mgoblog - ncaa: the bureaucracy en Unverified Voracity Is The Sky And The Sun <p><strong>Art.</strong> </p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>If only coach Mattison knew how to FaceTime. <a href=""></a></p> <p> — Frank Clark (@UMclark57) <a href="">July 10, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>First, the mandatory comment about charge: good charge, Frank Clark. Way to keep on top of that. </p> <p>Then: this is hilarious but it is also just, like, art, man. Yeah. </p> <p><strong>CLARK</strong>: coach you gotta point the phone at you <br /><strong>MATTISON</strong>: I am pointing it at me <br /><strong>CLARK</strong>: coach you are probably not a cloud or the sky or the rays of the sun <br /><strong>MATTISON</strong>: but I could be <br /><strong>CLARK</strong>: yeah but you're not, you're a bald guy, I've seen <br /><strong>MATTISON</strong>: but I could be the sky and the sun and a bald crown <br /><strong>CLARK:</strong> ok coach</p> <p><img title="crying-kid-brazil[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="crying-kid-brazil[1]" src="" width="564" height="377" /></p> <p><strong>Welcome</strong>. Orson wrote a terrific thing about the Brazil kid weeping so hard he was trying to shove a cup through his face <a href="">in case that would help</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>I have nothing for you. Maybe it's worse when your team is good, and there is the hope of winning. If you'll notice, fans of desolate, perpetually forlorn carrion wagons like Kentucky football or tragedians like Ole Miss fans don't hold up cups to their faces, clutch their eyes, and try to literally vomit their sorrow into a Coke cup after losing by six goals on their home turf.&#160; Brazil fans do, because shame has a prerequisite: the standard, or the notion that you will be somewhere that is not crying so hard you have to compress yourself into some kind of ball to keep from shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.</p> </blockquote> <p>Intermittent reinforcement is apparently the way to get obedience: sometimes you get the thing. Other times you do not get the thing. Sports is <em>very</em> intermittent reinforcement. So congrats, kid! If you haven't sworn off soccer forever already, you are the proud recipient of a lifetime mania that will probably work out just fine because you're Brazilian. </p> <p><strong>Brutal!</strong> Mark Emmert showed for a congressional hearing <a href="">that went even worse than the court thing did</a>.</p> <blockquote><p>McCaskill offered some of the sharpest criticism of Emmert, questioning why his role exists if he can’t shape reform or prevent athletic departments from investigating sexual assaults.</p> <p>“I can’t tell if you’re in charge or a minion” to the schools, McCaskill said. “If you’re merely a monetary pass-through, why should you exist?”</p> </blockquote> <p>&quot;I'm a good cartel,&quot; Emmert said under his breath. &quot;A good one.&quot; New Jersey's <a href="">Corey Booker</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;When they can lord over you the removal of your scholarship - because it does still happen, athletes are still exploited, that if they blow out their knee, if they somehow don't meet the mandates of a coach, they lose their scholarship, they don't get their degree -- to me, this is plain and simple the dark side of the NCAA, where athletes are being exploited,&quot; Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) later said, noting that some issues he dealt with as a college athlete 20 years ago are still being dealt with by athletes today.</p> </blockquote> <p>If the NCAA thinks they're going to <a href="">get antitrust help from Congress</a>, that hearing was some cold water. I know Democrats and Republicans and whatnot, but this may be an organization with a worse public image than Congress itself… not exactly baseball in 1910 or whatever.</p> <p><strong>Thornton tearing things up</strong>. Beilein and Calipari <a href="">were jowl to jowl watching Derryck Thornton</a>, and they were treated to a show:</p> <blockquote><p>(Thornton) picked up right where he left off after standing out at the Steph Curry Camp to start the month. Thornton was a true floor general, in complete control every time he stepped on the court and able to impact the game in a variety of different ways. He handles the ball on a string and excels at making a variety of different reads off the pick and roll. He holds his dribble going through the lane as well as anyone in the field, just waiting on the defense to break down and reveal open receivers. He even shot the ball well here, making a series of pull-ups as well as rhythm 3s. Thornton took unofficial visits to both Kentucky and Michigan last month and was followed by both Kentucky’s John Calipari and Michigan’s John Beilein here.</p> </blockquote> <p>Thornton's done taking visits this summer after heading to Michigan and Kentucky, both of which he plans on visiting again this fall. It appears this is a head to head battle. </p> <p><strong>Adapting to reality</strong>. Mark Richt is <a href="">adapting to life in the fast lane.</a> </p> <blockquote><p>&quot;One of the big things for us is football is now becoming a very high up-tempo game,” UGA coach Mark Richt explained recently. “It used to be 30, 40 seconds between a play. Now it could be as short as 10-to-18 seconds between plays. So you’re exerting and then resting for a short period of time. So now, even in the weight room, we want to go hard, rest a short time, then go ahead. A quicker recovery time. We’re not going to run the longer distances anymore. We’re going to run the shorter distance.”</p> </blockquote> <p>After last year's Indiana game, I'm hoping there's some sort of similar soul searching within the Michigan program. You'd figure so, but… if anyone was going to not give it as much time as they should it would be Michigan. They've been just so, so bad with anything related to tempo under Hoke, whether it's defending it or trying to go fast themselves. </p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> <a href="">Nebraska's photoshop squad</a> is wack yo. Derrick Walton's freshman year <a href="">reviewed</a>. Strategery <a href="">roundup</a>, including an attempt to un-break bootleg passes.</p> <a name="more"></a> 2014 world cup derryck thornton jr frank clark greg mattison mark emmert ncaa: the bureaucracy one act plays tempo unverified voracity Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:45:29 +0000 Brian 88243 at Hokepoints Went to Market <p align="center"><a href=""><img title="mixed-up-mother-goose_6" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="mixed-up-mother-goose_6" src="" width="484" height="304" /></a></p> <p>As a father, I suddenly find myself looking for ways to explain the world we live in and the rules that society has created. Nursery rhymes are of course a tried and true method of passing social mores on to the next generation. Since the NCAA's rulebook and enforcement practices are particularly difficult to comprehend for a young mind, I thought I would share some of these great old rhymes, each with an important lesson to teach, which have been passed down generation to generation, so our children may too come to understand what the hell the league is doing.