Rivals draws parallel between UM and OSU NCAA violations
http://collegefootball.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1245238
Simple synopsis is the article alks about how Delany spoke to the coaches at B1G media day regarding NCAA violations. While I am glad to see the big ten holding itself to a higher standard, I think it's ridiculous to juxtapose the violations we had at UM and those at OSU.
15 minutes of stretching = 10 years of systemic and systematic cheating? I don't think so. But I like the rest of it. The politics of it is that Jim Deleney is calling for stricter enforcement before THE Ohio State University has gotten its penalties. I don't know if that was an intentional or unintentional slight, but I wouldn't feel very secure right now if my name was Gordon Gee or Gene Smith.
If Delaney and Pac 12 commissioner Larry Scott are in Mark Emmert's ear, it could be a lot more fun than we have thought since reading the NCAA's tepid report last week.
tosu will most likely face no penalties that will affect the future of the program, i.e. bowl bans, scholarship reductions, etc. On the other hand, Michigan did face penalties that affected future teams in practice time reduction. Although Michigan's penalties may not be significant, they still look poorly on the school.
At this point the NCAA has basically said, "Cheat until you get caught, then blame someone you can fire and take no accountability," or in Auburn's case, "Pay your players, but blame someone not associated with the program and take no accountability."
The NCAA COI is a joke. Bottom line.
I also find it ridiculous that if violations fall on the shoulders of a single player or coach, the player or coach can leave the program and then not be held accountable, so the program gets off scot free even though that player/coach basically WAS the program.
To me, it's the equivalent of leaving the country after committing a crime. You should still be accountable.
Unless Delaney has tsio's back.
Funny, you have no problem doing the exact same thing in trying to equate Brady Hoke's involvement in Ball State's athletic department-wide textbook scandal to Rich Rodriguez's culpability in the recent sanctions levied against U-M's (and now WVU's) football program.
I've seen some OSU and MSU fans try to make the same correlation and can understand why they do it. It's curious though as to why you continue to perpetuate this idea.
Only in America can stretching for 20 min too long per practice be equated to drug dealing, stealing and selling gear, free cars, hookers, and tats. Pryor and his gang was living like Vinney Chase. What a joke.
...can college football players live like fictional debaucherous movie stars
It's about what you can prove. The NCAA, apparently, couldn't prove (or even find hard evidence of) anything other than what tOSU had already admitted. It sucks royally, I know, but since they don't have subpoena power, there are real limits to what they can do.
yeah, i know. It sucked off when one of most important witnesses walked out of the interviews when anonymity couldn't be offered. It is not like buckeye mafia is like Tony Soprano's gang.
yes, I can like anyting to a HBO series.
Oh, at least try to be fair. Michigan's penalties weren't only about a few minutes of extra stretching. Michigan had a member of the coaching staff monitor 7-on-7s; it had a member of the staff who lied to the NCAA. And, although the pattern wasn't clear it the time, this was the second time RR had broken NCAA rules. Michigan's infractions weren't near the level of OSU's. But Michigan did break some rules.
Oh please. My point stands. Pryor an his boys were living like Vinny Chase in a coke filled bender. College is not supposed to be like Entourage. I wouldn't be suprised if a dead hooker shows up in Mirrow lake.
The stench from Columbus has permeated every building in America except the BIG and NCAA HQs. Uggh, I need to shower again.
Really? I thought I heard Gene Smith say they were almost exactly the same and he'd be OUTRAGED if anyone said otherwise.
The NCAA meekly nodded their head and looked back down at their feet........
...an equivalency exists (it obviously does not), I can't find fault with Delaney's point that the Michigan violations (and they were violations even if categorizing them as "major" is ridiculous) were embarrassing. That's an accurate characterization.
It's the characterization of the OSU violations that's disturbing. He should be mortified.
Now to his larger point: It clearly is a "major" problem for the Big Ten that its two marquee programs have faced the COI in successive years. The frank discussion with conference ADs and HCs was absolutely justified.
As Michigan fans we are justified to feel somewhat abused by being lumped together with OSU, but this is the inevitable outcome of the findings. The program has been branded and it doesn't wash off.
That sucks. But, it's the way it is.
Our violation also has the unfortunate side effect of "How could you be so bad if you're practicing too much" jokes from tosu fans. We really, really need to beat them this year.
