I don’t understand the “unfortunately has not been made public” in reference to Harbaugh’s lengthy response to the NOA. If he chooses not to make his response public then why does his lawyer complain that it’s “unfortunate”?
Twitter is the wrong place to be moaning about a lack of transparency.
Flying to in-laws in Ohio tomorrow. About a 40-mile drive to reach the path of totality. Will drive back home (to DC area) Tuesday a.m. Fingers crossed on traffic, but will just stay patient. I was pleasantly surprised that plane tickets for our flight out were not unreasonable.
Ok, but could you do a surprise regular kickoff from an onside kick formation? In addition to the surprise element in defending against an onside kick, currently the return team still has to guard against every other manner of kick-offs -- traditional, squib, midrange/pop-ups.
It'll be interesting to see game theory evolve in how kickoffs get played in the new format.
But, most importantly -- what does this mean for the movement to award points for kickoffs put through the opposing goalposts?
"...received assurances that admissions wasn't going to be as much of a problem for him as it was for Juwan Howard"
This statement seems to imply that admissions was being made more of a problem for Howard than they needed to be. So I would certainly hope that is a distortion of what was actually discussed.
Having been an IU grad student during prime Knight years ('87-90) I only hope he didn't pick up any Bob Knight personality traits along the way. Although the positive character reviews suggest he didn't.
Disagree. He could recruit; it's just that too many of the players he recruited were NBA prospects who were so eager to get to the pros that they never became good college players. (Beilein had similar problems (Iggy, Wilson, Poole), but a lower proportion of them).
Yes, love of the school is clearly an insufficient qualification. But Hoke showed his limitations even in his first (extremely lucky) season. Folks around here were ecstatic with Juwan after his second season (higher ceiling than Beilein), and still optimistic going into his fourth.
"It seemed like it was working... until it wasn't."
This. Regrettably necessary, for reasons that I suspect probably have yet to come out (if they ever do). It's been disappointing to me to see so many on the MGoBoard and on the blog itself concluding simply that Howard is such a bad coach that he never should've been hired. When I look at the blog archives, what I see is a narrative that should read that he was in fact a very good coach who somehow became a not-good coach. This blog rated him as B1G coach of the year in '20-21, and called his contract extension (the one that he presumably will have to be bought out of) "good news."
Well, he is (or at least he was), successful in getting commitments from players with NBA futures. Problem is that a lot of them were so eager to get to the pros that they left before they actually became good college players (Houston, Diabate, Jett), or else they weren't adequately vetted for their ability to enroll at UM (Love, Shannon, Kante) -- for whatever reason -- and so they ended up elsewhere. It seems like he's identifying talent; it's just the wrong talent for purposes of having a winning college program.
Yeah. This is the first I'm reading of rumors of Hart-Harbaugh conflict (and not the one dating from when Harbaugh was at Stanford, which wasn't even a rumor). And besides, Harbaugh's gone, so why would Hart leave because of a conflict with someone who's no longer there? Meanwhile we've been told for weeks that Hart had a personal issue that needed to be dealt with first, but now all of a sudden the inference is that Moore decided to cut him loose? (although perhaps Moore decided he couldn't leave the position unstaffed for as long as Hart was going to need).
I'm kinda surprised how many are buying the story that the Alabama AD, having been told a year earlier that Saban was contemplating retirement, didn't do any reaching out to possible candidates until Jan. 10. And then pulled it all together in 49 hours. Meanwhile DeBoer was turning down two extensions from UW that would've more than doubled his salary. Yeah, ok.
I agree with this take. It was not at all long ago that Juwan was being praised up and down -- by this blog and elsewhere -- for his tactical acumen. Just do a cursory archive search for the numerous MattEM articles analyzing the high-end offensive sets Juwan was running.
There's definitely something wrong in the program, and it may be true a change at the top is the only thing that can right the ship. But it doesn't seem plausible to imply that Juwan somehow forgot how to coach.
Not exactly. Reporters’ job is to report actual news, not seek to generate scoops (and thereby exacerbate hand-wringing among their readers). What good does it do us to be poking for answers that are clearly not there yet? Angelique will literally be among the first to know when there is actual news of Herbert’s future, and she can tell us then when it’s actual news and not speculation.