</p> <p>This kinda started <a href="" target="_blank">on twitter</a>.</p> <p><strong>Little Bunny Foo Foo</strong></p> <p align="center"><em>After several warnings to Little Bunny Foo Foo <br />regarding his repeated field mice violations, <br />the Big Fairy vacated his head bops <br />and put him on probation.</em></p> <p>Kids need to learn that if you are really flaunting the rules the NCAA always has two things they can do to you: threaten to watch you really closely for any other violations you may report on yourself, and pretend things that happened didn't happen.</p> <p>Also there's no conclusive evidence, despite precautionary efforts, that the head injuries sustained by the field mice will have any long-term effects.</p> <p>From <a href="" target="_blank">BiSB</a>:</p> <blockquote><p align="left">In related news, the doctor eventually tagged Mama with a Lack of Institutional Control after too many monkeys fell off the bed.</p> </blockquote> <p>Mama of course could have avoided the LOIC if she had reported to the doctor that after an exhaustive investigation only a few isolated incidents of falling monkeys were discovered, and Dada had retired with honors for his role in covering it up.</p> <p>From <a href="" target="_blank">Zone Left</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again because glue is an impermissible benefit.</p> </blockquote> <p align="left">Humpty may, however, be entitled to a medical hardship waiver.</p> <p align="center"><em>Jack Sprat could eat no fat, <br />his wife could eat no lean. <br />But Jack was on scholarship, <br />so sharing would be a secondary violation.</em></p> <p>You see? Children learn the value of sharing, but also that it's important not to share things you get as a student-athlete. If the scholarship stipend is more than you need to live as the poorest student on campus, then the stipend can be reduced. In a similar vein:</p> <p align="center"><em>There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. <br />Since her son's team had a deal with the shoe's manufacturer <br />the NCAA investigated this.</em></p> <p>The value to a shoe company of having great student-athletes wear their apparel while performing great athletic feats is not generated by the athletes performing the feats in the apparel. Nay, the real value here was made by people in a board room who negotiated that deal. Anybody can split two defenders and take it to the house; it takes a truly special [company to hire a] guy who can wear a suit and shake hands with another guy in a suit over their mutual affinity for the word &quot;branding.&quot;</p> <p align="center"><em>Big man Jack Horner <br /></em><em>Sat in a corner <br />Eating a stale hotdog bun. <br />He thought &quot;I'm so lucky for this year at Kentucky, <br />I should thank David Stern when I'm done.&quot;</em></p> <p align="left">Name another job besides NBA player that requires you to have 1/4th of an SEC education?</p> <p align="center"><em>Jack be nimble <br />Jack be quick <br />Don't miss Jack's team <br /> at New Candlestick</em></p> <p> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="Mistress_Mary,_Quite_Contrary_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="Mistress_Mary,_Quite_Contrary_2_-_WW_Denslow_-_Project_Gutenberg_etext_18546" src="" width="244" height="312" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">That's not all Bo's lost.</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p><p> Jack's sixth-place in the Pac 12 school will be charged $500/night for San Francisco hotel rooms in anticipation of the Diamond Walnut Kraft Emerald Fight Hunger Bowl game versus Navy or something.</p> <p align="center"><em>Little Bo P. has lost his D. <br />And doesn't know where to find them. <br /> Just bring down a guy, and play 'em one-high <br />And Borges will try to run by them.</em></p> <p align="left">Football is stupid.</p> <p align="center"><em>This little piggy went to Fayettville <br />This little piggy should have stayed home <br />This little piggy crashed his bike <br />And that exposed the piggy's goomah <br />So the piggies hired the guy with warm whee-whee.</em></p> <p align="left">Whatever they say, John L. Smith is good for college football.</p> <p align="center"><em>Old King Cole was a Maryland soul <br />And a building was name for he. <br />But they needed a new, so they offed swim and crew, <br />And sold the rest out to cable TV.</em></p> <p align="left">The Big Ten believes it can better fulfill its academic mission by adding the Comcast Center to its footprint.</p> <p align="center"><em>Oh where oh where has my center gone? <br />Oh where oh where can he be? <br />With his back sewn up <br />And his tie once on <br />Oh where oh where can he be?</em></p> <p>Some violations are absolutely inexcusable. Being that one guy who tested positive for pot during the latter half of March cannot be tolerated, even though <a href="" target="_blank">23% of NCAA athletes just told you they use it</a>. With such numbers, and society's rapidly relaxing views on pot, there's never going to be another chance to really screw some kid over this, so you'd better find the nicest possible kid at the most model possible program, and absolutely duke him. Then they'll really know you're serious about enforcing the rule you were about to change.</p> <p align="center"><em>Mary, Mary, quite contrary <br /><a href="" target="_blank">How do your revenues yield?</a> <br />With Title IX and creative fin-&#160; <br />-ancing for football's new practice field.</em></p> <p>In a move that totally makes how much the athletic department spends on women equal to how much it spends on men's teams, the women's basketball team recently unveiled a $140 million renovation to their arena, which the fellas will also have access to so long as they ask nicely.</p> <a name="more"></a> 100% complete insanity hokepoints mitch mcgary is big puppy ncaa-the-bureaucracy ncaa-the-scandals ncaa: the bureaucracy this would be tagged batshit insanity on BHGP Tue, 27 May 2014 17:27:00 +0000 Seth 87549 at Unverified Voracity Bats Eyelashes <p><strong><img title="brad-penner-usa-today[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="brad-penner-usa-today[1]" src="" width="564" height="319" /></strong></p> <p align="center"><em>Harris had ten points on four shot equivalents in </em><a href=";y=2013" target="_blank"><em>last year's matchup</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p><strong>Open the floodgates</strong>. As you've probably heard, WVU transfer <strong>Eron Harris</strong> got his paperwork and immediately spoke to a gentleman of distinction:</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>West Virginia transfer Eron Harris has finally received his release. Told ESPN that Michigan's John Beilein has already contacted him today.</p> <p> — Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) <a href="">May 7, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>That is quite interesting. Harris, <a href="" target="_blank">a DO WANT shooter</a>, is essentially a class of 2015 guy who will be super-ready to play with two years of eligibility. But after taking MAAR and Aubrey Dawkins, there's no question that grabbing him seriously impinges on Michigan's ability to promise 2015 kids like Jalen Brunson and Jalen Coleman playing time—and their ability to offer scholarships. (Maybe less so Brunson since he is more of a PG, but with Walton likely still around Michigan's pitch has to center around the two of them playing at the same time.)