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I'd like to point out the

I'd like to point out the very nice use of the correctly italicized see as a proper introductory signal supra. Excellent MGoBluebooking.

I assume you're similarly

I assume you're similarly skeptical of any negative story about Notre Dame that doesn't offer Brian Kelly an opportunity to extensively rebut the charges...?

I guess I was responding to

I guess I was responding to the notion that a commitment is like a contract between equals. If you don't think it's important for either side to honor their commitments -- that each should merely maximize their leverage regardless of the promises they made before -- that's a perfectly valid and logically coherent viewpoint, but it kind of defeats the whole idea of "commitments" in the first place.

I'm not sure you're

I'm not sure you're comfortable with the implications of your argument that schools and prospects bear equivalent responsibility in recruiting. If a prospect showed over and over again that he was unable or unwilling to keep his word when he committed, schools would very rationally back off from recruiting him; if a coach demonstrates the same pattern of unreliability or duplicity (not saying JH does, but assume arguendo), wouldn't it be rational to also separate him from the program?

Either way, I think there are plenty of reasons to be more forgiving of high schoolers who decommit than of coaches who pull their offers. Among other things: massive information asymmetries between high school kids and collegiate coaching professionals; a significant likelihood that the prospect himself is not wholly in charge of his recruiting situation (parents, high school coaches, etc.) and thus shouldn't bear full blame for a change in circumstances; and a huge disparity in opportunity cost depending on when the commitment dissolution happens (i.e. if a Michigan cornerback prospect decommits a week before NSD, Michigan at worst signs a class with one fewer CB; if, on the other hand, Michigan unilterally pulls the same prospect's offer a week before NSD, there's a chance that the kid could wind up without a scholarship at all or getting locked into a minimum of a year at a school far from home / far below his potential).

Is it possible that we’re

Is it possible that we’re having a collective knee-jerk reaction against this because of all of the (admittedly excessive and ill-advised) tinkering that Dave Brandon did with THE BRAND? I’m just kind of concerned that we may move too far in the other direction, where we're just retrenching in this stodgy "This is MICHIGAN and we've been doing the same thing since 1817 and by god we're not going to change one iota of it until 3817.” I mean people griped when the band started doing pop routines at halftime because older alums just wanted them to keep doing homages to the polka. There are good innovations and bad innovations, and to a certain degree you can't figure out which are going to work out until you actually do them. Legends jerseys could've been a train wreck, but most people (myself included) think they've actually been a good innovation. On the flip side, general-admission seating in the student section was a really great idea in theory and just executed horribly and abandoned. There was a point when every venerable tradition was something novel, and I don’t see the utility in preemptively stifling this on principle. If it’s popular, it’ll become a cherished part of our Michigan tradition. If it flops (as is likely), then it’ll go by the wayside.

The "last two messiahs that

The "last two messiahs that we hired"? This seems like historical revisionism in the extreme. RichRod, while a hot coaching commodity at the time, was emphatically not the consensus first choice in 2007 -- that was clearly Les Miles. And virtually nobody wanted Hoke to be hired, crowned him as a messiah when he was announced, or even thought (on the basis of his career losing record) that he was a "very good football coach."

I agree with the general sentiment that even a head coach is limited in the velocity with which he can effect change in a program. But pointing to two arguably botched coaching searches during which we whiffed on our top choices does not add any evidentiary support to that argument.

"Homosexuality" is not

"Homosexuality" is not equivalent to gay males initiating sexual contact with straight males. And subjective discomfort alone, without objective evidentiary validity, has never been sufficient to justify discriminatory behavior. There were a lot of white players who were "uncomfortable" playing alongside African-Americans when pro sports were first integrated; that was baseless, we recognized it as such, and equality of treatment prevailed. A female's discomfort at sexual objectification by straight males is grounded in a history and pattern of gendered sexual aggression. Since there is no equivalent history or pattern of sexual aggression by gay men toward straight men, any distinction on the basis of sexual orientation is similarly baseless, and equality of treatment should prevail.