Hopefully this will help dampen the Manuel-hates-Harbaugh blather now that it’s clear they agree (and likely agreed for some time in advance) on what the transition should look like.
The release by Warde was definitely a CYA. But that also doesn't mean that giving Harbaugh what he wanted would have kept him either. He (read: his legal counsel) very well could have clinged to the immunity point as a way of keeping negotiations open so that he could continue weighing or leveraging his other options. I admit it's not probable, but certainly possible.
I think it's very much probable. Harbaugh was faced with deciding between a firm (or firm enough, but for the details) job offer from UM and a still-hypothetical offer from an NFL team. He needed an approach with UM that would afford him enough time to find out if he could land an NFL offer that met his needs. He wasn't going to cut off his job search (by re-signing with UM) until the process had run its course fully. Making high demands and asking to postpone a start date to mid-February was a tactic to buy that time.
Was the Wednesday offer by UM to accept everything Harbaugh asked for (and I suspect that characterization of "everything" is overblown, as if there were a signed text of a contract awaiting Harbaugh's counter-signature) a Hail Mary? Yeah, sure. But one only throws a Hail Mary at the end of the 4th quarter. If you throw it in the 2nd quarter people call you an idiot.
Dear Jordan Acker (and Dear MGoBoard, and Dear JUB, etc):
Your tweet is a negotiation. EVERYTHING is a negotiation. (This post is a negotiation).
But hopefully Jim Harbaugh, Warde, Santa, the BOR, and all their agents and lawyers are communicating directly and forthrightly with each other such that the effect of all this indirect negotiation is minimized.
Thanks othernel for posting the archived link above.
Certainly not a hit piece, even if the quotes from Finebaum are gratuitous (“If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll leave,” yeesh). But I still found it too superficial -- putting all the emphasis on the NCAA, when the rot extends deeper into the broadcast networks, the conferences they shovel money at to get exclusive TV rights, and ultimately the universities themselves (who, as members, ultimately control both the conferences and the NCAA). The NCAA is just the enforcement arm; it's doing the universities' bidding.
1) Juwan's recent heart surgery seems like it may be very relevant here, for two separate reasons. First, interaction between the circulatory and endocrine systems can be very strong, and heart patients can be subject to more intense mood swings. Second, he was absent from the team for months pre-season, so it's not unreasonable for the team to seem under-coached this early in the year, especially with the amount of roster turnover. The fact of his surgery means that both he and the team have been going through a lot of disruption.
2) The team's on-court performance and the HR issue are distinct, and need to be assessed distinctly, no matter how tempting it might be to commingle them and say "eh, they're not playing well, so go ahead and fire Juwan because of the Sanderson issue." In one case it's termination for cause and in the other case it's without cause and not having separation is where wrongful termination suits come up. In that respect, having a formal HR inquiry may benefit Juwan's chances to stay on, by affording him time to settle the team down and right the ship.
I think this is the reasonable take. It seems way more probable than not that the sending of the investigative report to the NCAA was timed for maximum impact -- if indeed there was suspicion that Michigan was cheating last season (such that OSU was taking countermeasures), then why wait 11 months before reporting those concerns to the NCAA if not to have the biggest impact on Michigan's season?
This "campaign" (if you will) is waged on multiple fronts -- the NCAA inquiry, the B1G's pre-emptive penalty, and the leak-driven media/PR campaign. Michigan's argument with the B1G is a procedural one, so it's important to keep the process points front and center until there is more clarity about where that is heading. The time to point out the ridiculousness of others' reactions to what actually happened will be after the facts are more clearly established.
Petitti's sole reliance here on the Sportsmanship Policy, divorced from specific rules violations, seems like a slippery slope, since the imposition of a penalty that would influence a team's performance on the field -- in advance of a determination that a rules violation had occurred -- would provide a competitive advantage to the other team.
