Wasn't Brandon just quoted as saying he had nothing to do with the decision
himself on, he'd be guilty of a FERPA violation.
And that blogger, and his source, are guilty of FERPA violations as well, right? (Of course, saying, "Ooooh, you've violated FERPA by revealing that" immediately gives credence to the rumor, because, like, it is only a violation if you've released real information, right?)
The point here is that this is all done. And anyone who wants to beat up RR or Admissions or MSC or Brandon or anybody else can just have at it, because by law, ain't nobody allowed to ask or confirm the details.
End of story.
btw: didja read the comments at TWB's blog entry?
I don't want to eat dinner now. Thanks.
He'll take it.
but posts like this are just pointless.
Its one thing to throw up a silly gif or a pic in a threat titled "Will RR Succeed," but the OP had a rational post.
Just my e-pinion, no need to throw this type of drivel in a legimitate thread.
that this thread is going to get interesting. Similar to a popcorn eating gif, only with breakfast food.
for visiting such a website
I don't know what to believe anymore. This whole thing has been emotionally-draining.
herp derp
I tend to agree with the first commenter over on that board, that this just doesn't jive with the reporting we've seen along the way, and stuff in the timeline is messed up; I think it smells like the fishy, sort of "cover our ass" type of thing that happens at all organizations. As in, I am certain there are people in the provost's office who believe this is what happened, but I think it seems quite plausible that this "take" on the situation isn't factually correct, and was possibly fabricated by someone within the administration/admissions-side of things to, well, cover their asses. And the stuff about Brandon and MSC being involved casts some doubt on the validity also, IME. But then again, as has been pointed out, because of the law, we're likely never to get any real answers, unfortunately.
It seems more fishy to me that the admissions office would "greenlight" DD's admission in February (without him even finishing high school) and then "backtrack" on it in June. Rationale being utter incompetance or some dark conspiracy - Neither of which seem plausible.
This senario (RR made some assumptions he shouldn't have made) seems, at least in general terms, to be more plausible to me. Combined with DD taking a questionable route to get "qualified" between now and January.
I agree with the other posters who've said we should hold off on judgment and assigning blame. Disagree with the matchstick and spork crowd demanding justice.
Just to clarify: obviously, I wrote that story. I had a very reliable source come to me with that information, and I chose to pass it on as it is clearly very relevant to the Demar Dorsey situation and everything that has been written about it. I personally believe the information I passed on to be 100% true, but everyone has the right to their own opinion and you can believe whatever you choose to believe. Clearly, there is more than one story out there about how everything went down, but I wanted to offer up this perspective as I don't think the other stories add up. I still visit MGoBlog several times a day, get most of my information of Michigan sports from here, and I think Brian is the best in the business. This was not intended at all to be a shot at Brian or anyone else -- I'm simply passing along information I believe to be true. Other than that, I'll let what I've said on my blog stand for itself.
I don't think anyone took it as a shot at Brian.
My question, though, is what was admissions doing this whole time since February? If they didn't know Demar Dorsey's GPA, isn't that their fault, too? Why did it take them this long to say, no he's not in, if they knew back then that his GPA was 1.9 and 12 on the ACT?
The timeline of that email doesn't add up to me. Even if RR gave the offer out, without admissions permission, why would they let the University accept his LOI. Or, a better question might be, how did they accept his LOI. They're given an opportunity to evaluate the players academically, and I am 100% positive that they did. So, that email doesn't make a lot of sense, from my perspective.
To say that Rich Rod just kind of bulldozed everyone, and let Demar sign everything is weird. There are other people involved with that process.
I'm not challenging you, or attacking you, I'm just pointing out that these were thoughts that came to my head when I read this. I'm also not saying that guy is lying, either. I'm just trying to fill in gaps.
Maybe admissions didn't reject him earlier because they were still waiting for an actual application.
