Absolute media silence on Signgate since the suspension
Anyone noticed that the media has gone silent on Signgate since the suspension? Outside of a couple clickbaits about what Pete Finebaum and Lou Holtz think, there have been no leaks, no news on investigations, nothing on Ryan Day's PI firm or the Purdue transgressions, no other coaches whining about how wronged they were. No new leaks from our side either which is strange since I thought we were going scorched earth.
Cynically that makes me think that the other coaches and ADs got what they wanted from little tony and so they can move on.
I find the silence somewhat deafening, like somebody told everyone to shut up now that they got their pound of flesh. what do you think happened?
November 15th, 2023 at 1:19 PM ^
Cynically that makes me think that the other coaches and ADs got what they wanted from little tony and so they can move on.
I don't think that's a cynical take. I think it's a rational one.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
Plus, they got what they wanted and it did nothing to help Penn State (nor will it help Ohio State in a week).
What's there to whine about when Stalions and Harbaugh are gone and the team is still steam rolling the competition? At this point, if anyone complains about sign stealing, they're just outing themselves as idiots
November 15th, 2023 at 1:58 PM ^
Remember the days when OSU was good enough at football that they could just point to the scoreboard? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:14 PM ^
I don't know that it wouldn't hurt us against OSU a little. I still think we'd probably win without Harbaugh, but it might hurt our chances a little bit - coaching was a big part of winning last year, and I think Harbaugh is a good influence on JJ during tumultuous games, and probably takes part in making in game adjustments.
I guess though I like our bravado, I don't want to act like having the suspension overturned isn't important and like coaching during games can't make a difference at all in winning a game.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:25 PM ^
Sherrone Moore is a fantastic play caller. I want him doing that and only that on game day.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:19 PM ^
Don't you worry your pretty little maize & blue head - it'll pick up again on Friday with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:20 PM ^
probably true, i wonder if the court is ready for the crowd and the cameras that will be on hand
November 15th, 2023 at 2:49 PM ^
I'm sure they are. And I have a feeling this judge is ready to partake in said spectacle. I'd be very shocked if Harbaugh gets to coach on Saturday (or the week after).
November 15th, 2023 at 3:23 PM ^
Agree. The judge will go out of his way to show no UM favoritism.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:07 PM ^
... "her" way. She has an art degree from UM.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:32 PM ^
His. It's back to the original judge, Connors.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:56 PM ^
November 15th, 2023 at 1:21 PM ^
damage has been done. I don't think we personally have all these leaks and transgressions on other teams. If we do, they are probably not recent and that probably is the reason why we aren't bothering.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:27 PM ^
Agreed. Like a lot of "insider" items over the last month, the dirty dossiers we supposedly had on everyone appear to be total BS
November 15th, 2023 at 5:36 PM ^
Or they just know they're going in front of a judge on Friday, and it makes them look bad to be complaining about how things were handled on the B10 side, if we're doing the same leaking routine. If it's going to resume, it'll be after the hearing, not before.
You want to give every appearance of acting in good faith. Our fans have complained about everything, at every turn, and have been shown to be wrong about most all of it. It just seems like people would stop and say, hey, I was dead wrong about all of that stuff before. Maybe I should sit tight and reserve judgement... but that never happens. People just move to the next "thing" to complain about.
It's frustrating.
November 15th, 2023 at 11:51 PM ^
Or they just know they're going in front of a judge on Friday, and it makes them look bad to be complaining about how things were handled on the B10 side, if we're doing the same leaking routine. If it's going to resume, it'll be after the hearing, not before.
Agree. The issue is the legal one right now.
You want to give every appearance of acting in good faith.
Agree, and further I would say that they *have* acted in good faith. The kernels of stuff that have come up have been directly material to this issue. Michigan has not, in any way, pulled dirt from other situations into the light. Meanwhile Michigan immediately forks over Stallions' computer and lets everyone pick through Harbaugh's personal stuff with a fine-toothed comb. Expense reports have been FOIAd and the response has actually been *prompt*. Michigan is going to considerable effort to be transparent.
I have no idea what, if any, actual dirt they have, but if it's there I suspect that Michigan doesn't want to just toss garbage at the wall; they'd like it to be firmly sourced before they just throw stuff out there, unlike the stuff thrown at them.
November 16th, 2023 at 7:49 AM ^
Yes, that's exactly how I see it. We will know soon, one way or another.
Go Blue.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:29 PM ^
This is what I think. It sounded like a lot of what we had was Urban's OSU paid players. That's assuming we even actually have it, or anything solid.
We probably were using it as a threat and Petitti called our bluff. Even if we had really intended to leak it, cooler heads prevailed since dropping that info would not help us at all, would barely dent OSU, if at all, and would surely lead to a media frenzy of mocking us for leaking it.