</p> <p>Do you grab that guy? Since Michigan's having a hard time holding onto guards for more than a couple years, I would say yup. Harris is also less of a deterrent to the 2016 kids Michigan seems to be doing very well with since he'll be around a maximum of one year after their arrival. </p> <p>In the flurry of articles following that tweet two things became clear. One, being closer to home is not <a href="" target="_blank">as much of a priority as the right fit</a>…</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;The fit is more important that the location (of the school),&quot; Harris said. &quot;Eron is used to seeing his brothers and family more than he has the past couple years. But if he has to go to New York or California to find the right fit, then that's what he'll do.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>…and two, Michigan's going to have to put on its prettiest dress and bat its eyes:</p> <blockquote><p>Within two hours of getting his release, Harris had already been contacted by Butler, Indiana and Purdue as well as Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, New Mexico, Notre Dame, Ohio State and UCLA.</p> </blockquote> <p>Harris is a terrific get-your-own-shot shooter who would have an apprenticeship before seeing the floor. If he's fleeing Huggy Bear because of fit, Beilein is pretty much the opposite… and this quote all but <a href="" target="_blank">begs you to read between the lines</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>“It is going to be the place that I can be myself,” said Harris. “I want to be myself. I want to go out there and play basketball and love playing basketball. I am a competitor first, and I want to play instinctively. That is it. I want my coach to respect me and I will respect him.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>The art of shade, man. </p> <p><strong>OPEN THE PRETZEL</strong>. One WI SG <strong>Brevin Pritzl</strong>, a shooting guard out of Wisconsin, blew up over the past couple of weeks of AAU tourneys. This has intrigued Michigan, who's bringing <a href="" target="_blank">him in for a visit this weekend</a>. An offer is probably not in the offing unless they're really serious about moving on from the dawdling Jalen Coleman, but he's a guy to keep an eye on down the road. </p> <p><strong>2016 priorities</strong>. MI PG <strong>Cassius Winston</strong> is a highly-rated gentleman in his own right, one who Michigan has a lot of interest in. He's <a href="" target="_blank">waiting for an offer this summer</a>, but not in June: </p> <blockquote><p>“I’m pretty sure, if I know correctly, that I’ll be offered by the end of the summer,” Winston said on Saturday at the Spiece Memorial Run-n-Slam.</p> </blockquote> <p>To me that says Michigan is going to give Derryck Thornton the first crack before they expand their PG POV. That expresses a level of confidence that Michigan didn't have when they went after Derrick Walton; they offered the other instate PG, Monte Morris, at the same time. </p> <p>In other Thornton news, current main competitor Arizona picked up <a href="" target="_blank">their second 2015 commit</a> from a highly-rated PG, which can't hurt.</p> <p><strong>Hibbity hooblah!</strong> It's NFL draft time, hooray. Taylor Lewan will go in the first 15 picks tonight; Jeremy Gallon and Michael Schofield are likely to follow in the next two days. Baumgardner <a href="" target="_blank">profiles Gallon</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;We've had dozens of guys go off to college and (not make it)) that had circumstances a lot better than Jeremy's,&quot; said Rick Darlington, Gallon's former coach at Apopka High School. &quot;He had to fight to get into college. Then he had to fight to stay in college. Then he had to fight to get on the field.</p> <p>&quot;You look at him now, and it's easy to say he was a great college player in the end. But it was never as easy for him as it was for others. He always had to struggle ... it didn't come easy.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>Gallon had to take three classes after his graduation just to get to Ann Arbor, which I know is something that was a problem with admissions. Not in Gallon's specific case, necessarily, but in the sheer numbers of guys Rodriguez recruited that needed serious help. Michigan would not look at Gallon today even if he was 6'4&quot; because hypothetical rising senior Gallon's grades would make them move on. </p> <p>On the one hand, some guys come through and become Jeremy Gallon. On the other, <a href="" target="_blank">attrition watch</a>. </p> <p>In other news, Hoke <a href="" target="_blank">defends Taylor Lewan again</a>.</p> <p><strong>I didn't expect anything different, but wow</strong>. Various NCAA personages are appearing in front of a congressional committee today to talk about unionization. There is a lot of ludicrous stonewalling like the Stanford AD refusing to state how much his coaches make when you can google it in five seconds—the answer is <a href="" target="_blank">three million dollars</a>—but nothing quite so faceplam inducing as congressmen taking up irrelevant talking points that have already been eviscerated and left for dead while waving his iPad around: </p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>Congressman Roe: &quot;I just pulled up on my iPad (holds up iPad) that most schools lose money.&quot; …</p> <p> — Kevin Trahan (@k_trahan) <a href="">May 8, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>Congressman Roe then resumed playing Candy Crush Saga before a brief nap, so he missed this riposte:</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>Best quote of the day, from <a href="">@andyhre</a> … <a href=""></a></p> <p> — Kevin Trahan (@k_trahan) <a href="">May 8, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>People in congress are just in congress for no reason.</p> <p><strong>Anger bit</strong>. Jim Delany talked to USA Today for two extensive pieces, one of which makes me involuntarily shake my fist at nothing in particular when Delany has the balls to <a href="" target="_blank">make this assertion</a>: </p> <blockquote><p><b>Q: Eight games vs. nine is a hot topic right now. What was the driving force behind the Big Ten going to nine conference games?</b></p> <p><b>A:</b> For us, it's a combination of things. One is the Playoff. Another thing is we're going to get larger (as a conference), we're going to play each other more. <strong>We want to be a conference</strong>.</p> </blockquote> <p>Well, you were, Jim. And then somebody had to chase money in a nonsensical way, thanks to the faulty assumption that the current setup wherein sports leagues can involuntarily tax non-fans is going to last <a href="" target="_blank">in an era of streaming</a>. </p> <p>This is not a &quot;conference&quot;:</p> <blockquote><p>What I really like is that every athlete in the Big Ten who plays football will play every opponent inside the four-year period. That's what I like.