Unverified Voracity Flees Mob, Fumbles En Route
via MZone
Periodic Ohio State turdstorm UPDATE! Yesterday Eleven Warriors graciously posted that Maurice Clarett might be a troubled weirdo who tried to take down Ohio State after he got the boot, but at least he's a trying troubled weirdo and he's not all bad. This is a level of understanding I do not have with Tractor Traylor even after the guy died tragically.
11W's reward for this understanding is to have Ray Small go MoCo:
"We have apartments, car notes," he said. "So you got things like that and you look around and you're like, ‘Well I got (four) of them, I can sell one or two and get some money to pay this rent."
The wheeling and dealing didn't stop with rings. The best deals came from car dealerships, Small said.
"It was definitely the deals on the cars. I don't see why it's a big deal," said Small, who identified Jack Maxton Chevrolet as the players' main resource.
The Columbus Dispatch reported on May 7 that OSU was investigating more than 50 transactions between OSU athletes and their families and Jack Maxton Chevrolet or Auto Direct.
Representatives for Jack Maxton Chevrolet did not return repeated requests for comment.
NCAA rules prohibit student-athletes from benefiting from the sale of their merchandise. Small said he wasn't the only one.
"They have a lot (of dirt) on everybody," Small said, "cause everybody was doing it."
Man… Ray Small. That guy was in trouble from day one at OSU, threw regular public hissy-fits about it, and he wasn't even that good at football. If I was an Ohio State fan he would be in my circle of the damned. Their term for this rapidly expanding category that includes Kirk Herbstreit and (to the truly deranged) Chris Spielman is "Fake Buckeye."
You can add Mark "Club Trillion" Titus to that list after he posted there was definitely something "shady" going on with football players' cars, then followed it up with a rebuttal saying that he shouldn't get death threats because that's mean. Titus claims the shadiness was to the point where most students knew or should have known what was going on.
Meanwhile, the local news station is investigating the Gibson thing and while that transaction continues to get more complicated it's not getting proportionally more explicable:
10 Investigates [sic] found that Gibson had a trade-in. He traded in a 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo that BMV records showed he bought for $15,400 just seven months earlier.
But the dealership may have given him only $1,000 toward the trade-in, [instead] dropping the sales price of the car he was buying by a substantial amount.
10 Investigates [sic] has learned that's what Kniffin has told investigators with the BMV.
The trade-in business materializes as predicted; an explanation for how Thad Gibson scraped together enough money to buy two cars worth a total of 30k in less than a year is yet to be explained. Along The Oletangy responds to the investigation apparently clearing the transactions:
In any case, it doesn't matter what the BMV finds when they analyze Jack Maxton Chevrolet's tax forms as long as no special treatment was given to Ohio State football players.
It's obvious plenty of special treatment was provided, but where is the smoking gun?
Position paper on demolition of Ohio State program and whether it is good or bad. If Ohio State was going to fall apart by Notre Daming themselves with a series of coaching hires ranging from questionable to insane, that would be a thing to be conflicted about in the same way certain Ohio State fans are bored with a terrible Michigan team they're just going to blow out.
This is a different thing entirely since it suggests the fence Tressel legendarily put up around Ohio's borders is one based on massive NCAA noncompliance. Meanwhile, thanks in part to this (and in part to Michigan imploding) they've gone 9-1 and turned the Big Ten into their personal playground. If the NCAA finds proof of this massive noncompliance and OSU gets bombed into the stone age and is no longer any good, there's no conflict there. It's an unadulterated good. Michigan has been hypersensitive about this stuff since the Ed Martin Day Of Great Shame, and it's obvious their main rival hasn't. Putting that on even footing will help put the rivalry there if it doesn't swing it all the way back to the Cooper days, which fine by me.
Hot under the collar, part II. ESPN's Mike Fish, you may remember from the above-referenced Maurice Clarett bombing, has a new article. This is the header image:
Africa basketball charity, AAU player headed to Indiana, Tom Crean, Indiana AAU coach. This can't be good. Not pictured: involuntary adoption. Hooray Beilein.