My fantasy is we have the goods on OSU's connection to the PI firm and are going to leak it the week of The Game.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:42 PM ^
For sure Michigan knows about OSU paying recruits just to visit. That sort of thing is going to be known in coaching circles.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:29 PM ^
Most likely not very recent, and filled with things nobody cares about anymore - paying croot's, money under the table, etc...
I take 'scorthed Earth' to mean the legal fight, not necessarily burning down college football.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:29 PM ^
Yup, if there were any legs to a bunch of the alleged dirt, it should have come out by now. It's part legal and part PR. The legal issues will be worked out in court and have an established timeline. The PR stuff was a firehose of stuff coming at Michigan out the gate and the response was the Rutgers/Purdue/OSU collusion stuff but that was 1 story in comparison to 100 (mostly retreads of previous stories). Not going to move the needle just based on volume.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
I don't think that's the case really. Once the collusion story dropped, public opinion began to swing back in Michigan's favor. It's much more level now than it was at the outset.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:03 PM ^
Obviously Twitter/Reddit isn't real life, but I wouldn't venture to say public opinion is even close to approaching middle ground.
And besides, coaches of programs who did arguably worse stuff (colluding to share signs is worse than CS looking at cell phone footage in his bedroom at 2am) crying crocodile tears and the commissioner of the conference echoing "player safety" BS shouldn't be met with a marginal swing in public opinion back in Michigan's favor. The Big Ten and other programs threw haymakers. Michigan's response has been a jab or two.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:53 PM ^
Twitter's algorithm under Musk will figure out the things that you don't like or will make you upset and boost those to your TL (assuming you're not just reading people you follow). So if you do happen to comment on SignGate or disagree with someone's takes, you're likely to see more posts like that.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:15 PM ^
Sure, Twitter is a complete dumpster fire now (was before too kind of) but I mean in general you have the national media save a few guys, the entirety of the Big Ten, a bunch of yokels from other conferences, and even non-sports related people diving in (WSJ, Forbes, etc).
Which is why this is a PR thing. You don't need to argue a case to a judge about Purdue/Rutgers/OSU sharing stolen signs and why that should mean Harbaugh isn't suspended. You should be showing that other teams do this all the time which is why it's not a big deal (because it's not).
There isn't a massive swell of pro-Michigan/this is stupid sentiment out there. On Twitter. Off Twitter. Wherever.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:23 PM ^
For what it's worth, I was talking to a 55 - 65 years old good ol boy, and he viewed it all as BS
He's not a Big Ten fan
November 15th, 2023 at 3:24 PM ^
Or we drop it after The Game. If we dropped it now, it is very unlikely Day gets suspended in time (because you have to build the outrage to get it approved), but it does galvanize his players behind him like ours are.
Wait til after and then cause the disturbances.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:38 PM ^
If we do have anything worth releasing, maybe the thinking is to wait until after the hearing on Friday?
November 15th, 2023 at 1:49 PM ^
My thoughts as well
November 15th, 2023 at 2:10 PM ^
Why? The legal proceeding has no authority over Michigan releasing this stuff. It's not like they're under some sort of court ordered restrictions and in a majority of the arguments in favor of suspending Harbaugh, Michigan hasn't done much other than the Rutgers/Purdue/OSU release.
The commissioner already cited some BS logic in Harbaugh's initial suspension. The legal process can remedy that on Friday, but we're not dealing with the court of law on all fronts. There is PR and the conference itself to deal with and arguing "actually, this isn't due process" in court won't actually touch the alleged actions of other programs. They can't go into court and say "look, we have proof OSU did the same thing" because that won't materially impact legal proceedings.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:44 PM ^
Monday morning. If they (1) have it, and (2) decide that it would be useful to release it, then Monday would be the best timing.
November 15th, 2023 at 5:42 PM ^
Finally, someone using logic.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:48 PM ^
I don't know personally I would wait to see if Michigan gets the TRO before dumping more dirt on the BIG TEN teams (if it were me) but maybe I'm coping and there really isn't a whole lot of stuff Michigan has. I WISH they'd go full nuclear on OSU in particular mostly because the unsufferable shit bags that are OSU fans where I live but I guess time will tell.
Hopefully JUB will be writing a book on it and I can add that to the library.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:50 PM ^
Could be. Isaiah Hole said something the other day (cryptically, as usual) that something was likely to drop from the Athletic but that it was likely to "take some time". No hint whether that was something positive or negative from a UM standpoint. Anyone have any ideas or heard any rumblings?