It's easy to envision a whole range of counter-claims -- that the reporting to the NCAA of the private investigation of Stalions' shenanigans was timed precisely to put Michigan's team at a competitive disadvantage mid-season; that anonymous statements to the press were intended to contribute to the distraction; that selective sharing of Michigan's signals gives an unfair edge to its opponents. Those too would violate the Sportsmanship Policy as Petitti is portraying it, and I can't imagine he is prepared for an unending parade of complaints like what he seems to be inviting.
Not negging you, but you are accepting Petitti's characterization of Michigan's argument as fact, when much of the rest of his letter is well-stocked with straw men and cherry-picked quotes. As I understand it, the University has seen the evidence that the NCAA has chosen to give to it. That's not necessarily all of the evidence.
Yes. I fully endorse this behavior. The more quickly this whole story turns into a parody of itself, the sooner it can be dispensed with as a sideshow and everybody can get back to playing and enjoying the games themselves.
Hopefully he finds more serenity in his repose than he seemed to in life.
My impressions of him skewed pretty negative, and I could never root for him or his teams. My coach on the 7th grade basketball team was a huge fan of Bob Knight and his approach to the game, and that experience turned me off of being on a school team for years afterward until my skin had sufficiently thickened.
As a grad student at IU in the late 80s I was aghast at the cult of personality that had built up around him in Bloomington. I remember an exhibition game that IU played against a touring Soviet national team, when Knight refused to bring the team back on the floor after halftime because he was mad about the officiating. After the game got called off a reporter found the IU president in the stands and asked him what he thought. The president said something to the effect that the incident didn't reflect well on the university. That night a pretty large crowd carrying torches (not sure about pitchforks) surrounded the president's house.
In retrospect, I think that the guy was indeed probably a basketball genius. And that his teams actually didn't come close to reaching their full potential simply because he was such a colossal asshole.
Perhaps. But the "other party" in this case isn't the media blowhards or even the conspirators behind the private investigation firm. It's the NCAA, which hasn't yet commented publicly beyond making it clear that it is taking the allegations seriously. Michigan/Harbaugh is taking the wise course of saying that it/he takes the matter seriously too. Only after the NCAA makes clear exactly how bad it thinks whatever it is that went on is there the opportunity to calibrate a response to the specifics of the allegations. This is still a moving target.
It would be premature for UM/AD/Football Program to be floating any "gray area" arguments at this point -- either publicly or privately. A key element in any successful negotiation strategy is to always present yourself as more reasonable/conciliatory/moral than your adversary. It's only after a formal allegation gets made that the school should contemplate pushing back. They are playing this the right way for the time being.
The way this anonymously sourced evidence is dribbling out day by day has all the markings of a planned PR campaign. Unless the sources who leaked on Days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are completely different people - which seems unlikely - the easy inference is that this is happening not to just get the information out there, but to have maximum effect.
There's a smirky parallel column in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/10/25/michigan-sign-stealing-funny/ about the supposed deliciousness of this scandal. But I'm hoping someday to read the exposé of the plot to "take down" the program from the start. Because it's sounding like it was at least as coordinated and deliberate as what is being alleged.
I would not bet anything that the "vast network" would have needed to be paid. At least not in cash. After all, Stalions himself apparently covered his own expenses while volunteering prior to his employment by the football program, and I can't imagine he's the only one who would do that. Lots of people spend lots of money in demonstrating their support of the team they love (and not just Michigan) -- many of them even read this blog.
The proffered explanation that Stalions was doing this rogue, using 3rd party volunteers, seems the most plausible. Harbaugh & Michigan have rather famously eschewed rule-bending in recruiting that would seem to offer a much bigger competitive advantage than this alleged sign-stealing. It's illogical that Harbaugh would put a championship run at risk for a marginal advantage while simultaneously handcuffing the program on the recruiting side.
Furthermore, it also seems entirely plausible that these 3rd parties didn't even need to be paid -- after all Stalions himself self-financed his earlier volunteer work and I imagine there are plenty more like him out there.
As to evidence that this nefarious "vast network" actually benefited Michigan on the field? I'd expect that would show up in charting of RPS events on a play-by-play basis. From casual reading UFRs I don't have the impression that Michigan has been markedly better than the opposition at "guessing" correctly on play calls. I'd be curious to know if that's really the case.
