Unverified Voracity Has Yet More Hot Takes To Deal With Comment Count

Brian

Just another day in the life.

lake-invaders_0One of our photographers wrote a book. You've probably seen Bill Rapai's hockey photos around these parts. If you like those you'll no doubt love his new book, which is about invasive species in the Great Lakes. For some reason it has a picture of an SEC coach reacting to Harbaugh's latest antics on the cover. Bill on the contents:

It’s called Lake Invaders: Invasive species and the battle for the future of the Great Lakes and it explains how these little beasties got here, the damage they are doing, how they might be controlled, and why you should care. (Yes, you should care.) There’s even a chapter on everybody’s favorite invasives, the Asian carps.

It's available on Amazon for anyone who's interested.

DRAKE JOHNSON GOT RUN OVER BY A FORKLIFT!? Yes. He is apparently fine afterwards, if 1) very bruised up and 2) understandably pissed off.

Do not run people over in forklifts, people. I shouldn't have to tell you this.

Tick tock the hot takes don't stop. All it took was for Jim Harbaugh to say some pointedly critical, but true, things for people to lose their minds about the dude. NJ.com columnist Steve Politi has been a reliable source of humor ever since that "Jim Harbaugh may be flashy, but Kyle Flood is real" column, and he is undeterred by being as wrong as humanly possible about that. His reaction to Man Invited To Give Speech may even top his earlier opus:

Steve Politi, a columnist for The Star-Ledger and NJ.com, said Paramus Catholic should be ashamed for having Harbaugh give the speech. …

"The big problem here is Paramus Catholic president Jim Vail who, in announcing his decision to give an out-of-state football coach a free infomercial at his school, called Harbaugh a great leader and educator. Come on, Harbaugh speaking to your students is as much a recruiting advantage for your football program as it is for Harbaugh at Michigan."

I love all these accusations that PEOPLE might be DOING THEIR JOBS WELL. While there's no doubt an element of publicity and recruiting on both ends, Jim Harbaugh is also a very interesting and successful person who might want to give people some guidance. And he's sure as hell going to be more interesting than whoever my high school graduation speaker was. I have no idea if there even was one. Chris Ash is openly envious, and he's real, so…

This undercurrent of "wait a second… wait just a minute here! I see what you're doing! You are trying to make your football team good!" is a never-ending source of entertaining spittle these days. Remember that Alabama dude who clutched his pearls and fell over because Michigan's satellite camp at Prattville was really about recruiting? This is just the latest episode. Here's Mike Florio accusing Harbaugh of the blazingly obvious:

If we’re going to pull back the curtain on why the SEC and ACC coaches wanted to keep Harbaugh out of their backyards, it’s only fair to pull back the curtain on why Harbaugh wants to frolic in them. Although Rosenberg does his best to defend the satellite camp process by baking the concept into the apple pie of American dream chasing, it’s obvious that the camps had become at least in part a pretext for recruiting the best players in a setting that, from the perspective of a high school kid, doesn’t feel like recruiting. It all leads to a more organic, authentic, and visceral bond.

That's the point! Also it is good! We have reached the point in this dumb conversation where people are accusing Jim Harbaugh of trying to have a real relationship with the people he recruits. I feel like I am going crazy here.

Yes, e-goons of the world, people have motives. When they pursue those motives within the rules and without negatively impacting anyone, pointing at them and screaming "YOU ARE PURSUING YOUR GOALS" is literally the dumbest argument possible.

I mean, yeah, get on Harbaugh for the various decommits last year. That's a legit criticism. This stuff is moron central.

Shots fired. I assume you've all seen the Harbombing of the satellite camp decision in SI. While Harbaugh talking to a dude who tried to sabotage the program with bogus allegations of NCAA violations is a frequent irritation, I'll take it as long as he's willing to say the things that are true in public:

Says Harbaugh: "You've got a guy sitting in a big house, making $5 million a year, saying he does not want to sacrifice his time. That is not a kindred spirit to me. What most of these coaches are saying is they don't want to work harder."

Hugh Freeze responded to this with the time-tested retort of the smarmy gasbag: muh families.

"I'll never apologize for wanting to be a father and a husband," Freeze said when asked about vacation time. "I miss enough volleyball games (and other things), that is a priority for me. ... I think we work very hard, I don't think working hard is an issue. If you're asking me if I want to add more nights away from my wife and kids, I do not. That window is closing for me to be a husband and a father and I think the kids that play in our system need to see me in that role an awful lot."

When someone talks about being a family man in this way they are always attempting to shut down criticism by being holier than thou. See: Dave Brandon's "this hurts my family" talk on his last-ditch media spree after the Shane Morris incident. It also blows by a point: if you don't want to do them, don't do them. Nobody's making you. You are in fact making the demands.

