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College football is for the

College football is for the football players? What? Are movies for the actors that perform in them?

Yes, when the film is made by students as part of a film class.

The University of Michigan is a school, not a business in the entertainment industry. Football is a program in the school, for the students.

I happen to enjoy watching them play, but I'm just along for the ride.

Also, because I haven't paid the students for their entertainment services, they owe me nothing. Start paying them and we can start complaining about the service we receive. Maybe Gardner would give me a refund for the Akron game.

the huge budgets are there

the huge budgets are there because schools choose to create those huge budgets.

Agreed. Somehow people all over the world and throughout history have managed to play sports without $100 million budgets (plus $100 million donations). The University created these obligations; it was a choice.

I think Dave Brandon said that there are 900 student athletes. That means we spend around $100,000 per student-athlete per year, and Ross' donation adds another $100,000. Wow.

Remember, college football is

Remember, college football is for the students who are playing, not for us. If you think, 'this will ruin college football', then IMHO you are missing the point.

If the NCAA is not going to pay them and insist these are legitimate programs of academic institutions which happen to make money, and not for-profit businesses with unpaid employees, then they need to structure things with the student-athletes needs as the absolute top priority, and as the second priority make money where they can. You can see my suggestions in my earlier post.

Who determines the student-athletes needs? I'd say the student-athletes, not 40-70 year old college administators and coaches, are the best -- and only -- voice. Again, they need to organize and stand up for themselves.

They should ask for more ...

This is fantastic. Like everyone else, they deserve to get whatever they can for themselves on the open market, not what we deign to allow them to have. The only reason they have this ridiculously bad arrangement is that they have had no negotiating power and have to take whatever the other party magnanimously thinks they should have; the solution is to organize.

They should add to that list:.

  • Guaranteed 5 year academic scholarship (many non-athletes need 5 years, and they don't have the demands of the football team)
  • Letters of Intent guarantee them the scholarship: AFAIK, the LOIs only require the student to stop talking to other schools, but put no requirements on the school to accept them.
  • The right to change schools between seasons with no restrictions. Everyone else in America can change jobs (edit: or schools) to a place that is better for them; why should the backup QB waste his very limited time in college sitting on the bench?
  • No games from Thanksgiving to the bowl season, the way the Big Ten used to do it. The students should get to go home for Thanksgiving and focus on school for awhile.

Nothing would make me more proud than to see UM players take the lead on this. In fact, it's almost a little embarrassing that the leaders and best are sitting in the background.

Pitino quote omits key paragraph

The quote from the Pitino story omits the second paragraph, which includes a key detail:

Pitino -- a former Kentucky coach -- then explained that his wife called him out for being afraid to go back to the state of Kentucky to coach at Louisville, his old school's arch rival.

When combined with the next paragraph,

She eventually convinced him to change his mind, and due to one of Martin's squash matches, Pitino informed Michigan of his decision via voicemail.

... it reveals that she didn't convince him to go to UM, but to go to Louisville. Pintino was calling Martin to say he was going to Louisville. The Detroit News corroborates it:

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121024/SPORTS0201/210240453/1131/sports0201/Louisville-s-Rick-Pitino-says-he-nearly-became-U-M-s-coach

 

 

MGoBlog talk radio

What's wrong with comparing MGoBlog to talk radio? How does it harm you? What has made you defensive? That's the kind of loyalty that I was referring to; in other online forums, nobody would take it personally -- they would simply agree or disagree.

Thinking about it, it's a better analogy than I originally thought: MGoBlog is a lot like a sports talk radio call-in show, with the host providing editorial analysis, somewhat emotional and provocative, and the audience responds (except the format here allows longer comments and discussions).

Again, the loyalty is what makes it like Rush. Would listeners to a sports talk radio show be offended by the paragraph above? I doubt Rush Limbaugh listeners would either.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I don't think I was disrespectful. Many people like Rush Limbaugh (very many!) and he's enormously successful. I noticed the response to Brian's post, which is unusual for an online community, and the comparison came to mind and struck me as very telling.

Blogs are like talk radio. First, they don't practice Journalism: For example, Brian doesn't ask the Athletic Department, other parties, or experts to learn more about the story. Also, they can get away with attacks that professional journalists cannot; if a professional journalist encouraged his readers to harass a 14 year old, it would end his career (could you imagine even the reviled Free Press columnists writing that!), but Rush and Brian seem to get much more leeway with that kind of thing). Finally, they tend to write in a way that gets emotional responses.

Here's a reason to compare Brian to Rush in particular:

Just as any followers of anything, people tend to side with the leader.

I don't recall another blog where the blogger is called a "leader" and the readers his "followers", but certainly that applies here. Kinda like Rush and his Dittoheads (and I don't think that term is considered a negative one; my apologies if it is). Would many here object to being called Brian's Army or MGoBlog Army or something similar?