Hey let's rehash this again. MZone noticed that I hadn't mentioned Lloyd Carr's election to the College Football Hall of Fame and asks why I hate Lloyd Carr, complete with requisite psychoanalysis and link to me being mad in the immediate aftermath of the Hoke hire when everyone was mad, something I've obviously backed away from in multiple column-length pieces since.
To defend myself: I don't take the CFHOF seriously. It just elected Deion Sanders. When Tom Curtis was elected it warranted about two sentences. For better or worse, I am totally uninterested in the charity work of rich people. I've also said my bit about Carr as Michigan's coach over and over again. Contrary to two-bit psychoanalysis it was not negative, or at least it was far less negative than many.
And I am pissed off at the hostility to change that's obvious every time any former Carr player says something about anything. We've got a program of Joe Morgans. I'm worried how that will manifest itself on the field. It's not hard to draw a contrast between what's gone down the last three years and what would have gone down if Bo was still around. Bo would have been on the warpath; he probably would have dropped by to scream at Rodriguez some. The impression we've gotten from every one of Carr's former players is that there is exactly one person responsible for Michigan's decline—Rich Rodriguez—and not only is that incorrect (Horror, DeBord, Tressel vs Carr) but it's detrimental to Michigan's future. If we got back to the days where every bowl opponent laughs at how predictable we are that will not be good.
(I don't think that's happening because Borges is a real live offensive coordinator and not a broken robot that only calls zone left. Hoke uber alles.)
Eyerolling reorg. Adam Wodon on the inevitable hockey realignment coming sounds like anyone talking about anything last year when talking about conference realignment:
It all starts with Notre Dame. (Well, it all started with Penn State and the Big Ten, but that's already happened.) Think about it — you're Notre Dame's president. Your sports teams all play in the Big East, or, in the case of football, is the most storied program in college sports. You fire up CHN's iPhone app one morning to check the hockey standings, and what do you see? You see Notre Dame competing against some MAC and D-II schools. You recoil. This is not what Notre Dame does. This is not what Notre Dame is.
That is not a knock on the other schools, it's just reality. There is no way that Notre Dame is staying put. That means that the CCHA is certain to lose its remaining powerhouse (from an institutional, NCAA-wide standpoint), and fall further to seven teams. That means the CCHA is in trouble, as a whole.
Maybe Wodon's got some inside chatter on this that he's refusing to mention in an effort to make his column as annoyingly speculative as possible, but this is the impetus for an elaborate reorganization scenario that sees Notre Dame move to Hockey East because they'd rather play Merrimack (seriously) than Ferris State.
Notre Dame is choosing between some games against BC and then a bunch of schools no one at Notre Dame has heard of plus flying for literally every road game and staying in the CCHA. While ND has money, are they going to spend it on that for no real benefit? And will Hockey East expand to an eleven teams just for the dubious benefits of having ND in the conference? Travel costs matter in hockey, the longest season in the NCAA, and no one is going to make enough money on an ND move to justify the increased costs even if "this is not what Notre Dame does." Yeesh.
Etc.: Daily reports on the lacrosse move. Barwis opening a local gym. Rothstein lays out the reasons Michigan lax can be competitive quickly. Big Ten Geeks on FCOA.
Moreover, the people who actually watched Hoke's SDSU team play generally were a lot more high on him than those who hadn't. He wasn't my #1 choice for the job, but I thought he was a solid choice, and he's only reinforced my opinion since then.
...Brian is associating himself with the crowd. Seems out of character for him. "Everyone" is not far off, but that's hardly a reason to posit that their take is the correct one.
I'm still at a loss to figure out what coach would have been a better hire than Hoke?
- Harbaugh would have been but his NFL stock blew up and he took that path (as I predicted).
- Miles? Come on. There's no way Dave Brandon was going to hire a sleazeball like The Hat after RichRod's lax management/envelope pushing got the program placed on probation for the first time in its storied history.
- Urban Meyer? Not a chance - the timing was just not right.
- Gus Malzahn? Transcendent offensive genius or just a guy who struck gold with a freak of nature QB that overmatched defenses? Oh, and how did that HC that was an offensive genius work out for Michigan?
- Al Golden or Randy Edsal?
You can't come up with a better hire than Hoke, can you? Can you? No, you can't.
entirely. Thanks for posting it, making it relatively concise.