Freeze then doubled down on the smarm by criticizing Harbaugh for being right, but in public:

Along with being recursively hypocritical, this is an admission that Harbaugh is correct but also mean. I like mean.

Elsewhere in shots fired. High school coaches are just as fired up about the ban:

"Realistically, I shouldn't have been surprised." said John Ford, the head coach at Roswell High School, which is located north of Atlanta. "The NCAA works in opposition to what benefits young kids and student athletes. They work to protect the few as opposed to protecting and promoting the many. The hypocrisy is pretty well known."  …

"I've been doing this for 15 years and I know it's really, really helpful for kids at these camps," [Toby] Foreman said. "It makes it extremely difficult, and I personally don't think the NCAA has kids interests at heart. You're almost punishing people for being proactive. Go out and recruit harder. Quit being lazy."

I wonder if the pushback on this is going to be sufficient to torpedo the rule change here. These days a lawsuit-stricken NCAA is very sensitive about public relations, and there are a ton of people on the warpath about this. It is really rare to see guys with skin in the game come out with these kind of statements, and the condemnation for the rule change has been near-universal. The only people sticking up for it are guys like Tony Barnhart who are more or less bought and paid for by the SEC and a less-than-lucid Dennis Dodd.

Tommy Tuberville, for one, thinks that the ban will not stand.

Elsewhere in how Freeze gets work done. Interesting little glimpse inside the sausage factory Freeze is running at Ole Miss from a doofus with money:

An Ocean Springs businessman claimed to have offered his guest house to unnamed college football players rent-free, only to later amend his story. But a source with knowledge of the situation said Scott Walker’s neighbors were told by the renters they paid for a two-night stay at his home last weekend.

Renting his home on a short-term basis would be a violation of local ordinances, and when first contacted by the Mississippi Press Walker said it was “four university players” who were “absolutely not paying” to stay in his guest house.

That raised red flags, because a booster (Walker is an Ole Miss grad and fan) offering free or reduced rent is a clear-cut NCAA violation.

Ole Miss cheats. Hardcore, all the time. That's how a nobody high school coach with one year at Arkansas State who arrives at a school with a fanbase that mostly still wants a plantation owner as their mascot and zero success in the past 50 years starts recruiting five-stars. I'm resigned to the fact that this will happen forever, and that the correct solution is to let people pay the players without repercussions.

But you run the cheatingest program in the country and you get sanctimonious about your free time? Harbaugh's just trying to level the playing field out a little bit here. Freeze can take his vacations and come back knowing that an Ole Miss offer has thousands of dollars behind it that a Michigan one doesn't.

That solution could be on the horizon. Via Get the Picture, this is a potentially huge move towards an Olympic model of amateurism:

Big East commissioner Val Ackerman told SI Now’s Maggie Gray on Friday that the NCAA is reconsidering allowing student athletes to sign endorsement deals.

Under the current rules, student athletes may not be paid for the use of their image or likeness or they would forfeit their amateur status and their collegiate eligibility could be affected. When Gray asked Ackerman why students shouldn’t be able to capitalize on the value they bring to their university, Ackerman responded that the NCAA is considering changing that rule.

“That’s one that’s actually under consideration I believe by the NCAA,” Ackerman said. “It’s actually a time right now where student athlete interests are being closely examined. I don’t have an answer for you on that one today but I will say that and a number of other topics are under review, and I think rightly by the NCAA and it’s very possible that over the course of the next year or two as these these ideas work their way through the legislative system you could see changes.”

In the next year or two! As always I will remind you that even if you don't like the idea of players getting paid directly by the university, opening up outside compensation is a very good thing when you command a money cannon like Michigan does.

Warde Manuel sticks up for his guy. Good to see that Manuel isn't shying away from the fight either:

“People say this is Jim Harbaugh, he wants to do it this way,” Manuel told the Free Press today. “No. This is a rule that has been allowable for a long time. With all due respect to … questions about not being able to recruit (during the NCAA quiet period), all that stuff was there before, and people did it. Now it’s no good? Some kind of way, it’s bad for the game? It’s crazy.”

That is direct and devoid of hand-waving CYA business speak, so bully for that.

Elsewhere in laziness. Iowa DE Drew Ott will not get a fifth year after a midseason injury. That's not much of a surprise since he played in six games a year ago and the NCAA does not budge on injury redshirts if you've played more than 30% of a season. The timing of the announcement, however, has irritated many since Ott cannot enter the NFL draft proper and will have to go the supplemental route. Why did this come so late? It's not on the NCAA:

In fairness to the NCAA, it does seem like the lengthiest delays in this entire ordeal were not their end -- it sounds like Ott's case wasn't even sent to the NCAA bodies that rule on this matter until late February.  His case was with Big Ten authorities until that point.  What took the Big Ten so long?  Good question -- and one that neither Ott nor Kirk Ferentz had an answer for during their press conference earlier today.  So perhaps our ire at the glacial pace of the decision-making in this situation should be directed at Jim Delany & Co. rather than the NCAA folks.