</p> </blockquote> <p>That is more of a conference than the SEC's setup where crossover teams without protected rivalries see each other once every six years, but Michigan hasn't played Wisconsin in four years. They may as well be in the Big 12. Going forward they will play the other division less than half the time. </p> <p><strong>I feel that this has to be intentional trolling</strong>. I mean I just…</p> <blockquote lang="en" class="twitter-tweet"><p>Michigan's new &quot;historic traditions&quot; football page features an Adidas uniform they wore once. <a href=""></a></p> <p> — Ben Mathis-Lilley (@BenMathisLilley) <a href="">May 6, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p>There is subset of MBAs who have their own opposite-day dialect of the English language.</p> <p><strong>Simplify : offense :: aggressive : defense</strong>. &quot;<a href="" target="_blank">Seven ways that Lane Kiffin will change Alabama's offense</a>&quot; unfortunately doesn't include &quot;make it squintier&quot; but does include this familiar refrain: </p> <blockquote><p><b>3. Playbook simplified</b></p> <p>One change won't be too obvious from the seats or living rooms. After playing with in an offense known for complicated terminology, players see a difference in Kiffin's style.</p> <p>&quot;Some coaches and quarterbacks over-analyze things at times,&quot; receiver <b>Amari Cooper</b> said. &quot;Sometimes it can be pitch and catch, let the play-makers make plays.&quot;</p> <p>Cooper, the leading receiver each of the past two years, also likes the in-game adjustments he saw from game film.</p> <p>&quot;Coach Kiffin calls plays based on matchups and what he sees,&quot; <a href="">Cooper said</a>. &quot;Like I said before, it's a simple offense. If he sees they are in man-to-man coverage and I have a hitch route, it converts if he's close to me, we are going to throw a little fade route and make something out of it.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>I really need Al Borges to get hired somewhere so there can be an article about how he's going to simplify offense X. </p> <p>That article includes obvious balderdash like &quot;finding the playmakers&quot; as if that's a huge overlooked priority for an outfit that saw AJ McCarron throw for 9.1 yards a pop with a 28:7 TD:INT ratio <em>and</em> rushed for 5.8 yards a carry without even removing sacks. But it also gives you some insight into what Nussmeier does: </p> <blockquote><p><b>2. Fullback added</b></p> <p>Alabama's been primarily a one-back running team during the Saban era. They used an H-back to help clear the way, but it sounds like the Tide will be using a more traditional fullback in 2014.</p> </blockquote> <p>Michigan's picked up a one-back offensive coordinator just in time for their four-man fullback crop to ripen. To H-back you go, gentlemen. </p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> scouting reports <a href="" target="_blank">are creepy</a>. Remember <a href="" target="_blank">when John Beilein was not a golden colossus</a>? Why Nick Saban <a href="" target="_blank">hates the hurry up</a>. Former MI SF AJ Turner is now prepping in NH and <a href="" target="_blank">might be a guy to keep an eye</a> on if Coleman doesn't work out.</p> <a name="more"></a> brevin pritzl cassius winston eron harris jeremy gallon jim delany ncaa: the bureaucracy ncaa: the hypocrisy and how to fix it nfl draft people in congress are just in congress for no reason transfers in unverified voracity Thu, 08 May 2014 16:39:45 +0000 Brian 87214 at Unverified Voracity Is Rather Obvious <p><strong>Hype video.</strong> Summing up the last two years in the tourney:</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//" width="560"></iframe></p> <p><strong>Paperwork. </strong>Michigan&#39;s three NBA draft candidates have <a href="">submitted their paperwork</a> for evaluation. This is a non-event, as they were always going to see what the NBA says. Unless they come back saying something different than expectation (yes Stauskas, maybe GRIII, probably not McGary). Which they probably won&#39;t.</p> <p><strong>SCOUR THE STREETS OF TIMBUKTU.</strong> Block/charge is broken but danged if Michigan wouldn&#39;t do well with one of those extreme defensive centers whose main job is to intimidate and throw down dunks. John Beilein may agree:</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Beilein tells <a href="">@michiganinsider</a> he may look for a bigger shotblocker to place on the back line due to changes in block/charge call</p> <p> &mdash; Brendan F. Quinn (@BFQuinn) <a href="">April 9, 2014</a></p></blockquote> <script async src="//" charset="utf-8"></script><p><strong>Oh really. </strong>The Penn State game <a href="">will be at night</a>, as anyone who had looked at the 2014 home schedule could have told you. Prediction: I mutter about pom-poms in the aftermath.</p> <p><strong>Oh really, but in a good way.</strong> Hockey has <a href="">already named its captains</a> for next year and I bet you can get the C and one A without even thinking a little and the other A after a brief pause.</p> <p><a href=""><img alt="Bkom0OcCMAAu8oC[1]" border="0" height="376" rel="lightbox" src="" title="Bkom0OcCMAAu8oC[1]" width="564" /></a></p> <p>Copp will join Jed Ortmeyer and Carl Hagelin as two-year captains since I&#39;ve been aware of Michigan hockey, and if he drives Michigan back to the tournament with authority he&#39;ll end up on my personal Michigan hockey Mount Rushmore with those two gentlemen. (Shawn Hunwick is the fourth.) I don&#39;t mean for this to turn into another discussion of Mount Rushmores like twitter was inexplicably doing a month back. Just let it go. No Rushmores.</p> <p><strong>OHL draft update</strong>. It was not a dramatic year for Michigan in the OHL draft, as every one of their commitments was picked in the late flier range. With James Sanchez&#39;s <a href="">commitment to the NTDP</a>, <a href="">three of their four commits</a> will be on the U17s next year. The NTDP contract has a financial penalty for early departure, so the window OHL teams have will be very small. It&#39;s not impossible, but generally NTDP guys who defect are staring down top-ten draft picks and decided they don&#39;t have to play school or are terrified by the prospect of competing with Shawn Hunwick.</p> <p>Michigan&#39;s three gentlemen are highly regarded, but not in that range. They&#39;re probably safe, except for the whole looming Berenson retirement thing. But there&#39;s nothing you can do about that.</p> <p><strong>Simple, but more complicated</strong>. Morris on <a href="">the differences between Nussmeier and Borges</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;We have to know a lot more this year. We have to know what lineman do on every play, who the back blocks on every play so we know who our (hot routes) are; stuff like that. It&#39;s definitely helping us out and making us more aware of the defense.&quot;</p> <p>Morris, who completed 5-of-11 passes for 73 yards on Saturday, summed up the changes as &quot;having to study defenses more&quot; and knowing &quot;the ins and outs of every play.