(DCDave's post)
Please do not talk about opponents laughing at Michigan. It makes me think about Josh Groban. And a million booger eating spartans. And the four letter network during the last nfl draft. And everyone on the Earth after the last bowl game. And Toledo. And trumped up NCAA speeding tickets. And the Paso Doble defense. And the lack of a mac level field goal kicker. And crack dealing/carjacking/non-student athletes. I'm a little sensitive. Please choose your words better.
Jim Tressel: "You're killing me Small!"
but isn't thursday the day it hits the mailbox? shouldn't someone have it scanned and up here right now?
That's not how SI works anymore. I think their big scoops hit the website as soon as the issue goes to print. So if they are predicting next Tuesday, that would be for the issue hitting newsstands a week from Monday (and thus mailboxes slightly earlier).
hard to believe this delivery model is falling out of favor
While I find the clusterfrick down in Columbus to be one of the more entertainining cannibalizations this side of the Andes, all UM fans should be careful how many stones they throw. I am fairly certain that if you dig deep enough into any major program, you are going to find guys getting sweetheart car deals, comped dinners, access to strip joints as underaged kids, DUIs and impermissible interactions with agents, runners, local businessmen, etc. People always talked up Carr running kids (looking at you Braylon) early in the morning for breaking team rules as proof that he ran a tight ship, but I'm fairly certain that some of those "team rules" were probably NCAA rules as well. It happens, and while schools like OSU, Auburn, and USC allowed it to grow well beyond acceptable bounds, let's not act like the program is above reproach when it comes to NCAA regulations.
A Michigan fan dialing up the current defense flavor of the month of the most dim witted OSU fan: everybody is surely doing it.
I didn't think it could get any weaker than them using it. I have to say this tops it.
that buckeye nation is waiting for a classy, educated, golden boy whistle blower they can all admire. Tressel will have to recruit a few first.
And Michigan is waiting for a football coach that knows how to win, I think.
here this a.m. Think about what Carr's status might be if he'd had a level playing field--the anointed.
Carr did have a level playing field.
Troy Smith didn't use his Cadillac Escalade to run over Michigan's defense. He used his arms and his legs.
Sometimes I wonder what it would take for Brian and others on this board to appreciate what Lloyd Carr did for the University of Michigan. He just got elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, did tons of charity work, won a national championship, raised Michigan's overall winning percentage during his career, and produced a bunch of NFL players whose careers we have been able to enjoy for years and years.
Yet still we bitch and moan.
Frankly, I don't care that the CFHOF induction wasn't covered on MGoBlog. Brian's not obligated to cover anything, and there's more coverage of Michigan sports on this here blog than anywhere else, and that probably includes the official site.
There are college football coaches doing douchey things around the country, literally destroying their programs . . .
. . . but Carr had a couple bad (not even bad, but mediocre!) seasons toward the tail end of his career, and we still can't appreciate what he did for the university and look back at those years fondly. Maybe you'd prefer Jim Tressel? No, he's a cheater. Urban Meyer? No, he recruits thugs. Brian Kelly? No, he's a douche. Pete Carroll? No, he's a cheater. Joe Paterno? No, he's old and his program goes up and down. Chip Kelly? There might be some shady things going on there... Mack Brown? He just had a losing season, something Carr never did. Nick Saban? Cheater and douche. Bob Stoops? Maybe.
That's just about every powerhouse team in the country, and there's something sinister or scary about each one.
Lloyd Carr was a good coach, a good guy, and Jesus H. Christ, stop whining like spoiled children that he wasn't a perfect enough coach for your liking.
A+, would read again.
Tremendous post Mag.
You'd think that after the last three years his stature would have gone up, not down.
In the real world; it has. Here, in the mgobubble, it is, unfortunately, not the case.
You do realize that the presence of diverse opinions here, as varied as blind fans of RR, Brian, Hoke, Carr, etc and those that are blind enemies of the same list, undermines the "mgobubble" meme, right?
