Thanks for your professional input and good luck with your job.

Then, to have watched the entire journalistic community seem to get swallowed up in ego, sensationalism, dwindling readership, celebrity (watching ESPN make TV "stars" out of a lot of these guys has been sickening to me) and weak, if not nonexistent, investigative practices. As Rosenberg has done with his latest piece, it seems as if the quest for The Big Story and fame drives them as much as anything. Get that Piece out there, get your name out there, get on TV, and you may be able to hit the Big Time, and all those days of covering everything from the jumping frog championships in Bunghole County to the State Fair cotton candy eating contests finally seem worth it. No more dealines, no more frustrated editors yelling at you, and no more competing in your hometown for stories with pimply faced youngsters fresh out of college. And one way to show just how ready you are is to take down one of the Big Dawgs in your community. From a perspective of writing in Detroit, could this be a way of getting out there, showing that you are ready for Prime Time, and basically saying "Goodbye!"? Y'know--jump a sinking ship and all that, and stick it to 'em on your way out.

What helped to create this situation was Carr was beginning to slack off a bit at the end of his coaching career ( read go blue michigan wolverine blog... i know, i know, lot of you talk of all this coach Carr integrity, but he did not want to coachhis last year... Carr can be quoted saying that he was hoping Mary Sue (head of um) would ask him if he wanted to coach anymore or something like that... Carr should of "Man-upped", or grew a few or something and just quit, unless sliding into home with one more year of big paychecks was more appealing... the perfect storm is going from cold to hot, a dramatic change at u of m. I am truly appalled about all the attacks on coach rod... there is a bird , I think the albatross that is ungainly on the ground, and trying to take off, but once in the air is a beautiful flying machine... I compare coach Rod to this bird. If he can survive his ungainly take off, and soar into the maize and blue sky he will be one of the great coaches ever... the naysayers best chance to destroy him is now... once he begins to soar he will be invincable to all of this nonsense.

I am also a newspaper reporter, and know Snyder and Rosenberg personally (I don't work at the Freep). I'm also a longtime MGoBlog reader, though I haven't contributed until now because the reporter in me tends to avoid publicly stating opinions about things. I agree with shorts' comments and that my first reaction to this was frustration. As a Michigan fan, I was disappointed to see the story, of course. But as a journalist, I tried to read it from the perspective of how well-sourced it was and how well the conclusions were supported. I can't fault the Freep for looking into this, as any reporters would do in the same situation. But my reading of it left me feeling like the Freep was really putting its credibility out on a limb by trying to make far more of this than the information they have supports. I do want U-M to follow the rules, just as I would expect any of the teams that it plays to follow the rules. If they broke the rules and that can be proven, then they have to face the consequences. But the unfortunate effect of this story is that right now everyone just assumes that RichRod has broken the rules, because a giant headline in the Freep accompanied by a story with some flimsy reporting said he did. More than anything, three things really have made me angry about this. 1) The lack of any effort to include or seek out any information that contradicts the accounts of some obviously disgruntled players/ex-players/Justin Boren; 2) the accompanying "MSU plays by the rules" sidebar; and 3) Rosenberg's comments on ESPN that I heard last night. In a few hours, Angelique Chengelis managed to get a player and the parent of a player on the record disputing the allegations. (Disclosure: I used to work for the News, and I encourage anyone to subscribe to the News instead of the Freep, even though you still get the Sunday Freep.) Sure, she also talked to some players who corroborated the allegations (which tells me that it was pretty easy to figure out which players had talked to the Freep). But her story, put together on the fly to match her competitors, was far more balanced and less sensational. The MSU sidebar was, at best, a bare-minimum attempt to look like they weren't picking on Michigan. There's a joke in journalism that all you need to write a story about a new "trend" is 3 people to support it. Well, the Freep found 3 ex-players -- not even any current ones -- to say they followed the rules and that was that. Contacting 3 MSU ex-players at random is far from the same thing as specifically seeking out U-M players who have an ax to grind. Then yesterday afternoon I heard Rosenberg doing an interview by phone on ESPN. He seemed to be going out of his way to avoid answering any questions in a way that could suggest RichRod is anything but the worst coach in Division I history. He has made it clear in his columns that he doesn't like RichRod, and then to have him be the main reporter on this story really makes it less credible. There is a reason that newspapers separate columnists and reporters. For some reason, sports is seen as the one topic that one person can do both jobs. In this case, having someone who is on the record as not liking RichRod act as an investigative reporter really does the paper a disservice. As a reporter, I have always immediately dismissed anyone who says "The media always..." or "They're just trying to sell papers." Reports like this just make it harder for the rest of us in this field to fight those opinions.