Um... I wasn't discussing

Um... I wasn't discussing sexual assault at all, and I'm certainly not denying that male rape happens (or diminishing it in any way). This is about what types of sexual pursuit are socially encouraged and what types are not.

No, I'm not saying that at

No, I'm not saying that at all. And when I say "sexual aggression," I'm not talking exclusively about sexual assault or rape. I'm talking about the fact that, taking a broad view of society, straight men are expected to be and usually are the initiators and pursuers of sexual relations with women. As a matter of purely descriptive social anthropology, I don't think that's a terribly controversial point. Meanwhile, there is no similar social expectation or pattern with regard to gay men sexually pursuing straight men. Of course male-on-male sexual assault happens; I can't imagine a plausible reading of my comment that denies that. That wasn't the point.

There is a demonstrated

There is a demonstrated history and socially encouraged pattern of straight men acting as sexual aggressors toward women. There is no similar history or pattern of gay men acting as sexual aggressors toward straight men. This is a false equivalency.

Come on.

This is one of those false equivalence arguments that crop up in gender contexts all the time. Being a gay male surrounded by straight males cannot be neatly analogized to being a straight male surrounded by straight women. For one thing, gay males live their entire lives in situations in which (1) they are surrounded by straight men, and (2) they know that any sexual advances toward those men would be not only unwelcome but potentially safety-endangering. The same thing cannot be said of straight men interacting with straight women, in which context society tells us that sexual objectification is not only natural but expected. If anything, it would be the gay male who feels most uncomfortable in the presence of naked straight men because he's socially conditioned to suppress any and all sexual feelings toward his straight male friends and peers. I cannot emphasize enough how glaringly different this is than the conjectural "straight dude in a room of naked ladies" comparator.

Just wanted to commend you on

Just wanted to commend you on sharing your insight into this, CBB. Exceedingly happy for you, both for being open about who you are and for having such supportive parents. This comment alone outweighs all the ignorant homophobic remarks I've seen on sports blogs and social media since the Michael Sam story broke.

Global comment

Hey guys,

First of all, wanted to say that I think you do tremendously well with what I can only imagine is a harrowing task of keeping the MGoBoard and comments in check. Kudos.

Just wanted to raise an issue that's been bothering me for a couple days. The Michael Sam post on the board lasted about ten minutes before being locked as "political," which is a judgment that I can understand (if not wholly agree with). But 11W (with a similar fatwa against politics and religion) and tRCMB (of all places) were able to entertain lengthy, mature, and collegial discussions about what was, at least for a few days, the biggest story in sports. It's really disappointing to me that MGoBlog posters aren't capable of the same niveau of adult conversation as our lesser rivals (or, at the very least, that our moderators don't think we are).

I suspect that the primary purpose of locking the thread was to avoid the incidence of a few isolated homophobic comments that have made their way into previous threads (thinking specifically about the Jason Collins discussion). While that kind of solicitude for our LGBT readers is admirable, I think there's another implicit message being sent by locking down the thread: basically, telling LGBT people that their very existence is "political" and thus inappropriate for normal conversation. I don't want to speak for the whole community, but I'd have to believe that, given a choice between dealing with a few stray homophobic comments and having any issue involving a gay person declared verboten on the blog, most LGBT readers would eagerly choose the former.

Again, I hope none of this comes across as an attack. I don't mean to second-guess you guys, and I think you do a very very good job under difficult circumstances. But I hope that, going forward, we can at least allow a discussion like the Michael Sam one to percolate a little bit before imposing a gag order.



Thanks for reading and for your work on the blog.

Yes, my apologies for not

Yes, my apologies for not making that clear in the initial post. The rules on "standing" to file a complaint are a little sketchy when it comes to *institutional* complainants (i.e. there were many occasions when Housing or DPS would file a complaint that perhaps *could* have been filed by a wronged individual but was *also* a transgression against general Housing/University policies). But in a case like this, the complainant would almost certainly be the sexual assault survivor herself. No need to worry about some random student/professor/staff member reading these allegations on MGoBlog and taking it on himself to file and pursue the complaint with OSCR. Sorry again for the lack of clarity on that topic in the initial post, was trying to fit a lot of information in and missed that fairly major point.