As part of his job, Delany really can't minimize any NCAA violations, obviously including Michigan's gym rat routine, but he can and should at least illustrate how much more grave tsio's scandal is.
...was fair, I said it was the inevitable consequence of Michigan having been found by the NCAA COI of having committed major violations.
Sucks to be us, basically.
Is OSU doomsday according to the Mayan calendar of Justin Boren's back.
...disagree then. What's inevitable about it is that because the B1G cannot afford for any more of its member schools to get cross-wise with the NCAA and because both of the marquee programs have committed major violations, he has to acknowledge that fact. I just don't think that by doing this he's making an equivalency between the two.
I think we're being a little too sensitive here but that's ok. It's an understandable reaction.
UM Football took it on the chin for what were basically very minor, unintentional violations because RR did not understand what CARA forms were and did not raise holy hell the third or fourth time he received an email telling him they still had not been filed.
You, and others here, are focusing too much on one aspect of our violations. The stretching and paperwork was not the big problem. The big problem was that we had grad assistants monitoring summer workouts, which is clearly against the rules and can be argued to have gained us a competitive advantage. While I certainly agree that our violations, overall, pale in comparisons to OSU's, and I have no idea what Delany is trying to do here, I don't know how this can be deemed "unintentional."
You, and others here, are focusing too much on one aspect of our violations. The stretching and paperwork was not the big problem. The big problem was that we had grad assistants monitoring summer workouts, which is clearly against the rules and can be argued to have gained us a competitive advantage.
jmblue; You're wrong.
There really weren't any "clear" violations on Michigan's part. You've already mentioned the hyper-technical stretching-time calculations. Forgive us if we're a little touchy about that, since Michigan's largest newspaper spent a month falsely alleging that our practice-time violations were huge, gross flagrant violations. All of which turned out to have been lies and misunderstandings of the real rules, by Free Press reporters.
Michigan was not guilty of having "grad assistants monitoring summer workouts, which is clearly against the rules." Graduate assistants -- true, "quality control" staff -- CAN, within limits, monitor workouts. And the Michigan graduate assistants in question were guys who were temporary hires, were paid $17 an hour, and who spent virtually all of their time in non-coaching activities. The gripe that the NCAA had with Michigan boiled down to the fact that some of the QC grad assistants had spent some time in "skill development" work with players that would have been no violation if the strength and conditioning staff had been doing the very same work.
They were not at all "clear violations." No outsider, even someone who was an NCAA enforcement lawyer, standing on the sidelines watching the workouts, could have been able to tell if there were violations. Only by carefully checking the job descriptions of the QC staff involved, and checking on the QC staff's other activities, would anyone have been able to know if Michigan had violated Bylaw 11.7 on allowable numbers of coaches.
And I am sorry but I just can't let this go; this is not really much of a case of Message-Board Fanboys not accepting any bad news about their beloved team. The readers of this blog are fundamentally better informed about the Michigan NCAA investigation than any other demographic group. And anybody who simply reads the Free Press and who listens to sportstalk radio without benefit of this Blog, would be fundamentally misled about Michigan. The Michigan fans who read the Detroit Free Press, Mark Snyder and Michael Rosenberg, and believe what they have read, are basically lost.
Jim Delany had better be a really good Commissioner behind the scenes, making really good deals for the Big Tenon television and marketing deals, because out in front of cameras, he looks like a real dumb asshole.
Delany didn't need to make that comparison. Obviously, it is a matter of his fee speech to do so if he wishes; but to make this comparison is his choice as the chief exectuive of the Conference and it is a stupid choice on his part.
And just to rub it in with Delany, and to make him look as stupid as he really was yesterday, let's remember that it was Jim Delany who chiefly weighed in last December, to get the Tat 5 players into OSU's bowl game. Ohio State's initial inclination was to ssupend the five players. Jim Delany and bowl officials sought to reverse that.
I hope somebody from Michigan tells Jim Delany, to his face, what a stupid comment that was.
I hope somebody from Michigan tells Jim Delany, to his face, what a stupid comment that was.
Me, too. But if it ain't you or me, it's not going to happen. UM employees will remain necessarily diplomatic.