That is especially odd since Mario Ojemudia suffered a similarly ill-timed injury and found out he would not get an exception in December.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with MSU's attempt to get sixth years for three players, all of whom appear to have taken voluntary redshirts. MSU keeps telling people they'll be back but the NCAA is very strict about sixth years; going to be tough to come up with sufficient documentation about an injury when these guys have bios declaring they were scout team player of the week.

Etc.: FFS just fire Butch Jones already. Willie Henry getting talked up as a second rounder now. Cut off one of Harbaugh's heads and he grows two more.

Comments

Needs

April 14th, 2016 at 4:25 PM ^

I imagine the Olympic model would essentially mean allowing student-athletes to control the marketing of their own likenesses, and therefore wouldn't involve Title IX at all, because the benefits would not be provided by an entity receiving federal educational funds but from a private business.

It might, however, mean that ads with student-athletes couldn't feature the block M or the logos associated with other universities. How such marketing would interact with, say, university appearal contracts is another matter. 

At the least, it would elminate conflicts like those that occurred with Jeremy Bloom, where a football player who was also a world class freestyle skier couldn't accept the sponsorships vital to being a pro skier, or when Darnell Autrey of Northwestern in the 1990s wanted to appear in a movie as he pursued an acting career.

JeepinBen

April 14th, 2016 at 2:05 PM ^

If say... there were a Student Athlete Union, they could collectively bargin with the NCAA. How about students sign with an agent (or University provides an agent) and each deal has to be vetted/maxed out/etc? No SA can endorse more than 3 products in a school year, each endorsement deal must fall between $X-$Y.

Sure, at big schools like Michigan every player might max their payout, but is that any different from millionare boosters paying for waterfalls at practice facilities?

a different Jason

April 14th, 2016 at 1:43 PM ^

The speaker at my high school graduation was named Snodgrass. He made fun of me when I had to jump up to grab the flag when it fell over.

I love asian carp. They have given us so many wonderful YouTube videos.

Amaizing Blue

April 14th, 2016 at 1:47 PM ^

Not sure why I found this particular piece so enjoyable, but I did.  Especially the part about people waving their arms and calling others out for having goals and doing a good job-a vivid mental picture that made me literally laugh out loud.  

 

Oh, and fuck Hugh Freeze and his bagmen. 

1VaBlue1

April 14th, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^

I knew Ole Miss was cheating that first signing day when they jumped over half the schools in the nation to finish top 10 with all those stars - from nowhere.  What I didn't know (having never paid attention to a nobody school in the middle of nowhere) was that Freeze had so little experience running nothing.  I never questioned that they were cheating, that thier bagmen are among the more successful in the SEC.  But it seems pretty clear that he came aboard with that bagman umbrella in place.  In his vast experience doing nothing, he sure did set up a good slush funding system.  Maybe his small stint as Ole Miss Recruiting Coordinator helped set that in motion?

And Fuck Hugh Freeze.

His Dudeness

April 14th, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^

A) Good shit, Biff. This was a gem.

B) Re: the Tennessee thing... How in the holy fuck does that fall into a *could* violate state law bucket? COULD?? How could that not violate state law?! The police call the UT coaches when an athlete gets into trouble (before they even investigate a crime scene) as a fucking "courtesy?" That's so so so fucked up. That violates all sorts of Title IX regulations and i have no clue how it doesn't violate a great number of other state and federal laws. That's fucking insane.

Magnus

April 14th, 2016 at 2:34 PM ^

Yes, it *could* be illegal *if* he told them to burn their clothes or get rid of evidence or whatever. But you admit you don't know what was said.

And if the point isn't that we don't know what was said, then I don't know why we're discussing what his phone calls entailed. I would argue that the point of this discussion *is* in fact to theorize about what he said.

The other end of it is the police's involvement, and the dude who called Jones should probably be fired.

DetroitBlue

April 14th, 2016 at 2:53 PM ^

We definitely agree on your last point; that cop is an embarrassment and should never work in law enforcement again.

Just for the sake of argument, let's assume he didn't tell them to cover their tracks. Even so, he's a total piece of shit. There's no way you can honestly believe he called them to talk about anything other than the rape he just found out about. You might not be able to prove it in court, but anyone who disputes the main reason for that phone call is either a moron or being willfully ignorant.
The best/most innocent scenario then is that he made it less likely that a couple guys who just raped a girl will be punished. Add that to the fact that he called one of his own players a traitor for helping the victim, and that's all I need to know. He's a piece of shit and anyone saying 'let's not jump to conclusions here' isn't worth arguing with




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Magnus

April 14th, 2016 at 3:22 PM ^

Here's what I posted in the other thread:

Just for funsies, let's pretend the officer called up Butch Jones and said the following:

"Hey, a couple of your players are in some trouble, and I'm sending over some officers to speak with them. But we don't want any further issues. I think they respect what you have to say. Could you call them up and grease the wheels a little bit? Make sure they don't make a scene when our officers knock on their door?"