Erik, I wrote the description

Erik, I wrote the description of the OSCR process that Brian quoted above, and just wanted to emphasize that the formal arbitration process has been the same since well before 2009. The reduced standard of proof for sexual assault allegations, however, seems to be a new thing since I left. When the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities was undergoing its scheduled revision in 2010, there was a suggestion that the standard of proof for sexual assault allegations be reduced to "preponderance of the evidence" (50.1%, although I hate that quantification) rather than "clear and convincing" (the more demanding standard required for all other violations). I was under the impression that that amendment did not pass the CSG, but apparently another amendment was made in the interim.

TL;DR - the process was the same going back to 2009 (and before), but the standard of proof for sexual assault allegations is lower now.

OSCR

Having worked at the Office of Student Conflict Resolution (the "disciplinary" office that administered the expulsion proceedings against Gibbons) for two years in undergrad, I thought maybe I could offer some insight / clear up some confusion about the OSCR process in this thread.

OSCR is not, in any appreciable sense, an investigatory body. It is a passive office that acts only after receiving a complaint from some member of the University community. While any individual student, faculty, or staff member can file a complaint, the most common OSCR complainants by far are Residence Education (Housing) and DPS. In order to pursue a complaint with OSCR, the Complainant has to provide all the necessary evidentiary backing; again, OSCR does not investigate events on its own.

The process for initiating and pursuing a complaint with OSCR goes as follows:

  • An OSCR staff member conducts an intake meeting with the Complainant to discuss the nature of his/her/its complaint and inform the Complainant of the various resolution pathways available (in addition to formal arbitration, OSCR offers a number of alternative dispute resolution pathways that do not result in disciplinary action).
  • An OSCR staff member will then conduct an intake meeting with the Respondent to notify him of the complaint and inform him of his rights/options in the process.
  • At that point, the Respondent can either accept responsibility for the complaint or indicate that he's willing to proceed to a formal arbitration.
  • Assuming that the Complainant is also interested in pursuing a formal arbitration, OSCR will either appoint a trained member of the University staff to serve as the formal arbiter, or it will select a panel of student arbiters.
  • After hearing from both the Complainant and the Respondent, the arbiter or the student panel will reach a finding of "responsible" or "not responsible," and will then proceed to make a sanction recommendation.
  • Any recommendations for expulsion have to be approved by a member of the University administration. When I was there, I believe this was the responsibility of the VP for Student Affairs, E. Royster Harper.

As you can see, this is a multi-step process that requires several meetings and often many different witnesses, advisors, and arbiters. With that said, it is emphatically NOT a three- or four-year process. Given that all of the investigatory work is already completed before a complaint is filed, the formal arbitration process does not take very long at all. In my time at OSCR, I can't remember a single arbitration - including those involving sexual assault allegations - lasting more than a single semester, from initial complaint to final sanction.

Hope this helps. Happy to take questions.

Good. Tressel will finally

Good. Tressel will finally start losing in the state of Michigan.

I don't know that, when a

I don't know that, when a superior official in an organization gives a directive to his inferior, I would necessarily characterize that as a "personality" issue. That's just the fundamental nature of employer/employee relations and corporate hierarchical structure playing out as it's designed to.

Our long national nightmare is over.

Idk, 133 + 72 = 205, divided

Idk, 133 + 72 = 205, divided by ~115,000 people in the stadium = less than two-tenths of one percentage point of those in attendance. I have to think that more than 0.18% of the South Quad population is hospitalized, treated, arrested, or cited on a normal Saturday night.

And yet somehow the laws of

And yet somehow the laws of supply and demand don't bend to your fiat.

Yes, because every individual

Yes, because every individual college football team exists in a vacuum, and the level and depth of talent at our chief rival and perennial conference competitor has zero bearing on the outlook for our program...

Where do you think Professor

Where do you think Professor Needs A Raise is going to get his raise from?

Thoughts on the Common App?