I agree with you that there are holes in the timeline that need to be filled ... specifically, how the LOI was granted. I do stand by my story, so I think the explanation there may be that the athletic department didn't want to rescind a scholarship offer of a high-profile recruit and reveal that Rodriguez had offered Dorsey without being granted permission. That's the best I could come up with, anyway.
Also, I don't think anyone is attacking me or challenging me -- I apologize if it came across that way, I was just trying to clarify that this wasn't in any way a shot at Brian or anyone at MGoBlog.
I think the explanation there may be that the athletic department didn't want to rescind a scholarship offer of a high-profile recruit and reveal that Rodriguez had offered Dorsey without being granted permission.
But isn't rejecting him 4 months later even worse? Or were they hoping for the cover of "He didn't do what he had to do in the last semester."
It makes sense ... obviously, rejecting Dorsey four months later is completely unfair to Dorsey, but it does give them the cover of admissions making the call instead of the athletic department. However, that's entirely conjecture on my part.
redacted
What was Admissions supposed to be doing since February? They're not going to deny a student that never submitted an application to their office.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe admissions is at all involved in the LOI process. Football makes arrangement with their athletic compliance office to send them out. As long as the athletic department has a copy of a transcript and test score, they send it out. No academic evaluation is done by the compliance office. The recruit signs it and returns it to compliance and the conference/NCAA. Once it's signed and returned, the player is officially committed to the university pending admission. Admissions doesn't let the university accept the LOI or have anything to do with its approval.
Admissions didn't release him from his LOI. The athletic department sends that notice.
I don't agree with the presumption here that admissions grants RR "permission" to offer or accepts LOI unconditionally. All the offers require completing high school and meeting academic standards AT THE END. So DD could have had a 1.9/12, then rocked a 4.0 in his last semester and gotten a perfect score on his 6th attempt at the ACT...end result: qualified.
Isn't it feasible that DD knew he couldn't pull it off, then went to a questionable school where he could...and admissions called BS on it?
Not saying thats what happened, just that we don't know it didn't.
Why stop at DD? If this is the way RR operates, i.e. does not consult Admissions and assumes he will get approved whoever he wants, I can come up with a long list of other candidates that Michigan probably would want who also had grade issues but not the checkered past. Why didn't RR do the same with them? This is RR's third class (counting 2008) in which he could have pulled such a stunt. Why just this one?
I am going to go out on a limb and assume the OP has correct info on the initial ACT score of 12. It is very possible that when the new score came in at 18 there was alot of hand-wringing over how that happened. The guy's grades are poor. He went to this funny place to get his final GPA up. And now his ACT goes from 12 to 18 overnight. Admissions (and Brandon) might have concluded that this was all too much to be believed. My understanding is Witty had a similar situation, a question over a sharp increase in test scores. You also have the recent situation at Memphis in hoops. Admissions (and Brandon) might have decided this was just not a risk they could take.
But the rest of the crap in the OP's post is hard to believe. RR is already on the hot seat and he supposedly blew off Admissions on a kid who clearly was questionable on a couple of levels and thought that was a winning plan? No one is that stupid.
It's not that hard to go from really terrible to not that terrible. It's like going from 1-11 to 4-8. Regression to the mean plays a part in that. It's a hell of lot harder to go from a 30 to a 36 and I would say that would be a hell of a lot fishier.
The testing services have been doing this for years and have tremendous statistics about how likely it is for something like this to occur. Again, I have no way to know even if the reported scores of 12 and 18 are true, but something seems to have happened after signing day that caused Admissions to change its decision. I simply have a hard time believing RR simply decided not to run this one by Admissions. It makes no sense. There is no way he could have thought he would get away with it.
I think athletes that get personal attention and have a compelling reason to improve their test scores fall outside the realm of statistical analysis.
Arguably, FERPA does not create a private cause of action such that Demar Dorsey could sue you. But the Supreme Court case that set forth that principle, Gonzaga v. Doe, was not exactly like this one.
You'd be in a position of saying, "I'm a journalist, and I gave my source anonymity, and I'm going to protect that source-anonymity." That's alway an interesting question, when otherwise un-credentialled bloggers get into tradtional press protections. And I don't think the State of Michigan has a Shield Law.