I don't have an Athletic subscription so I can't read the linked article, but Penn State doesn't have any common opponents with either Michigan or OSU so far this season, so I don't know how these anonymous opposing coaches can be making meaningful comparisons.
The conferences (i.e. the universities that constitute the conferences) tolerate the NCAA because the NCAA is controlled by the universities. The universities nowadays are more interested in maximizing their revenue from sports than they are in the sports themselves (e.g. the rule changes that decrease and distort game play in order to increase commercial exposure, the conference realignments chasing broadcasting revenue), much less the interests of the student athletes themselves.
The NCAA is still around because it makes a very convenient scapegoat. The more dysfunctional the better.
(Not to get political, but the analogy to Congress is irresistible – voters hate Congress, but they love their particular Member)
Good point. It's not that foreign students can't have income (surely there are Saudi princes studying here who hold interests in U.S. entities that generate income), it's that they can't earn income from U.S. sources except under certain circumstances. But I'm curious to know what those circumstances are. Someone elsewhere mentioned on- & off-campus employment, but is an NIL arrangement employment? I.e. are athletes "employees" of whoever is selling their NIL? Might the work-around be to set up a foreign registered entity with whom they could contract for their NIL income?
Recent Comments
I don’t understand the “unfortunately has not been made public” in reference to Harbaugh’s lengthy response to the NOA. If he chooses not to make his response public then why does his lawyer complain that it’s “unfortunate”?
Twitter is the wrong place to be moaning about a lack of transparency.
Flying to in-laws in Ohio tomorrow. About a 40-mile drive to reach the path of totality. Will drive back home (to DC area) Tuesday a.m. Fingers crossed on traffic, but will just stay patient. I was pleasantly surprised that plane tickets for our flight out were not unreasonable.
Busman's holiday?
Ok, but could you do a surprise regular kickoff from an onside kick formation? In addition to the surprise element in defending against an onside kick, currently the return team still has to guard against every other manner of kick-offs -- traditional, squib, midrange/pop-ups.
It'll be interesting to see game theory evolve in how kickoffs get played in the new format.
But, most importantly -- what does this mean for the movement to award points for kickoffs put through the opposing goalposts?
"...received assurances that admissions wasn't going to be as much of a problem for him as it was for Juwan Howard"
This statement seems to imply that admissions was being made more of a problem for Howard than they needed to be. So I would certainly hope that is a distortion of what was actually discussed.
Having been an IU grad student during prime Knight years ('87-90) I only hope he didn't pick up any Bob Knight personality traits along the way. Although the positive character reviews suggest he didn't.
Disagree. He could recruit; it's just that too many of the players he recruited were NBA prospects who were so eager to get to the pros that they never became good college players. (Beilein had similar problems (Iggy, Wilson, Poole), but a lower proportion of them).
Yes, love of the school is clearly an insufficient qualification. But Hoke showed his limitations even in his first (extremely lucky) season. Folks around here were ecstatic with Juwan after his second season (higher ceiling than Beilein), and still optimistic going into his fourth.
"It seemed like it was working... until it wasn't."
This. Regrettably necessary, for reasons that I suspect probably have yet to come out (if they ever do). It's been disappointing to me to see so many on the MGoBoard and on the blog itself concluding simply that Howard is such a bad coach that he never should've been hired. When I look at the blog archives, what I see is a narrative that should read that he was in fact a very good coach who somehow became a not-good coach. This blog rated him as B1G coach of the year in '20-21, and called his contract extension (the one that he presumably will have to be bought out of) "good news."
Well, he is (or at least he was), successful in getting commitments from players with NBA futures. Problem is that a lot of them were so eager to get to the pros that they left before they actually became good college players (Houston, Diabate, Jett), or else they weren't adequately vetted for their ability to enroll at UM (Love, Shannon, Kante) -- for whatever reason -- and so they ended up elsewhere. It seems like he's identifying talent; it's just the wrong talent for purposes of having a winning college program.