First of all, awesome post, maizeonblueaction. I love pieces on here that focus on the academic/institutional side of the university in the off-season.

Second, a question - do you have any sense (intuitive or empirical) of how Michigan's belated accession to the Common Application has affected raw application numbers, acceptance rate, and yield rate? The 40% yield seems somewhat lower than it was when I started, and I'm wondering how much of that can be attributed to the ease of just checking one more box on the Common App when you're applying to schools, as opposed to the selection bias introduced when people have to proactively search out and separately apply for admission to Michigan.

Of course, none of that is to say that financial aid wouldn't meaningfully affect our yield of admitted students. But it might make the low yield a little bit "stickier" just because you're engaging with a pool of applicants who are applying to UMich out of convenience but may not have applied without Common App accessibility.

Probably both, but one of

Probably both, but one of those (financial aid) is almost entirely endogenous to UMich, while the other (the nationwide higher education bubble) is exogenous and thus much more difficult to tackle from a single institution's perspective.

Is "oomph" here used in the

Is "oomph" here used in the Michael Bay sense (i.e. forgoing character development, compelling dialogue, and a coherent narrative in favor of just indiscriminately blowing stuff up)? Because if so, you probably could've saved $20 by just staying home and microwaving a ball of tin foil.

I don't think you really

I don't think you really grasped what I was saying.

"Trust them, they have more access than you" is not an availing argument when used to justify criticisms of the person with the most access to the program.

Again, none of this is to say that Brian & Bacon's critiques are unfounded or incorrect. But their purported access to the program is probably the poorest measuring stick by which to evaluate their claims.

Without getting into the

Without getting into the Brandon/Bacon/Brian ballyhoo, I have to say this is a pretty nonsensical and self-defeating line of argument. If we're going to say that Bacon & Brian's opinions carry some sort of enhanced credibility because of their amorphous "access" to the program, wouldn't the same logic then immunize Dave Brandon from criticism, since presumably he has significantly MORE access to the Michigan program than Bacon and Brian combined, and therefore can speak more authoritatively than a sports writer and a blogger, respectively?

Why don't we just evaluate these criticisms on their own merits and against our own experiences as fans rather than appeal to baseless assertions of esoteric knowledge to buttress the arguments we happen to favor?

This.

I'm in law school at Yale, and professional/graduate programs have, as a rule, LESS generous financial aid than their undergraduate counterparts. Still, with the amount of grant and scholarship aid I've gotten, I'm paying roughly the same amount it would cost me to go to UMich Law (as an in-state student, no less).

Ivy financial aid is awesome for those of us in the 99%.

lol. I think if I were going

lol. I think if I were going to maintain two mgousernames, I'd be a little bit less outwardly sycophantic when posting on my own stuff (no offense to PW, glad you enjoyed the diary)

All right, Hoke vs. Meyer,

All right, Hoke vs. Meyer, the ultimate recruiting battle: who's going to snag the consensus 5-star president?

Great work. You mind if I

Great work. You mind if I include this in the table?

(Edit: I went ahead and incorporated it anyway, with attribution of course)

Alternating Maryland/Rutgers

Alternating Maryland/Rutgers home/away is actually ideal for those of us on the East Coast, since we'll always have at least one game that's only a short train ride away.

Added to the table. Thanks

Added to the table. Thanks for the help. (Though it looks like both Marcus Allen and Conor Sheehy are 4* to 247 Composite.)

Not sure how Jalyn Powell

Not sure how Jalyn Powell even enters this discussion, since he had offers from MSU and no one else.

Reschke was an MSU legacy, but I do think the coaching staff sort of botched that one. Given his relationship with Morris, it could've at least been competitive if we had been working him from day 1. Instead, he got the offer almost as an afterthought (I can't find a link, but I know a lot of speculation at the time was that we offered Reschke to maintain our relationship with the coaching staff at Brother Rice).

Burbridge and, to a lesser extent, Madaris certainly hurt in 2012, but isn't that just illustrative of how far Hoke's recruiting has come in the last two years? Assuming that Burbridge freely chose MSU and wasn't academically subpar for UM (huge assumption not backed up by history), can anyone seriously envision that recruitment turning out the same way in 2014 or 2015?