And damn, if that was sent from a University of Michigan email address and somehow becomes subject to a FOIA (again, FERPA might offere some protection -- wow, this gets involved), look out.
Your source may have some liability, and it might expose the University to liability. Indeed the main hammer in FERPA is the denial of federal funding to institutions in violation of FERPA. Could be your source, and your reporting, cause some FERPA troubles for somebody, or some big University in Ann Arbor.
You might want to talk to a lawyer before you post something like that. You might want to talk to one now, about what to do about this one.
OR DD didn't meet a certain set of requirements that was laid out by the admissions department.
be amazingly idiotic on RR's part and make me question his ability to adminster the program, but I have a hard time beleiving its true given all the talk of RR lobbying to have Dorsey's commitment accepted back in February to the point of bringing in Vance Bedford for his seal of approval. Who was the lobbying to, if not the AD's office and/or the admissions people?
Time until some delusional poster seriously submits that you or The Wolverine Blog might work for the Freep.
...with a 1.9/12 ACT track record, this young man might have struggled to last at M anyhow. all things considered, it's probably just best to part ways now.
Considering the median gpa and ACT at U-M are 3.7-4.0 and 28-32, I think that's a very fair statement.
I was under the impression that admissions waited this long to make a decision because they wanted to see how much improvement dorsey would make in the last few weeks (maybe RR bought him some extra time with admissions?).
Every year it seems we get a borderline recruit who is a late arrival at camp b/c he needs to retake a class or retake a test over the summer. I thought Dorsey would be another one of those cases, and that his eligibility would be determined later in the summer. Perhaps he did all he could to improve his grades/test scores and admissions saw no possible way that he would be able to overcome his low grades/test scores over the summer.
Am I missing a key part of the story?
My read is dropping out of school and the online courses bringing his GPA up did not sit well with the admissions department. Demar may very well have worked hard, and turned his grades around. But if the online courses are not accredited to the standards of the University, well then they aren't.
It does appear there are some of the bureaucracy and communication issues like the ones in the NCAA case.
I am assuming Rich got clearance on the former violations, not on grades. We have some many snippets of this story, that have been spun this way and that, that it is really hard to tell wa happened ....
So, I'll just go with Brandon's statement. He was not accepted. And hope that Demar continues to try to find way forward.
...RichRod or the Admissions Dept is "at fault", the bottom line is that Dorsey's academic credentials are clearly not sufficient for admission to Michigan. He doesn't get in just because.
I wanted him to get in because I wanted him to patrol the secondary. I wanted him to be that kid who has an epiphany and realizes he has to change the way he's doing business or else.
If this is accurate...
When Rodriguez offered Dorsey a scholarship, he had a 1.9 GPA and a 12 on his ACT. Florida withdrew his scholarship because of his grades. Nobody in admissions ever cleared Dorsey before Rodriguez offered a scholarship. He eventually got his grades up by dropping out of school, attending an alternative high school which he did not get credit from [Ed: this would be the LifeSkills school which released the promotional video featuring Dorsey], and taking online classes, all of which he got an A in. His ACT score (according to his coach, Michigan never saw documentation) jumped to 18.
...there's no way he belonged at Michigan. There's no way Michigan could afford the risk he would bring to our already under scrutiny program.
And if he really was sporting a 1.9/12, then I absolutely question why he was being recruited to Michigan in the first place. Granted, I tend to question whether that number is accurate, but if it is...
in this thread?
I think I had to use a couple of "ifs" myself, in saying, "IF a FERPA case is filed..."
is accurate. florida didn't pull his scholarship because of his grades, they were still recruiting him within a week of signing day. RR also had a meeting with admissions before DD was faxed his LOI. admissions then changed their minds about letting him in. simply put, the information put out to refute brian's story is untrue.
...the problem with your take. Since when does a school "let students in"? They "admit them" based on established criteria, which apparently Dorsey did not meet.