Yeah. This is the first I'm reading of rumors of Hart-Harbaugh conflict (and not the one dating from when Harbaugh was at Stanford, which wasn't even a rumor). And besides, Harbaugh's gone, so why would Hart leave because of a conflict with someone who's no longer there? Meanwhile we've been told for weeks that Hart had a personal issue that needed to be dealt with first, but now all of a sudden the inference is that Moore decided to cut him loose? (although perhaps Moore decided he couldn't leave the position unstaffed for as long as Hart was going to need).
Anyway, someone connect the dots here?
"Details of how Alabama sniped DeBoer in two days."
I'm kinda surprised how many are buying the story that the Alabama AD, having been told a year earlier that Saban was contemplating retirement, didn't do any reaching out to possible candidates until Jan. 10. And then pulled it all together in 49 hours. Meanwhile DeBoer was turning down two extensions from UW that would've more than doubled his salary. Yeah, ok.
For credit on a bank shot the kicker needs to call it first.
My own idea is a 3' ring at the top of each upright. Worth 50 points. #NoLeadIsSafe
The bookies would hate it, though.
I agree with this take. It was not at all long ago that Juwan was being praised up and down -- by this blog and elsewhere -- for his tactical acumen. Just do a cursory archive search for the numerous MattEM articles analyzing the high-end offensive sets Juwan was running.
There's definitely something wrong in the program, and it may be true a change at the top is the only thing that can right the ship. But it doesn't seem plausible to imply that Juwan somehow forgot how to coach.
If Herbert had said “yep, I’m staying” then it would be news, and would be worth reporting. But he didn’t, so it’s not news.
My comment was poorly phrased - reporters should ask questions, but their job is to report news, not to peddle “no news” as if it were news.
Not exactly. Reporters’ job is to report actual news, not seek to generate scoops (and thereby exacerbate hand-wringing among their readers). What good does it do us to be poking for answers that are clearly not there yet? Angelique will literally be among the first to know when there is actual news of Herbert’s future, and she can tell us then when it’s actual news and not speculation.
Hopefully this will help dampen the Manuel-hates-Harbaugh blather now that it’s clear they agree (and likely agreed for some time in advance) on what the transition should look like.
This is clear evidence that the scheme was even more far-reaching than any of us suspected!
/s
Just make sure the baby doesn’t get assaulted by any Spartans in the “tunnel.”
I think it's very much probable. Harbaugh was faced with deciding between a firm (or firm enough, but for the details) job offer from UM and a still-hypothetical offer from an NFL team. He needed an approach with UM that would afford him enough time to find out if he could land an NFL offer that met his needs. He wasn't going to cut off his job search (by re-signing with UM) until the process had run its course fully. Making high demands and asking to postpone a start date to mid-February was a tactic to buy that time.
Was the Wednesday offer by UM to accept everything Harbaugh asked for (and I suspect that characterization of "everything" is overblown, as if there were a signed text of a contract awaiting Harbaugh's counter-signature) a Hail Mary? Yeah, sure. But one only throws a Hail Mary at the end of the 4th quarter. If you throw it in the 2nd quarter people call you an idiot.
Good point, but I upvoted the OP regardless because it’s a sound argument.
PSU, Oregon, Mississippi, and Missouri, each with 2 conference losses, had no right to a playoff opportunity.
Just imagine if Penn State would’ve somehow won the whole thing. Would anyone really think the new playoff format had produced a deserving champion?
Dear Jordan Acker (and Dear MGoBoard, and Dear JUB, etc):
Your tweet is a negotiation. EVERYTHING is a negotiation. (This post is a negotiation).
But hopefully Jim Harbaugh, Warde, Santa, the BOR, and all their agents and lawyers are communicating directly and forthrightly with each other such that the effect of all this indirect negotiation is minimized.
Actually, from the “sources’” mouth.
Gobble gobble!!
Thanks othernel for posting the archived link above.
