t0nic

History

Member for

1 year 33 weeks

Karma

Current value

2

Recent Comments

Date	Title	Body
39 weeks 3 days ago	It's good that Butterfield is	It's good that Butterfield is keeping this on top. It's always awesome to see the work we as alums are doing around the world. I really hope we can help Odoms get to his goal.
1 year 32 weeks ago	Wow I am speachless...	Wow I am speachless... Awesome can't even begin to describe my feelings.
1 year 32 weeks ago	Hold Your Horses	If McGary commits to Michigan it will be a huge get for our team but we won't know until tonight. People jumping the gun is always funny to read here because if he chooses Duke these boards will blow up. I rather just be happy that Michigan has a new player center, updated arena, and we seem to be competing for top recruits. Our team has shown progress and is steadly getting better and should be fun to watch this year.
1 year 33 weeks ago	Thanks for the heads up. My	Thanks for the heads up. My email forwarding seems to be one of the broken ones that is not getting through. I went through the steps but it still isn't forwarding to my gmail address (redid forwarding). Will have to take a deeper look later in evening.
1 year 33 weeks ago	If there was one thing	If there was one thing Brandon wasn't going to repeat it was the Martin style chaos of hiring Rodriguez. Even if it was a charade and Brandon knew the coach he wanted he still played a cool hand in keeping it close to his vest as long as possible and made the transition as swift as possible. My thoughts was that Rodriguez was gone even pre-bowl as many people believed it was time to clean house and start over. Sometimes a do-over is warranted and I am pretty sure there was people telling Brandon that even pre-bowl.
1 year 33 weeks ago	Response to Some Criticism	<quote>He seems to want to paint all of RichRod's media snafu's on a lack of preparation by Bill Martin to get him ready for press conferences or university edict. At the same time, he never raises the issue that the head football coach of Michigan should probably have acquired in his career some media savvy at some point.</quote> I take these portions slightly different as Bacon through the book really lays out that Rodriguez never reached out the Michigan Men or leaned on them for advice and was ill prepared to handle the high level of political games being played at Michigan. Rodriguez's fault is naively believing that he was going into a situation where he wouldn't have to be looking at his back and that he would have the support of the University family (Martin, Coleman, Athletic family, etc). He was just not ready or prepared for level of scrutiny Michigan football entails in addition to the internal politics.  <quote>He says on the bottom of page 206 (i think) that he's never heard RichRod tell a lie or be duplicitous, then on the middle of the VERY NEXT page recounts RichRod saying something he knew to be untrue at a press conference, but argues Rich had no other option. </quote> The press conference in question was an answer to if the Freep Investigation was hindering his team and publically Rodriguez said "no". Bacon's quote was in reference to conversations he personally had with Rodriguez, "From everything I've gathered, he told me the truth every time - even when it was not flattering, including his description of his coverastion with Delany the previous week." <quote>And yet, at the end, all his criticisms seemed smoothed over, whereas his criticisms of Lloyd, Martin, MSC and the Free-Press have bite. Chapters on them are ended with snarky comments. </quote> The criticisms of Martin/Free-Press are pretty hard to refute as multiple sources have come forward against them. The real difficult part is reading into Lloyd Carr as he never agreed to be interviewed and also he's always been a private individual so we will never know that side of the story. There are ton of questions left on the table about what Carr did or didn't do and Bacon acknowledged he could get no sources to come forward publicaly so we are at impass as to finding out his real motives. Bacon does comes across as seeming to have foundness for Rodriguez but he also does lay out Rodriguez's faults throughout the book. Having met both Carr and Rodriguez there is no question that Rodriguez seems to be a "nice guy who you'd want to hang out with" and Carr was always cordial but politically savvy with his words. Rodriguez was just the wrong guy for Michigan and I think the book highlights that.
1 year 33 weeks ago	If you read the book Brandon	If you read the book Brandon comes across as neutral and actually a plus on one occasion for Rodriguez due to his PR skills and his defense of Rodriguez during the CARA form incident. Bacon doesn't go into much detail about Brandon probably because up until the very end Brandon didn't tip his hand one way or another and there probably wasn't any good sources willing to speak. Martin however comes across as a bozo when it comes to interaction with the media and power brokers which is to be expected.
1 year 33 weeks ago	Finished Book Last Night	Finished the eBook last night  and it was a real page turner and definitely really confirmed alot of my suspicions and thoughts of the past three years. Like others have said I do feel bad that Rich Rodriguez never really got a far shake but I am more angry at my athletic department and administration who never stood up for what was right. Too often in the book you get a sense that the Michigan brand was worth more then the honor of defending someone who is supposed to be one of your own by telling the truth (Freep Issue, Buyout, etc). The silence and lack of defense of the program by the power brokers really comes through.   I think Bacon's book does a very good job putting us the readers into the locker rooms and coach's meetings which we as fans and alums never really get to see.