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>As long as there is less stuff this can work out, and it sounds like there&#39;s less stuff. Hopefully more stuff than Morris claims, though:</p> <blockquote><p>What&#39;s hoped for is improvement via simplification. Under Borges, the Wolverines struggled in an intricate, extensive offense.</p> <p>Nussmeier&#39;s offense is the converse.</p> <p>&quot;That&#39;s how every coach should be,&quot; Morris said. &quot;The stuff we run, we want to be perfect. I think Vince Lombardi, when he was coaching the Packers, they ran about three plays, but they ran them perfectly. That&#39;s why they won. That&#39;s what we&#39;re trying to do this year.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>I want my amount of stuff porridge to be just right. Last year was too hot, and that would be too cold. But after last year we might have to settle for dully banging face for uninspiring yardage.</p> <p><strong>/rolls eyes, makes wanking gesture</strong>. If that&#39;s bolded I <a href="">must be talking about Jason Whitlock</a>.</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;I&#39;m not a big Shane Morris guy, Devin Gardner struggles during adversity,&quot; Whitlock said. &quot;Devin Gardner handles adversity worse than others, in my opinion. &hellip;</p> <p>&quot;I don&#39;t want to beat the kid up, but that play against Michigan State when he&#39;s one yard away from a first down and he fell down,&quot; Whitlock recalled. &quot;When you&#39;re a competitor and the leader of the team, that doesn&#39;t happen.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>&hellip;which is probably why he threw for 451 yards on a broken foot against Ohio State. We could extrapolate from one play on which he made a mental error, or we could look at a season in which he was massacred weekly and still came out until&mdash;in fact after&mdash;his body literally would not let him.</p> <p>It&#39;s a miracle Whitlock&#39;s made it as far as he has in the world without ever being even on the same planet as correctness.</p> <p><strong>Okay?</strong> Jeff Goodman flings Caris LeVert on his <a href="">Way Too Early First-Team All-American list</a>($). There&#39;s not much content and Goodman claims LeVert is a &quot;terrific defender,&quot; which he&#39;s not yet&hellip;</p> <blockquote><p><b>G <a href="">Caris LeVert</a>, 6-6, Jr., Michigan<br /> Stats:</b> 12.9 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 2.9 apg<br /> <a href="">Nik Stauskas</a> made the huge jump last season, and look for LeVert to do it next year. He&#39;s long, can score in a variety of ways and is also a terrific defender.</p> </blockquote> <p>&hellip;but we have officially reached the point where people in the media point at a random Michigan player and expect him to morph into a beast because John Beilein. Michigan&#39;s actually got three candidates to make this morph&mdash;LeVert, Walton, and Irvin&mdash;who are sorta kinda making freshman to sophomore leaps. (LeVert is not but is very young for his grade.)</p> <p><strong>Yes please</strong>. The Northwestern union ruling is far from final but if things go like it looks like they&#39;re going to go&mdash;every time the NCAA runs up a judge these days the judge goes <a href="">LOL NO</a>&mdash;major changes are coming. If it does go the CAPA route, things will get interesting because public schools are going to be beholden to state law, not the NLRB. Ohio seeks <a href="">to disadvantage itself</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>COLUMBUS, Ohio &mdash; College athletes in Ohio would not be considered employees under state law, under changes to the state&rsquo;s budget review made by a legislative committee on Monday.</p> </blockquote> <p>Michigan, meanwhile, has what I&#39;m pretty sure are strong grad student and lecturer unions. They are emphatically extant, at the least. It&#39;ll probably take Ohio one look at the stuff Michigan is handing their athletes to reverse course here, but never underestimate human stupidity.</p> <p><strong>Why bother with an early signing period?</strong> The entire concept of the &quot;signing period&quot; is uselessly anachronistic, but <a href="">people keep trying to fix it</a> by introducing early signing or late signing or whatever. Bylaw Blog&#39;s John Infante is the latest:</p> <blockquote><p>An early signing period should be in early December. It should be as close to the end of the regular season as possible to minimize the effect on bowl preparation. That means the Wednesday after conference championship games are played. This is one week earlier than the current initial signing date for midyear junior college transfers. The signing period would be open for one week; it would include prospects enrolling that January and the following fall.</p> </blockquote> <p>There&#39;s no reason to have a signing day at all, but it&#39;s now a TV event so it will persist forever and ever amen. There is a way to both ease the burden on coaches and players who have come to an agreement: provide a non-binding letter of intent. Players can sign it at any time and withdraw it at any time. Once they sign it other coaches can&#39;t contact them and they can&#39;t take officials except to the school they signed with. They have to make it official on signing day.</p> <p>That system would provide players a way to opt out of the recruiting process whenever they wanted without locking them in if their coach gets whacked. Importantly for its chances of passage, it reduces workload for coaches, who no longer have to babysit their commits so hard and have a more limited range of poaching options.</p> <p><strong>People are just in charge of things, part LXVII</strong>. You may remember Rutgers AD Julie Hermann from such events as &quot;it is revealed that Rutgers, reeling from a scandal in which it was revealed that their basketball coach was a violent psychopath, hires person claimed to be violent psychopath by former players, then experiences mass football decommitment spree after football coach is claimed to be violent psychopath.&quot; And then nothing else because Rutgers.</p> <p>Hermann is now back in the news, <a href="">which can&#39;t be good</a>.</p> <blockquote><p>&ldquo;If they&rsquo;re not writing headlines that are getting our attention, they&rsquo;re not selling ads &ndash; and they die,&rdquo; Hermann told the Media Ethics and Law class. &ldquo;And the Ledger almost died in June, right?&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;They might die again next month,&rdquo; a student said.</p> <p>&ldquo;That would be great,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to do all I can to not give them a headline to keep them alive.&rdquo;</p> </blockquote> <p>Good job, good effort, Hermann.</p> <p>I&#39;d say the stink of Rutgers would harm the image of the Big Ten, but&hellip; hey, yeah we&#39;re a basketball conference now. The stink of Rutgers will harm the image of the Big Ten.</p> <p><strong>AND STAY OUT</strong>. The greatest collapse in NBA GM history is complete, as <a href="">Joe Dumars will resign</a> after creating the unlikeliest NBA champion in recent history, a team that was a bounce or two away from a second title. Then he traded Chauncey Billups for a broken-down Allen Iverson and spent the money saved on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva, at which point it was over.