I'm a reporter, too. Not at the Freep. I, along with most of my colleagues, found Rosenberg's piece a little vague and hole-y. That being said, though, that's how first-day stories often play. The Freep story is far more compelling and by-the-book than most people here wish to admit. Consider: the larger bias appears here, not in the Freep, and the opinions of national reporters and readers generally confirms same; you're simply reading the story thru blue-colored glasses. The story is well-sourced. The freshmen Rosenberg quotes clearly state what's what. Doesn't matter re what context the questions were asked, as long as the subjects were offering the right information. They were stating the hours required. Do you think that, had Rosenberg gone into great detail re what he was writing, the info would have been different? Probably the frosh would have done only the following. They would have said nothing, or lied. Instead, if unwittingly, they actually revealed the truth. So quit your half-baked, self-serving, apologist whining about The Media. That's what guilty or defensive people always do when they don't have a better response. Since none of you actually know what the truth is... Note: Brian, while "debunking" the Freep story, conveniently ignores the central point: Sundays. He also conveniently ignores how many sources (ie players) complained. Not a good sign. Doesn't matter who called whom first. That's ridiculous. Everyone looks at the story solely with an eye toward debunking it, rather than with a POV that says, "Hmmm, could actually be true, couldn't it?" Are you really that confident in RR? Really? Think about THAT.

I'm a reporter, too. Not at the Freep. I, along with most of my colleagues, found Rosenberg's piece a little vague and hole-y. That being said, though, that's how first-day stories often play. The Freep story is far more compelling and by-the-book than most people here wish to admit. Consider: the larger bias appears here, not in the Freep, and the opinions of national reporters and readers generally confirms same; you're simply reading the story thru blue-colored glasses. The story is well-sourced. The freshmen Rosenberg quotes clearly state what's what. Doesn't matter re what context the questions were asked, as long as the subjects were offering the right information. They were stating the hours required. Do you think that, had Rosenberg gone into great detail re what he was writing, the info would have been different? Probably the frosh would have done only the following. They would have said nothing, or lied. Instead, if unwittingly, they actually revealed the truth. So quit your half-baked, self-serving, apologist whining about The Media. That's what guilty or defensive people always do when they don't have a better response. Since none of you actually know what the truth is... Note: Brian, while "debunking" the Freep story, conveniently ignores the central point: Sundays. He also conveniently ignores how many sources (ie players) complained. Not a good sign. Doesn't matter who called whom first. That's ridiculous. Everyone looks at the story solely with an eye toward debunking it, rather than with a POV that says, "Hmmm, could actually be true, couldn't it?" Are you really that confident in RR? Really? Think about THAT.

I think they did ask those questions....and when they got an answer they didn't like or weren't sure how to twist it to fit their agenda, they just left it out. I've been asking the exact same question since the article was published, "What was the punishment?" I've sent several emails to the Free Press and those that wrote/edited the article as well as post comments on the articles and have yet to receive an answer. I have also asked for a reply from those same people in regards to the two current players that claim they were misquoted and had their words twisted. AGAIN, I have not received a reply. As far as their being punishment for missing voluntary workouts, there actually is/was a form of punishment...it's called getting beat out by someone that went to these voluntary workouts and surpassed you on the depth chart. Obviously that isn't really a punishment, but it would be a great way for the Free Press to twist another person's words around to make it look like it was