Not at all. The fact is that as we move further and further away from the RR era, people (even those who were once strong RR supporters) have taken time to review the facts and change their minds. Some still sit entrenched in their old positions; some are slowly poking the edges of the bubble; and others might choose to never leave the bubble. The fact is, however, that mgoblog is really the only place where you'll still find love for RR and constant attacks on those not of the RR era.
says below--in the real world, people do know how great he is.
You were obviously upset, and said some things I didn't agree with, and I gave you a hard time. But you've shown what truly getting over something means, and shown my view of you to be wrong.
But that's getting tired; so just - Bravo.
Any chance Cook reads posts like Magnus' and takes them to heart? Doubtful.
I wonder what the point of having a blog was in the first place if someone is going to block 45 out of 100 comments. I post something and it starts as 1(normal). Later on I come back and it's 3(insightful). Even later on I come back and the same "insightful" comment is back to 1(normal) again, then later I see it's blocked out and given a 0(overrated). Sometimes the blog feels a little schizophrenic to me. :-/
Tremendous.
Good post. I don't agree with everything you said, but I respect your opinion and the passion behind it. Carr was always a great representative for the University and the community at large, and I don't think anybody would disagree with those statements. Is he a HOF? Apparently yes, though the merits might be up for debate.
I do take issue with your generalizations about Carr and how he stacks up with other coaches. You say certain coaches are douches, as if Carr didn't come across as an ass at times. Yes, he reminded people of Bo and that was fine enough around these parts, but in other towns my guess is that his "Senator Carr" routine drove people as crazy as Tressel and the like. And while we love to think Carr ran a clean ship with no violations, that's probably a bit naive. I'm fairly certain that some of those "team rules" he cracked guys like Braylon for might have been NCAA violations in other people's eyes. And while this is purely anecdotal, during my 4 years on campus I did see athletes with the type of clothing, electronics, cars, etc. that should have been outside their price range (and yeah, I get that some of them had parents who could help financially, they took out loans, etc.). But I accept that, because CFB is such a pockmarked field that you can barely see the lines anymore, and UM is probably cleaner than most when it comes to major violations. But I never thought of Carr as a saint, and for all of his literary references, homespun charm, and true love for the University, he was a coach expected to win and win big, and he did until the end. I liked the wins, so I'm not going to ask the particulars of how he got there.
But what drives me crazy around here is that whenever anyone complains about Carr, everyone jumps down their throats as spoiled haters, as if being critical of the coach is uncalled-for unless that HC is RR. Well guess what, I never thought Carr was the greatest coach, and while those 10-win seasons were great, he still lost consistently once Tressel got going in Columbus, and bowl games not played in Tampa (or wherever the Outback is played) were going to be dicey. And while everyone points to UM getting to some BCS games toward the end, it was only becaause OSU played for the MNC. Michigan was fine under Carr, but he left this team in a worse place than when he started, and I'm not sure the culture he left behind is the right one for the game as it currently is played.
I agree with most of what Magnus says on Carr. And I certainly don't think he commited "treason". That said, a couple things. FIrst, I think Carr did absolutely great things for the team and the University for the first several years of his tenure. But I honestly think that, by the time he retired, the game had passed him by. He was still a classy guy tring to win the right way, but his unwillingness to innovate dropped Michigan from national contender to perennial second best even in the Big Ten. I don't think he needed to sell his soul to avoid this decline, either. You don't need to give out free tats or sign 35 players to stop a mobile QB or run a play on 4th down on the opponent's 35.
Second, I do think he could have done more to help RR - not even publicly, but he certainly could have talked to some of these disgruntled alums and said, hey, give this guy a chance. Who knows if it would have made a differene though, and maybe he was just ready to be done (it's not like he's been terribly outspoken since the Hoke hire either).
I don't think that these things by any means outweigh the good things he did, and I was a strong defender of him when people were calling for his head in '05. Absolutely great coach, just not an innovator - he was a great steward of Michigan tradition, but I do think he was more a "maintainer" than a "creator" (not that there's anything wrong with that role).
Second, I do think he could have done more to help RR - not even publicly, but he certainly could have talked to some of these disgruntled alums and said, hey, give this guy a chance.
Why assume he didn't? Think about what he said in the locker room after the Florida win. In addition, some of the upperclassmen on the 2008 team have said that Carr spoke to them during that season and challenged them to stick with the program.