</p> <p>Eventually Dumars started making decisions seemingly to spite Pistons fans; aside from the fortune of having a franchise center slide to him in the draft there is literally no good thing Dumars has done since he broke bad with Iverson. The Pistons have been stuck in NBA purgatory, never any good but never bad enough to secure one of the top picks in the draft. This year&#39;s desperate attempt to get into the playoffs secured them the <a href="">worst three point shooter in NBA history</a> on a team with two promising young bigs. And of course, Trey Burke. Though Burke&#39;s not shooting well this year the difference made by his presence in Utah&#39;s lineup is obvious in their record. The guy Dumars picked over him picked up three consecutive trillions.</p> <p>But you know what they always say: when you can draft a guy who dragged his team to a .500 SEC record you gotta do it.</p> <p>Anyway, Dumars dug his own grave and I&#39;m mad at him for&hellip; uh&hellip; being the dumbest person. But at one point he was a genius, so thanks for that.</p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> We&#39;re <a href="">the saddest</a>. Bacon on <a href="">the Northwestern ruling</a>. Wisconsin players <a href="">have contempt for the NCAA</a>. Josh Furman will <a href="">spend his grad year at Oklahoma State</a>.</p> <a name="more"></a> 2014 ncaa tournament andrew copp CAPA caris levert doug nussmeier hockey recruiting hype video jason whitlock joe dumars passed on trey burke and will never be forgiven junior vs ncaa: fight! lolrutgers ncaa: the bureaucracy night games unverified voracity Wed, 09 Apr 2014 16:08:45 +0000 Brian 86703 at Unverified Voracity Replaces Suit Guy <p><strong>SOUNDS ENCOURAGING</strong>. <a href="">Oy</a>.</p> <blockquote><h3>Michigan OL coach Darrell Funk says young linemen must move forward, 'we don't have any choice'</h3> </blockquote> <p>I already bombarded you with grim news about the OL yesterday, so I'll forgo that today. </p> <p><strong>Ten second impact: minimal</strong>. Patrick Vint went back to <a href="">a few games of a hyperspeed nature</a> to find out how many penalties would have been issued if you couldn't snap the ball until 29 seconds were left on the shot clock. Answer: a few. Auburn would have gotten hit four times in the Alabama game, presumably just by a second or two. It's really hard to get a play off within ten seconds of the previous one's end. </p> <p>It still seems virtually guaranteed that the rule won't pass; even if it does it's not a huge shift in the game.</p> <p><strong>Stats by conference</strong>. <a href="">They now exist</a> on <a href="" target="_blank">Kenpom</a> and validate the steep drop in shot-making you have probably perceived in Big Ten games this year. The league is 30th of 32 leagues in eFG%. They're also 28th in FT rate. Even last year's Best League Ever was 28th and 25th in those metrics, but in 2012 the B10 was 8th in eFG. </p> <p>The moral here is probably that these margins are very thin. The difference between the top power conference in eFG, the Big East, and the bottom, the SEC, is about two percentage points. IE, you'd see one extra make in 50 Big East shots. </p> <p>One other notable thing: home dominance has plummeted this year. Home teams are at a 55% clip compared to 64% last year and 62% the year before. That's a big ol' swing.</p> <p><strong>The other side of the pit</strong>. Bill Connelly's OL stats <a href="">applied to the defensive line</a> reveal that Michigan was slightly below average at rushing the passer, good at preventing runs of more than five yards, and bad at holding up in short yardage and getting TFLs. </p> <p>IE: their defensive line was bad. That's not a huge surprise given the obvious things like playing former WDEs at nose tackle and the still-inexplicable absence of Quinton Washington.</p> <p><strong>It's not good</strong>. Gasaway's Tuesday Truths have <a href="">one over-arching trut</a>h for Michigan fans:</p> <pre> W-L Pace PPP Opp. PPP EM 1. Iowa 8-4 68.5 1.13 1.00 +0.13 2. Michigan St. 10-3 63.7 1.10 0.98 +0.12 3. Wisconsin 8-5 62.9 1.12 1.03 +0.09 4. Michigan 10-3 61.8 1.15 1.07 +0.08 5. Ohio St. 7-6 63.7 1.02 0.97 +0.05 6. Minnesota 6-7 62.9 1.06 1.07 -0.01 7. Purdue 5-7 64.7 0.99 1.03 -0.04 8. Indiana 4-8 64.9 0.97 1.02 -0.05 9. Nebraska 6-6 63.9 0.96 1.02 -0.06 10. Penn St. 4-9 66.2 0.99 1.08 -0.09 11. Illinois 3-10 63.8 0.94 1.04 -0.10 12. Northwestern 5-8 60.9 0.88 1.02 -0.14 AVG. 64.1 1.03</pre><p>That is: they are the worst defense in the league save for Penn State. </p> <p><strong>Oh no. Please don't. No one else can possibly wear a suit</strong>. Iowa's athletic director preserves the Big Ten's most precious tradition: <a href="">making grandiose promises to quit</a> if players get a larger slice of the revenue pile. </p> <blockquote><p>Barta suggests a pay-to-play system would force schools to put a monetary value on the different levels of competition in all collegiate sports.</p> <p>&quot;And I'll probably choose to do something else for a living if we ever had to go that route because it's so complex,&quot; Barta says. &quot;Do you pay the Division III football player as an employee? Do you pay the tennis student athlete as an employee?&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>I should probably be his replacement because I can figure out those two answers immediately: no, and no. Neither is involved in economic activity for their school since their programs are not making money and are therefore charity cases instead of employees.</p> <p>[HT: <a href="">Get the Picture</a>.]</p> <p><strong>Defensive rotation</strong>. With Michael Downing and Andrew Sinelli both suspended for Friday's game after hits to the head against the Gophers, Michigan really needs some help. They will get it in the form of Kevin Lohan, who <a href="">returns from injury</a> after missing 19 games. Mike Chiasson will also draw in to a struggling blue line. Also returning is Alex Guptill and his wildly varying levels of involvement.</p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> Women's gymnastics <a href="">beats Nebraska</a> to take the Big Ten lead. Softball <a href="">kicks off their season</a> with a 4-1 trip. Dee Hart booted from Alabama for <a href="">a pot possession charge</a>. <a href="">Lists of top recruiting classes over long periods of time</a> always point out Michigan as a good recruiting school that sucks despite the recruiting; there really needs to be a recruiting + attrition study.</p> <a name="more"></a> basketball defense darrell funk hockey ncaa: the bureaucracy people in charge of things are just in charge of them for no reason rules unverified voracity Wed, 19 Feb 2014 22:03:35 +0000 Brian 85413 at Hokepoints Counts de Mone <p><a href=""><img title="demone" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="demone" src="" width="564" height="329" /></a><br /> </p><p align="center"><em>'de-moh-NAY!' s'il vous plait.</em></p> <p>The NCAA has published its 2013 data submitted by member institutions for the purposes of Title IX compliance. You can <a href="" target="_blank">download the spreadsheets from</a>.