Certainly not a hit piece, even if the quotes from Finebaum are gratuitous (“If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll leave,” yeesh). But I still found it too superficial -- putting all the emphasis on the NCAA, when the rot extends deeper into the broadcast networks, the conferences they shovel money at to get exclusive TV rights, and ultimately the universities themselves (who, as members, ultimately control both the conferences and the NCAA). The NCAA is just the enforcement arm; it's doing the universities' bidding.
There oughta be a law.
Couple (uninformed) comments on the BB situation:
1) Juwan's recent heart surgery seems like it may be very relevant here, for two separate reasons. First, interaction between the circulatory and endocrine systems can be very strong, and heart patients can be subject to more intense mood swings. Second, he was absent from the team for months pre-season, so it's not unreasonable for the team to seem under-coached this early in the year, especially with the amount of roster turnover. The fact of his surgery means that both he and the team have been going through a lot of disruption.
2) The team's on-court performance and the HR issue are distinct, and need to be assessed distinctly, no matter how tempting it might be to commingle them and say "eh, they're not playing well, so go ahead and fire Juwan because of the Sanderson issue." In one case it's termination for cause and in the other case it's without cause and not having separation is where wrongful termination suits come up. In that respect, having a formal HR inquiry may benefit Juwan's chances to stay on, by affording him time to settle the team down and right the ship.
Faze, not phase.
That might depend on what he advised them to say/not say.
And now I'm not hungry anymore.
I think this is the reasonable take. It seems way more probable than not that the sending of the investigative report to the NCAA was timed for maximum impact -- if indeed there was suspicion that Michigan was cheating last season (such that OSU was taking countermeasures), then why wait 11 months before reporting those concerns to the NCAA if not to have the biggest impact on Michigan's season?
This "campaign" (if you will) is waged on multiple fronts -- the NCAA inquiry, the B1G's pre-emptive penalty, and the leak-driven media/PR campaign. Michigan's argument with the B1G is a procedural one, so it's important to keep the process points front and center until there is more clarity about where that is heading. The time to point out the ridiculousness of others' reactions to what actually happened will be after the facts are more clearly established.
Petitti's sole reliance here on the Sportsmanship Policy, divorced from specific rules violations, seems like a slippery slope, since the imposition of a penalty that would influence a team's performance on the field -- in advance of a determination that a rules violation had occurred -- would provide a competitive advantage to the other team.
It's easy to envision a whole range of counter-claims -- that the reporting to the NCAA of the private investigation of Stalions' shenanigans was timed precisely to put Michigan's team at a competitive disadvantage mid-season; that anonymous statements to the press were intended to contribute to the distraction; that selective sharing of Michigan's signals gives an unfair edge to its opponents. Those too would violate the Sportsmanship Policy as Petitti is portraying it, and I can't imagine he is prepared for an unending parade of complaints like what he seems to be inviting.
Not negging you, but you are accepting Petitti's characterization of Michigan's argument as fact, when much of the rest of his letter is well-stocked with straw men and cherry-picked quotes. As I understand it, the University has seen the evidence that the NCAA has chosen to give to it. That's not necessarily all of the evidence.
Careful. The guy who uttered that wonderful line wasn't around for much longer, if I recall correctly.
Quick! Somebody find Jim a pair of sunglasses!
Yes. I fully endorse this behavior. The more quickly this whole story turns into a parody of itself, the sooner it can be dispensed with as a sideshow and everybody can get back to playing and enjoying the games themselves.
Hopefully he finds more serenity in his repose than he seemed to in life.
My impressions of him skewed pretty negative, and I could never root for him or his teams. My coach on the 7th grade basketball team was a huge fan of Bob Knight and his approach to the game, and that experience turned me off of being on a school team for years afterward until my skin had sufficiently thickened.
As a grad student at IU in the late 80s I was aghast at the cult of personality that had built up around him in Bloomington. I remember an exhibition game that IU played against a touring Soviet national team, when Knight refused to bring the team back on the floor after halftime because he was mad about the officiating. After the game got called off a reporter found the IU president in the stands and asked him what he thought. The president said something to the effect that the incident didn't reflect well on the university. That night a pretty large crowd carrying torches (not sure about pitchforks) surrounded the president's house.