Right now we're seeing a lot of former players come out of the woodwork to say how frustrated they were with the RR regime. Most of them held their tongue while he was here. I wouldn't be surprised if Carr urged them to zip it at the time for the good of the program. It may not fit into the "Carr's an evil mastermind" narrative some try to advance, but it seems to fit in the character of the man we saw as the face of the program for so long.
I never said he was guilty of "treason" or was the leader of some cabal against RR, but the fact remains he made it clearly publicly he wasn't a huge fan of the direction the team was going and, I'm guessing, made this displeasure known behind the scenes as well. But that is neither here nor there.
Carr seems like a nice enough guy and his charity work is great, but that doesn't mean I have to love everything about his coaching tenure or style, or by into the notion that he is one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. When I think of the greats, I think of Bo, Bear, Yost, and Spurrier, and compared to those men I don't think Carr matches up. Sure, he's probably a HOF like Joe Dumars may be a HOF - a good guy who won enough and who didn't screw it up. But outside of the NC, his career and that of RR's are eerily similar in terms of wins and losses, and RR turned WVU into a destination for big-time football; Carr kept the train going at UM but I wouldn't say he really pushed UM beyond where it was under Moeller and the later years of Bo.
But I'm kind of done arguing about Carr. He will always be the greates to some, an overrated stand-in to others, and something to everyone. I'll respect what he did at UM and beyond, but trying to brow-beat me with "he's done more to help people in a week than you'll ever do" isn't going to change my opinion of him as a coach.
....on the mark and definitely needed to be said. Thanks, Magnus.
I don't always agree with you about all things Michigan but in this case you have hit the nail on the head. Lloyd Carr deserves better than he has received on the board. It's clear he's a good man and a real leader who supported the development of the young men he coached. He was an honourable coach who was respectful of his opponents and the rules. In the case of being a good man, a leader, an honourable coach and respectful he is the complete opposite of that liar Tressel.
Who has met Carr or know him personally know he is a good person and acts graciously towards others.
Word
Carr clearly didn't have a level playing field against Tressel.
Because OSU players took favors? I really hope this meme doesn't take hold in the future. There is no evidence, none, that any player came to OSU BECAUSE of those favors. And that is a fact. Look, I have a bit of glee just like we all do at this mess they are in, but there is no way that it made a difference on the field. We got out-recruited and out-coached during this losing streak, period. Players getting discounted cars and tats should bring about all kinds of punishment, and rightly so. But the emerging "we would have won more if Tressel hadn't cheated" meme is precisely the wrong lesson we should learn from those years.
He has no answer. You are right -- to excuse Carr's losses to Tressel on OSU players receiving excessive gifts and breaking NCAA rules is about the flimsiest, most non-sensical argument one can make.
It's the kind of shit you'd expect to hear from a sports talk radio caller.
I just think it's a poor argument to use because it can be easily countered. When a kid with no preference is deciding between a school where you don't get the benefits like some OSU players do and a school where you get the benefits it encourages the kid to attend the latter.
But there is evidence that tressel played players on the take from boosters when playing michigan, whom shouldn't have been eligible to play.
Who reads this:
This is a kid whose number four was "downgraded" to number 82, who was suspended routinely by Tressel and forgiven, then suspended again, and again...
And thinks, "Oh! So that's where Dantonio gets his reputation for harsh discipline!"
Lloyd Carr > Brian Cook
One will be in the College Football Hall of Fame AND have part of a children's hospital named after him and the other is an internet hack just trying to make a dime.
I don't understand how some of you people have the tenacity and energy to post the same arguments in thread after thread after thread.
Viva Avila!
At this point, I think everyone understands both the pro RR arguments and the pro Carr/Hoke arguments, but when an argument ensues, both sides distort the others position. Mind boggling.
In what capacity would one even compare Brian and Lloyd?
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<br>Lloyd was a very good coach.
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<br>Brian is a very good writer.
If you really think Brian is a "very good writer", I would like to put us both in a time machine so you could grade my papers when I was an undergrad at Michigan......my transcript would undoubtly look more impressive. BTW, I enjoyed your other comments above.
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