I don't see any e-mail for Delany. Here's the standard contact info:
James E. Delany
Commissioner
1500 West Higgins Road
Park Ridge, IL 60068-6300
(847) 696-1010
Fax numbers:
Admin. (847) 696-1150
Comm. (847) 696-1110
That's not far from home and eerily close to work. Should I drive over....?
Not sure I want the disorderly conduct charge. Picture in the Trib of me being dragged away by the Park Ridge PD will likely show my Michigan Alum plateholder in the background as well, thereby giving OSU fans a good laugh. Thanks for the info, regardless, in case I feel enough outrage tomorrow to slap a stamp on an envelope.
While I agree that the UM and OSU violations are an odd combination, we really should stop saying it was just 15 minutes of stretching. I know that's Brian's default line, but there was more to it. We also had a staff member lie to the NCAA, GA's inapproriately acting as coaches, and a broken compliance system that was completely ineffectual at tracking down an issue that it knew existed. Saying "15 mintues of stretching" makes us sound like the commenters on 11W.
The Freep clearly missed the main story when they focused on practice time. They said in their story that QC staffers were watching voluntary 7 on 7 games. If they had focused on that aspect, we would have been in much hotter water, and the public perception would have been different.
I think the definition of coaching got expanded a lot during our investigations. I think the big deal in our case was the QC staff's contact with the players in the off-season. Our QC staff were acting as inter-sport strength & conditioning staff in the off-season. Yes, this was a loophole being exploited. there would have been a case for it if the QC staff had the qualifications of the S&C staff, and actually worked with student athletes beyond the football team. Because they didn't, the NCAA (rightly) came down on the side of it being coaching activity. (Along with attending coaching meetings - which QC staff are now allowed to do - shagging balls in practice, and watching film ... stupid stuff that clearly you would expect a GA or a QC staffer to do.)
Clearly we got caught crossing the line in a gray area - a practice that apparently followed Rich Rodriguez from West Virginia, and was continued there after he left. A practice that he thought he had clearance on from the compliance department at Michigan, and previously the compliance department at West Virginia.
While we are at it, the basketball scandal based on amount of money changing hands, was much worse than Tat Gate.
While it kills me that the obfuscation at Ohio State looks to be working with the NCAA, I hate to say it, but we are not clean in this space, and therefore deserve to be brought up as an example.
Perhaps, like at USC, the NCAA will come back around on Ohio State a few more times and eventually get to failure to monitor or lack of institutional control. Who knows ...
It ain't over 'till its over. Let's wait and see what happens August 12th and beyond before we jump to a foregone conclusion that TSIO will skate freely. The NCAA bulldog is still gripping and chewing at Auburn and Oregon, and we can expect the same will happen at TSIO. Recall how long it took to finally come to a real conclusion for USC.
Patience is something hard to acquire, and you may all be right and TSIO may skate on the issues that look pretty apparent to us, but you have to give it some time even if it looks not so good right now.....
Please understand; I am not making a big deal about OSU getting off easy. And I am not terribly concerned about anybody "comparing" Michigan and OSU, per se.
I am angry at Jim Delany for making an essentially gratuitous public case that Michigan's hyper-technical NCAA problems were any part of a big systemic problem in college athletics, with many rogue actors causing big problems for member institutions and the conferences.
drops the ball like I expect they will, can the Big Ten issue sanctions of some sort? A two year ban from the Big Ten Championship Game would at least send a message, and it seems like they should have the prerogative to do it.
while blind drunk, but they appear to have been lucky enough to get a judge who likes to tipple and drive himself, so he's going to go easy on them.
Michigan was ticketed for going 30mph in a 25mph zone, and for leaving the car registration at home.
to be "major violations" on par with OSU's misdeeds says all you need to know about that organization, and that individual. They're all idiots.
Why do you say Rivals made the comparison? They were just reporting what Delaney said at the conference.
As ridiculous as Delaney's comments were I think we need to take a step back and understand what he's trying to do here. Delaney, as someone above accurately pointed out, was the bagman for the OSU "just let em play in the Sugar Bowl" reversal and he knows it. His comments weren't meant IMO to increase the public perception of the wrongness of our acts - rather it was his attempt to DOWNPLAY the severity of the OSU infractions.
Remember, as hateful as it is to us, OSU is his flagship franchise right now and he's tethered to their mast so to speak. He's trying to deflect public perception of their misdeeds by equating them to ours.