November 15th, 2023 at 2:14 PM ^
The athletic story already broke. It was about Wakey Leaks and no one cares. We’ve lost the PR war by a ton and that isn’t going to change. The only thing that matters now is winning on the field and hopefully getting out of this shithole conference in a few years.
lastly, Isiah Hole doesn’t know shit. No one does.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:58 PM ^
That Feldman article was the biggest dud of all time. I'm sure the research/data gathering took a bit of time, but to me it read (and certainly ended) like it was slapped together in 15 minutes. Just a really uninteresting read.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:16 PM ^
Sounded like this is something new/different. He just mentioned it on Sunday night.
Seems to me he hasn't been all that far off.
November 15th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
No, it's not the Wakey Leaks thing. It's something else that helps Michigan. Have no idea what it is, but Isiah Hole has been correct about a lot of his predictions.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:05 PM ^
I don't think we know. But evidence of other teams' crimes is not relevant, least of all to the legal system. Say you murder someone--"Other people do it!" . . . not super-persuasive. (This doesn't mean some people don't deserve it, btw.) I think that this analogy, generally, holds pretty well for lesser crimes, too. At least if you agreed to abide by the laws as a citizen of X.
Say you rob a bank or billionaire. The banksters and the 1 percent may well be beneficiaries of a bad system, deserve it. But the courts are not on your side.
Say you rob a bank, but the money turns out to be marked and you can't use it (cw the argument that stealing signs brought us no advantage). They'll laugh as you continue to remonstrate while they send you to prison.
Say--as people are saying--that you didn't steal the money in person. I think your partners are going to go to jail, too, not that you're getting off.
Say that the company was responsible, not the president. . . You can see that a lot of these objections may not mean much, debatable as the actual rule may be.
I think that our best-case scenario now may be that Jim's re-instated and we wait for the NCAA.
Second-best that he's back for the B1G championship.
And let's hope no more evidence that higher ups knew is going to be produced.
I do believe that fact that cheating's widespread is relevant to the wider picture. But as the laughing fans from other universities suggest, this was an own goal, a gift to our enemies. I pray we win an NC despite it.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:17 PM ^
I think the "other people do it" defense is more persuasive if no one has ever been punished for doing it before.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:26 PM ^
Holding back publicly also makes sense here. We're arguing that people doing things like this shouldn't be punished. If the punishment is not revoked for our guy on Friday that would be the time to release things to the world and then demand punishment in kind for their guy. Especially since we'd rather both coaches be on the sidelines 11/25 than neither.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:50 PM ^
Let’s say we don’t know if there was a bank robbery because the definition of “robbery” is weird, the people who define “robbery” haven’t yet decided there was a robbery, and everyone in the bank is holding the same amount of cash.
November 15th, 2023 at 2:54 PM ^
I don't agree that everyone is holding the same amount of cash. If they were, we wouldn't be here, with all this resentment. The first two clauses might hold, until clarified. But again, we do agree to play by these rules. The world is full of bad ones.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:25 PM ^
Ok, but if there is any question as to whether rules were broken, then it doesn’t seem to matter who has what.
But I don't know really. I’ve never read the rules, I’m just going by what I read here. (I believe this qualifies me for TP’s job but I’m still hoping to get that open HC position in East Lansing 👍)
November 15th, 2023 at 3:18 PM ^
But then you ask what was the harm (competitive advantage) and does the punishment fit the crime (said competitive advantage). Given that the competitive advantage was nil then why is anyone being punished beyond firing the guy who committed the crime?
November 15th, 2023 at 3:25 PM ^
My read on this is that the "everyone is doing it" evidence, if there is any, might have an impact on the subsequent punishment for the crime. Clearly this is not being handled by the B1G as a legal case would be - their response to UM pretty much spells this out.
Given the lack of any substantial evidence of anything yet, the B1G looks to me like they doled out a punishment based mainly on public opinion, which apparently they can get away with. If showing that this is a very common thing can sway public opinion, the NCAA might back off a little on the punishment (and the B1G might stop short of piling anything else on).
I'm assuming people understand that it's not escaping punishment that UM is looking for - it's an appropriate punishment for the crime.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:56 PM ^
This is probably the most nonsensical analogy I've ever read, and I've read some doozies. No one is being accused of anything like a robbery.
November 15th, 2023 at 4:54 PM ^
Damage has definitely been done. This feels so much like Deflategate. Going after a good team for something everyone does, suspending Brady when the NFL had always just fined teams in the past, the team goes on to continue to win, but all the haters call them cheaters and want asterisks put on all their records. The jealousy is really pathetic.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:21 PM ^
At lunch I saw Steven A Bullshitvolcano giving "insight" on Harbaugh potentially being punished more, but going forward I do expect the news reports to mostly involve the B1G getting its ass kicked by Michigan lawyers.
November 15th, 2023 at 1:28 PM ^
He's been pushing the notion that Michigan should be excluded from the CFP for the past several days.