The treatment of Jamal Crawford by the NCAA when put in the light of Michael Oher is beyond ridiculous. As mentioned by ACE the guy who "adopted" Crawford had no ties to U of M, Oher gets adopted by an Ole Miss guy and goes to Ole Miss. NCAA lets it happen and we're stuck with a crappy Sandra Bullock movie, while Crawford is forced to go pro.
This a thousand times....Kind of interesting how things work out.
Also I'm still waiting for the Italian tourism board to write the NYT a scathing criticism of Jalen's comments about visiting Italy, I mean he said some negative things about his trip 20 years ago, but didn't explictly say if he still holds those beliefs today.
Being able to remember some of the crap he wrote during the heights of the Wings/Avs rivalry I have a hard time taking Paige seriously. I mean he's probably not an Avs fan, but he certainly wrote like he was one, and a dim witted Avs fan at that. His lack of interest in sports though makes some of the things he wrote make more sense, still craptastic journalism though.
This is my biggest problem with the way U of M handled the Ed Martin thing. When they got the Feds to ask about money he gave to Michigan basketball players they should have told the Feds to ask about money he gave to ALL college players. The documentary didn't touch on this other than Jalen's comments about Martin helping out lots of kids. Combine this with the numbers of players from Southwestern and other Detroit schools playing D1 ball at the time and the NCAA would have been put in an interesting position of going after a ton of schools or just letting Michigan off easily.
That part in the book is proof that Albom is an idiot. Here he's supposedly covering the Fab 5 so comprehensively but yet he doesn't notice Webber having a ton of cash? Then again it might be a sign that Webber/Martin's actions weren't nearly as far out of line with everything else going on in college bball in the early 90's.
Oh and I don't think it was the State street Moe's that would have been referred to in the book. No McDonalds in that area...more likely it was the M-Den that used to be on South U. Or even more likely it was just another thing Albom pretty much pulled out of his butt.
And maybe if Izzo doesn't look like he owns the state quite as much the press will finally look into the shady stuff he's done that's been ignored. I'm not holding my breath but it would be great if Sparty problems weren't just swept under the rug.
I agree hiring a grossly incompetent man was a big part of the problem, but all of the actions of the administration at the time were a problem. Michigan needed to stand up and say you want to investigate Ed Martin, fine we've done all we can to come clean, but when it comes to using the Feds to get info on recruits it needs to be ALL recruits. Martin was paying a lot of Detroit kids money and they didn't all end up at U of M. I'm thinking the NCAA might have opted to cut the investigation rather than have the complete truth of how dirty college basketball is come out, with a bunch of schools going down at the same time.
Actually Martin started attending games in the early/mid 80's can't remember which recruit for sure but it was a Detroit Southwestern guy (meaning Perry Watson connection). Frieder let him in the program. This is from memory but the Michigan Daily has an article you can look up from 2003 to confirm this.
Recent Comments
The treatment of Jamal Crawford by the NCAA when put in the light of Michael Oher is beyond ridiculous. As mentioned by ACE the guy who "adopted" Crawford had no ties to U of M, Oher gets adopted by an Ole Miss guy and goes to Ole Miss. NCAA lets it happen and we're stuck with a crappy Sandra Bullock movie, while Crawford is forced to go pro.
This a thousand times....Kind of interesting how things work out.
Also I'm still waiting for the Italian tourism board to write the NYT a scathing criticism of Jalen's comments about visiting Italy, I mean he said some negative things about his trip 20 years ago, but didn't explictly say if he still holds those beliefs today.
Being able to remember some of the crap he wrote during the heights of the Wings/Avs rivalry I have a hard time taking Paige seriously. I mean he's probably not an Avs fan, but he certainly wrote like he was one, and a dim witted Avs fan at that. His lack of interest in sports though makes some of the things he wrote make more sense, still craptastic journalism though.
This is my biggest problem with the way U of M handled the Ed Martin thing. When they got the Feds to ask about money he gave to Michigan basketball players they should have told the Feds to ask about money he gave to ALL college players. The documentary didn't touch on this other than Jalen's comments about Martin helping out lots of kids. Combine this with the numbers of players from Southwestern and other Detroit schools playing D1 ball at the time and the NCAA would have been put in an interesting position of going after a ton of schools or just letting Michigan off easily.
That part in the book is proof that Albom is an idiot. Here he's supposedly covering the Fab 5 so comprehensively but yet he doesn't notice Webber having a ton of cash? Then again it might be a sign that Webber/Martin's actions weren't nearly as far out of line with everything else going on in college bball in the early 90's.
Oh and I don't think it was the State street Moe's that would have been referred to in the book. No McDonalds in that area...more likely it was the M-Den that used to be on South U. Or even more likely it was just another thing Albom pretty much pulled out of his butt.
And maybe if Izzo doesn't look like he owns the state quite as much the press will finally look into the shady stuff he's done that's been ignored. I'm not holding my breath but it would be great if Sparty problems weren't just swept under the rug.
I agree hiring a grossly incompetent man was a big part of the problem, but all of the actions of the administration at the time were a problem. Michigan needed to stand up and say you want to investigate Ed Martin, fine we've done all we can to come clean, but when it comes to using the Feds to get info on recruits it needs to be ALL recruits. Martin was paying a lot of Detroit kids money and they didn't all end up at U of M. I'm thinking the NCAA might have opted to cut the investigation rather than have the complete truth of how dirty college basketball is come out, with a bunch of schools going down at the same time.
Actually Martin started attending games in the early/mid 80's can't remember which recruit for sure but it was a Detroit Southwestern guy (meaning Perry Watson connection). Frieder let him in the program. This is from memory but the Michigan Daily has an article you can look up from 2003 to confirm this.