</p> <p><strong>Politics refresher:</strong> Title IX is a gray area topic since it is political but affects college sports which this blog is about. This is a feel thing: it is logical to point out that a male wrestler's experience will be more similar to that of any female basketball player than Derrick Walton's, it is politics to label that &quot;reverse discrimination.&quot;</p> <p><strong>Quinze, seize you: </strong>Generally BCS teams spent between 37% (Stanford) and 77% (Oklahoma State) less on the women's sports than the men's. Michigan spent about $7.00 on the fellas for every $3.00 on the gals, a ratio near the top. BCS schools, private schools (who <a href="" target="_blank">didn't used to have to comply</a>) and Southern schools tended to higher disparities; among the 15 lowest women-to-men expenditure ratios all but three (Minnesota, ND and Pitt) were in the Confederacy. The Dept. of Education doesn't regulate an annual expenditure ratio between men's and women's sports, but they look at them as part of the nebulous compliance system.</p> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" cellspacing="2" align="right" border="4"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <th colspan="4">Avg Expenditures by Conference <br />&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; (in millions) 2012-13</th> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>Conf</th> <th>Men</th> <th>Women</th> <th>Ratio</th> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>WAC</td> <td align="right">$4.8</td> <td align="right">$3.7</td> <td align="right">78%</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Big East</td> <td align="right">$11.3 </td> <td align="right">$7.0 </td> <td align="right">62%</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>MAC</td> <td align="right">$11.3 </td> <td align="right">$6.0 </td> <td align="right">53%</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>MtnWest</td> <td align="right">$13.7 </td> <td align="right">$6.7 </td> <td align="right">49%</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>Sun Belt</td> <td align="right">$8.5 </td> <td align="right">$4.0 </td> <td align="right">48%</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Conf USA</td> <td align="right">$12.6</td> <td align="right">$5.8 </td> <td align="right">46%</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td><strong>Big Ten</strong></td> <td align="right"><strong>$38.8 </strong></td> <td align="right"><strong>$16.7 </strong></td> <td align="right"><strong>43%</strong></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Pac 12</td> <td align="right">$32.0 </td> <td align="right">$13.7 </td> <td align="right">43%</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>American</td> <td align="right">$25.0 </td> <td align="right">$10.0 </td> <td align="right">40%</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Big XII</td> <td align="right">$33.0 </td> <td align="right">$13.1 </td> <td align="right">39%</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>SEC</td> <td align="right">$39.5 </td> <td align="right">$14.7 </td> <td align="right">37%</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>ACC</td> <td align="right">$34.6 </td> <td align="right">$12.5 </td> <td align="right">36%</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><strong>Building Lies. </strong>Weirdly, expenses appear more normal than the revenues, which get downright weird. A few examples (for reference, Michigan's men's hockey team reported revenues of $3.2 million, the 4th-most in that sport):</p> <ul> <li>Stanford's women's basketball team, which was a 1 seed that lost in the Elite 8, reported $16.5 million. The next-highest is Baylor's ($5.9 million), Vandy ($5.6 M), Tennessee ($4.9 M) and UConn ($4.7M) </li> <li>Clemson's women's diving reported revenues of $406k. Only two other schools reported any revenue for that. </li> <li>TCU said they made $3.4 million from horseback riding and $416k from women's rifling. </li> <li>Southern's women's soccer team, which didn't make the tournament field, reported $3.1 million in revenue, which is more than their football team and almost as much as all of their men's sports combined. </li> <li>Robert Morris's women's hockey team reported more revenue ($1.1 M) than its men's team ($997k). </li> <li>Michigan's men's lacrosse team led the country in revenue: $2.4 million </li> <li>Wisconsin's women's ice hockey reported $7.6 million; their men's team reported just under $12 million (double what next-highest, Minnesota, made).<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="crisler" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="crisler" src="" width="244" height="206" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">Michigan's the rare school that doesn't pretend its opulent escalator entrance was built for the women's gymnastics team. []</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </li> </ul> <p>Wisconsin's hockey numbers might be a clue as to how these schools are getting their numbers. The Badgers recently built a practice facility adjacent to the the Kohl Center with donated funds; the women's team plays their game there. Stanford <a href="" target="_blank">got a massive donation</a>' last year from its version of Ross and built a multi-sport athletic facility with his name on it. Michigan appears to have funneled some of their Big House improvement through lacrosse.</p> <p>It appears what's happening is when a donation is put toward a building project the schools tend to split that between whichever teams use it. End result: teams that funded major construction projects ended up with the highest ratios of $$ spent on women versus men.</p> <p><strong>Biggest liars? </strong>There's no way to figure out the accounting for these things but it's obvious some programs play with the books more than others. TCU is pretending they built a $3.4 million storage shed for saddles and bridles that the football team just happens to use as an indoor practice facility. They also upgraded the ROTC rifling range, which they attributed to the women's team. They're a private school that <strike> to be a women's college and is still 57% female</strike> [ED-S: apologies—you have no idea how many people I've repeated that factoid to over the years]&#160; that spent the last decade trying to become a BCS program, which explains the fiscal acrobatics.