Finally, look at the response. Someone even looked up posts I made years ago to find material to use against me, and others modded up their attack. Someone else predicted, accurately, that my karma would take a hit -- for challenging the dear leader? An angry, defensive reaction, and some of the same emotion you see from Rush and his army.

Here, though, we have all kinds of dissenting opinions/thoughts/ideas.

There are always some but compared to other online communities, including in the small world of UM sports, there is relatively very little dissent here, and much very aggressive groupthink.

Personally, I hope for more from a UM blog than so much credulity, groupthink, and the occasional angry mob. Where is the skepticism? Where are people saying "X is not your private army"? (Again, there is some but relatively little.)

That hope was one reason I asked my questions at the end. They are basic questions about any story but unfortunately nobody is asking them (at least in the first couple pages of posts, before I added mine).

Rush Cook

If you think about it, Brian has really become the Rush of the UM blogs ... When someone obstructs the 'people's' agenda he doesn't hesitate to conduct a fair and balanced investigation into them. You can be a leading expert in your field or a 14 year old; he is egalitarian and undeterred.

And every Rush has his dittoheads, showing the power of mass action and mass thinking.

On the subject of the Alabama game, does anyone have any knowledge of tbe negotiations, the Athletic Departmwnt's intentions, or the issues involved in major college sports entertainment events and contracts? Has anyone inquired with the Athletic Dept?

Invation of privacy

Publishing a photo of a 18 year old's dorm room feels really invasive; I'm sorry I saw it. Did Burke give his permission to publish it? If not, it's way over the line of creepy stalking.

(It doesn't matter that someone else published it first.)

Who should be banned?

McFarlin's actions were annoying, Brian's are incitement to harm someone else, a crime. If someone besides Brian posts someones personal contact info, they should be and I hope would be banned.

If McFarlin is really 14 years old, it is really disgusting. If I were McFarlin's parents, I would call the district attorney's office.

The problem is not McFarlin acting like a 14 year old, but Brian acting like a 14 year old. I'm just one reader, but this blog is 'banned' from my machine.

Ban it

Anything that provides a significant competitive advantage, for the player or the school, will soon become required if you don't want to fall behind: Many players will enroll early to avoid falling behind in the race for playing time (how does Denard Robinson feel about early enrollment now?), and many coaches will pressure players to do it, so that their teams are more competitive in the fall (many coaches in RR's position would pressure incoming QBs to start in the spring?). Not all, of course, but many.

The NCAA should protect the kids from this pressure and ban them from joining their college team until their high school class has graduated. The cost to the kids is minimal and they can enjoy the last semester of high school.

Go Blue!

She was pushing

She was pushing him.

Seriously, how fast is 21 MPH, relative to other athletes?

In today's Detroit News

Angelique Chengelis covers this issue in todays Detroit News, but she misses the essential point that the school is just using the players and selling their unpaid labor.

http://detnews.com/article/20090429/OPINION03/904290376/1131/sports0201…

Anyone notice the punt return

Anyone pay attention the punt plays at the beginning? Second punt went to (Odoms?); with no coverage coming at him, it bounced off his pads and out of his arms. I can't believe I'm the only one who the fumbled punt made an impression on.

GM can turn down (and return!) my money

> do not take bail out money and keep gov't. out of the pockets of all.

GM and the rest of the companies are free to do just that. In fact, I'd like them to return to me (and you and everyone else) the money they already took.

Fake plug-in warning

On my Firefox, there is a false plugin notification (appears in the bar at the top). If that's what you are talking about, it really isn't a plugin; it's probably an error in the information that the server sends that makes it look like there is a plugin.

If you try to install it, it says it can't install plugin type "text/html". That's the content-type for a standard web page. You don't need a plugin for that.

If you are talking about the video loading, it just takes awhile for me, especially on slower or busy computers.

Problem may be high CPU

On my Windows computer, the videos use a lot of CPU (processor). If there aren't enough CPU resources to go around, the video could get choppy. Try closing other programs that are using CPU. You shouldn't have to do that -- you probably watch plenty of YouTube without any problem.

If you look in Task Manager (right-click on your taskbar, click Task Manager), and go to the Processes tab, you can see how much CPU Firefox/IE and other programs are using.

Prior studies

My only suggestion would be to make the data useful, as much as possible, for other research. Allow others to add fields, etc (maybe with approval). If possible, maybe use an online database that others can access.

The purpose of my post, however, is to point you to research others have done on similar questions, which may inform or guide what you are doing. I've been bookmarking these for a little while to satisfy my own curiosity. Most of these are an evaluation of prior recruiting rankings, but the first one will tell you who the clear top ranked recruiting school has been since 1995.

* http://michigan.scout.com/a.z?s=162&p=2&c=834176
* http://michigan.scout.com/a.z?s=162&p=2&c=836034
* http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/andy_staples/02/16/2006-c…
* http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Hug-your-fr…
* http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Hug-your-fr…

Also, this one compares NFL and high school combine performance for many players. Apparently, it's all downhill after you turn 18:
http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=917643