In our pretend world, let's just assume that's the message Jones got.

Is Butch Jones a terrible human being if he called them up and did what the officer asked?

panthera leo fututio

April 14th, 2016 at 5:10 PM ^

You would need to make some pretty fucking heroic assumptions in Davis's favor to think that he shouldn't lose his job. We'll never know exactly what was said between coach and player, but every shred of a big pile of circumstantial evidence points to him circling wagons around team members accused of rape, in a way that undermines both accountability/justice in this specific instance, as well as undermining the broader goal of, you know, having Tennessee athletes rape people less.

jblaze

April 14th, 2016 at 1:50 PM ^

"But you run the cheatingest program in the country and you get sanctimonious about your free time?"

Isn't that just every Southern businessman? Screws their mistress on Saturday night, goes to Church Sunday morning with family?

Rabbit21

April 14th, 2016 at 3:19 PM ^

Can we drop this southern stereotype crap?  I get being mad about the Satellite camp thing, but It's getting pretty boring.

Also based off of what I am seeing, Lots of PAC-12 fans like this ban as well and are happy to say, "Screw Harbaugh.", but I'm not seeing a lot of Californian jokes around.

lilpenny1316

April 14th, 2016 at 1:51 PM ^

 

I could tell you this, it would have killed a lesser man. He is blue twisted steel, very flexible and amazing. It’s one of those miraculous things, but he’s done well as can be expected.


I have never been so ready to take on a forklift.

 

MC5-95

April 14th, 2016 at 2:29 PM ^

To everyone on Twitter writing "Bravo to Hugh Freeze for saying he won't apologize for wanting to spend time with his family": He never said anything about spending time with his family in his original comments so no one was asking him to apologize for that. 

They're all trying to wrap this in some Southern faux-pious God / family / country bullshit, which like most family values arguments is just a way of making themselves feel superior.

WolverineHistorian

April 14th, 2016 at 2:23 PM ^

I have a long list of college teams I root against during football season. I never thought Ole Miss would be one of them but I will treasure ANY loss they have this Fall.

In regards to the camps, if this rule gets delayed or overturned by threats of law suits or whatever other reasons, I can just imagine the crying the SEC will do about Harbaugh getting his own way and not once will they mention the many other coaches who were in favor of keeping the camps.

Like Mike Leach. What does the SEC think about HIS comments calling them out? Or do they simply not give a crap because he's not Jim Harbaugh?

jsquigg

April 14th, 2016 at 2:43 PM ^

"Ole Miss cheats. Hardcore, all the time. That's how a nobody high school coach with one year at Arkansas State who arrives at a school with a fanbase that mostly still wants a plantation owner as their mascot and zero success in the past 50 years starts recruiting five-stars."

 

Bravo, Brian, bravo.  This is a well deserved fisking.

 

mjagger

April 14th, 2016 at 2:44 PM ^

DRAKE JOHNSON GOT RUN OVER BY A FORKLIFT!?

like they were singing Santa got run over by a raindeer?

 

I glad we can joke about it and Twisted Blue Steel Johnson is going to be fine. 

lilpenny1316

April 14th, 2016 at 3:04 PM ^

I wonder if that would keep kids in school here a little bit longer.  If you can recruit kids on the idea that we have such a huge alumni/fan base willing to buy a shirt with your face on it, I wonder how big of a difference that would make.

It would probably mean that ND could make the same pitch also, but good luck to the majority of the B1G.

Blue_In_Texas

April 14th, 2016 at 3:13 PM ^

"Ole Miss cheats. Hardcore, all the time. That's how a nobody high school coach with one year at Arkansas State who arrives at a school with a fanbase that mostly still wants a plantation owner as their mascot and zero success in the past 50 years starts recruiting five-stars." 

 

This was such a perfect summation about how I feel about that dumb fucking team. Thank you.

bronxblue

April 14th, 2016 at 4:55 PM ^

Freeze was always a huge hypocrite, who trots out religion and family to cover up for his many transgressions. The only positive is that history has shown that while a certain level of cheating will be overlookes, if your name keeps getting brought up you will get bashed at some point. Ole Miss has passed that level, so I assume pretty soon they'll be sent back to the intolerant double-wide of irrelevance from which they stumbled out of.

OneFootIn

April 14th, 2016 at 6:17 PM ^

Country song? With all the whining coming from down south I'm getting the feeling that someone is going to write a country song defending God, country, football, and the ESS EE CEE. It will certainly suck.




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