Their aggregate recruiting

Their aggregate recruiting class ranking to Rivals has put them in the top 3 of the Big Ten for the last four seasons (every year since 2009). So while they might not be recruiting well by historic Nebraska standards, they are still consistently outrecruiting 75% of the Big Ten.

True, but isn't there

True, but isn't there something to the idea that Nebraska just feels isolated? I mean, it's Nebraska fergodsakes... home of Children of the Corn. Not to mention that Madison is a well reputed college town while Lincoln is... ehm... have I mentioned Children of the Corn?

"Not every bit of info in the

"Not every bit of info in the world has links involved"

Ah, so it's one of those bits of info that's been successfully kept off the Internet.

Well, there was a whole lot

Well, there was a whole lot in there that I think is wrong (including the absurd notion that we should channel our own presumption of the moral instincts of the Framers any time we confront a matter of constitutional law), but I think the stare decisis point is well taken.

The only sort of unifying theory of Kennedy's stare decisis jurisprudence that I would offer is the idea that individuals have a greater interest in the consistency of rights-expansive caselaw than they do in the consistency of rights-restrictive caselaw. Presumably, no one has taken actions or made decisions in reliance on rights-restrictive caselaw that would then harm them if those cases were overturned and rights were expanded. But the converse is not true - many people would be hurt (even if only in a dignitary injury) by a rights-restrictive departure from prior precedent. And that distinction actually fits pretty neatly into Kennedy's famous opening for Casey: "Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt."

I think the implicit point

I think the implicit point was that if something is so unoffensive to you that you shrug your shoulders over it, it's an insufficient basis for denying people equal rights under the law.

I can understand why he

I can understand why he decided to include that example, but I hold to the reading that Scalia was intentionally caricaturing the LGBT movement as a sort of bogeyman - a well-connected conspiracy set on rending the moral fabric of the nation by judicial fiat rather than political action.

There's just no reason to even include that whole commentary otherwise. You don't see Ruth Bader Ginsburg punctuate her dissents with "Today's opinion is the product of a Court held in the thrall of the historical-revisionist Federalist Society movement that has pervaded America's law schools through generous corporate largesse." It may be true, but it's immaterial to the issue in dispute. A Supreme Court justice is certainly a generalist, but the gamut of his responsibilites doesn't extend to providing specious color commentary on the campus politics of law schools.

Torturous, but sadly not

Torturous, but sadly not tortious.

(Gonna go cut myself now.)

I think the bigger issue with

I think the bigger issue with Scalia's Lawrence dissent is that he repeatedly alludes to this menacing behemoth of "the homosexual agenda." Maybe characterizing the LGBT community as politically powerful and insidiously effective doesn't seem like such a big deal, but imagine if it had been "the Jewish agenda" or "the Latino agenda."

(But I'm just a second-year law student so I'm basically talking out of my ass here.)

He's the first active *team*

He's the first active *team* athlete. The team part is critical, because the whole "locker room mentality" is one thing that has kept LGBT athletes in the closet for so long.

Please stop making this about

Please stop making this about you. Thanks.

"We've had at more than 0

"We've had at more than 0 posts." <--- This is a winner.

Agreed, but

there's a strong argument that Late Carr directly precipitated RichRod.

Yes, the monitoring costs of

Yes, the monitoring costs of watching a line will certainly far exceed the burden of monitoring individually ticketed spectators for each one of the several thousand student section seats.

/s

Sorry but if we're going to

Sorry but if we're going to talk about "shitty experiences," let's talk about how INVARIABLY a gaggle of drunk, obnoxious sorority girls would show up halfway through the second quarter (or later) of every game demanding that security remove whoever was standing in "their seats."

This is long overdue.

^ This.

An act of violence perpetrated against a group of people in a crowded place during a public event is certainly a "terrorist attack" in the truest sense of the term. Not all terrorists are al-Qaeda, or Muslim, or foreign. See, e.g., Oklahoma City, Atlanta Olympics, etc.