In retrospect, I think that the guy was indeed probably a basketball genius. And that his teams actually didn't come close to reaching their full potential simply because he was such a colossal asshole.
Clearly Stalions' big mistake was not including the fake nose and mustache with his glasses disguise.
Perhaps. But the "other party" in this case isn't the media blowhards or even the conspirators behind the private investigation firm. It's the NCAA, which hasn't yet commented publicly beyond making it clear that it is taking the allegations seriously. Michigan/Harbaugh is taking the wise course of saying that it/he takes the matter seriously too. Only after the NCAA makes clear exactly how bad it thinks whatever it is that went on is there the opportunity to calibrate a response to the specifics of the allegations. This is still a moving target.
It would be premature for UM/AD/Football Program to be floating any "gray area" arguments at this point -- either publicly or privately. A key element in any successful negotiation strategy is to always present yourself as more reasonable/conciliatory/moral than your adversary. It's only after a formal allegation gets made that the school should contemplate pushing back. They are playing this the right way for the time being.
The way this anonymously sourced evidence is dribbling out day by day has all the markings of a planned PR campaign. Unless the sources who leaked on Days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are completely different people - which seems unlikely - the easy inference is that this is happening not to just get the information out there, but to have maximum effect.
There's a smirky parallel column in the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/10/25/michigan-sign-stealing-funny/ about the supposed deliciousness of this scandal. But I'm hoping someday to read the exposé of the plot to "take down" the program from the start. Because it's sounding like it was at least as coordinated and deliberate as what is being alleged.
It sounds more and more like Stalions' only qualification for his job was an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
Jim might want to think about amending his credo to include a caveat about also exercising good judgment.
I would not bet anything that the "vast network" would have needed to be paid. At least not in cash. After all, Stalions himself apparently covered his own expenses while volunteering prior to his employment by the football program, and I can't imagine he's the only one who would do that. Lots of people spend lots of money in demonstrating their support of the team they love (and not just Michigan) -- many of them even read this blog.
The proffered explanation that Stalions was doing this rogue, using 3rd party volunteers, seems the most plausible. Harbaugh & Michigan have rather famously eschewed rule-bending in recruiting that would seem to offer a much bigger competitive advantage than this alleged sign-stealing. It's illogical that Harbaugh would put a championship run at risk for a marginal advantage while simultaneously handcuffing the program on the recruiting side.
Furthermore, it also seems entirely plausible that these 3rd parties didn't even need to be paid -- after all Stalions himself self-financed his earlier volunteer work and I imagine there are plenty more like him out there.
As to evidence that this nefarious "vast network" actually benefited Michigan on the field? I'd expect that would show up in charting of RPS events on a play-by-play basis. From casual reading UFRs I don't have the impression that Michigan has been markedly better than the opposition at "guessing" correctly on play calls. I'd be curious to know if that's really the case.
I don't have an Athletic subscription so I can't read the linked article, but Penn State doesn't have any common opponents with either Michigan or OSU so far this season, so I don't know how these anonymous opposing coaches can be making meaningful comparisons.
The conferences (i.e. the universities that constitute the conferences) tolerate the NCAA because the NCAA is controlled by the universities. The universities nowadays are more interested in maximizing their revenue from sports than they are in the sports themselves (e.g. the rule changes that decrease and distort game play in order to increase commercial exposure, the conference realignments chasing broadcasting revenue), much less the interests of the student athletes themselves.
The NCAA is still around because it makes a very convenient scapegoat. The more dysfunctional the better.
(Not to get political, but the analogy to Congress is irresistible – voters hate Congress, but they love their particular Member)
Good point. It's not that foreign students can't have income (surely there are Saudi princes studying here who hold interests in U.S. entities that generate income), it's that they can't earn income from U.S. sources except under certain circumstances. But I'm curious to know what those circumstances are. Someone elsewhere mentioned on- & off-campus employment, but is an NIL arrangement employment? I.e. are athletes "employees" of whoever is selling their NIL? Might the work-around be to set up a foreign registered entity with whom they could contract for their NIL income?
Homophonic slurs? Like "Yew eight bare bawls"?