</p> <p><strong>[After the jump, comparing expenses to recruiting and performance]</strong></p> <a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><p><strong>Quick expense report. </strong>Because of my unhealthy relationship with vlookup functions, between various spreadsheets I've created over the years I now have a pretty extensive list of what various universities call themselves in various inputs (NCAA stats, recruiting databases, Kenpom, etc). So I figured I'd to combine them and compare the Title IX data with, you know, stuff but ran out of time. Here's how basketball expenditures last year compared with performance (kenpom pyth rank):</p> <p><a href=""><img title="Schools" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="Schools" src="" width="564" height="365" /></a></p> <p>And here's how football and basketball recruiting corresponded to the money each school admitted spending on that. I just added the 247 football and basketball scores together, which makes the data lean heavily toward football, but that's how it should be since you typically recruit 5x as many football players per year:</p> <p><a href=""><img title="Schools2" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="Schools2" src="" width="564" height="374" /></a></p> <p> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" cellspacing="2" align="right" border="4"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <th colspan="2">Avg Recruiting Expense for All Men's Teams </th> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>Conf</th> <th>$ Spent</th> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>SEC</td> <td align="right">$1,148,626 </td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Big Ten</td> <td align="right">$1,037,491 </td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>Big XII</td> <td align="right">$948,361 </td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>ACC</td> <td align="right">$848,718 </td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>Pac 12</td> <td align="right">$805,193 </td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>BCS Avg</td> <td align="right">$958,847 </td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td>Mid-majors</td> <td align="right">$326,989 </td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <td>FCS</td> <td align="right">$168,034 </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p>I forgot to add Illinois to the labeling; they're that solitary light blue dot that spent the same as ND or OSU or Bama and came up 66th in combined football/hoops recruiting. Lollillinois.</p> <p>Let's table that by conference:</p> <p>The SEC sits atop more football talent than anybody else, but also outspends everybody else in recruiting. But not by all that much: a hundred thousand. That can mostly be put at two outliers: Auburn and Tennessee. There was certainly a correlation between good recruiting classes and expenditures on recruiting, but it was one mostly based on what conference you're in. Teams of a level mostly spent what they had to spend. Indiana isn't on a monstrously different playing field from Alabama, but there's a pretty strong delineation between the mid-major conferences in football and the BCS ones, especially since Louisville becomes a BCS team next year.</p> hokepoints i am very proud not to have taken unnecessary shots at the south in this post kenpom money money money ncaa: the bureaucracy title ix Tue, 18 Feb 2014 15:53:54 +0000 Seth 85381 at On The Union <p>We&#39;ve reached a crossroads. Northwestern has had just about their entire football program sign on to an attempt to get themselves recognized as a union by the National Labor Relations Board. This is a crossroads for the NCAA for obvious reasons.</p> <p>It is also one for this here blog because it is explicitly a no-politics zone. Whenever the word &quot;union&quot; comes up your bitter uncle who watches Sean Hannity on a loop waddles in from <a href=""></a> to talk about how unions are the doom of America and gets in an argument with your aunt with a dozen cats who sounds like <a href="">that one lady on NPR</a>. This argument is why the <a href="">hopefully-soon-to-be-fired dude</a> in charge of NCAA PR framed his response like so:</p> <blockquote><p>This union-backed attempt to turn student-athletes into employees undermines the purpose of college: an education.</p> </blockquote> <p>The unions! They&#39;re <em>destroying education</em>.</p> <p>I don&#39;t care about any of that; I only want to look at an interesting tactic to force schools to bargain with their athletes.</p> <p>So.</p> <h3> <strong>Can this work?</strong></h3> <p class="rtecenter"><img alt="19967c3u6e0rkpng[1]" border="0" height="404" rel="lightbox" src="" title="19967c3u6e0rkpng[1]" width="405" /></p> <p align="center"><em>Former UNC center John Henson</em></p> <p>The NCAA says student-athletes are not employees, because student-athletes are student-athletes, who are not employees. This <a href="">came about in the 1950s</a> when the widow of a player who had died tried to get workmen&#39;s comp. The Colorado Supreme Court eventually found that Fort Lewis College was &quot;not in the football business,&quot; which was probably accurate in that time and place.</p> <p>More recently, a paralyzed TCU player had a long-running court battle that ended in 2000 with the NCAA winning on what seems like a hell of a technicality:</p> <blockquote><p>The appeals court finally rejected Waldrep&rsquo;s claim in June of 2000, ruling that he was not an employee because he had not paid taxes on financial aid that he could have kept even if he quit football.</p> </blockquote> <p>Along with a weaving series of decisions by the NLRB that erratically but generally side with universities when students who happen to also be workers ask for bargaining rights, this is what the NCAA will hang its hat on.</p> <p>On the other side, <a href="">a 2006 paper by a couple of Michigan State law professors</a> (one of whom is a Michigan law alum) entitled</p> <blockquote><h3> THE MYTH OF THE STUDENT-ATHLETE: THE COLLEGE ATHLETE AS EMPLOYEE</h3> </blockquote> <p>The article is a lot more fun than it sounds.</p> <blockquote><p>Why, a half century after adopting this term, should the NCAA<br /> unceasingly intone to millions of viewers that these young men and<br /> women are &ldquo;student-athletes&rdquo;? The NCAA&rsquo;s purpose in this message is<br /> to shore up a crumbling fa&ccedil;ade, a myth in America, that these young<br /> athletes in NCAA-member sports programs are properly characterized<br /> only as &ldquo;student-athletes.&rdquo; This characterization&mdash;that athletes at<br /> NCAA-member schools are student-athletes&mdash;is essential to the NCAA<br /> because it obscures the legal reality that some of these athletes, in fact,<br /> are also employees.</p> </blockquote> <p>About halfway through the authors start using the term &quot;employee-athletes&quot; in a delightful fashion. And I&#39;m pretty sure that this paper is the underpinning of the case Northwestern will take to the board, because it lays out its argument specifically for D-I football and basketball players. The new College Athletics Players Association is <a href="">currently restricting itself to the same players</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>Huma told Farrey that only NCAA Division I FBS football players and men&rsquo;s basketball players will be eligible to join CAPA &mdash; not because non-revenue sports athletes don&rsquo;t deserve a voice and workplace protections, but because revenue sports athletes are in the best position to make a legal case that they should be treated as employees.</p> </blockquote> <p>The upshot of their argument is that the most recent edict set down by the NLRB declares that students working in some capacity for the university are not actually employees as long as their work is primarily educational (ie, research assistants getting credit for their work) and if their relationship with the university is &quot;not an economic one.&quot;</p> <p>Scholarship athletes are being compensated for activities that have nothing to do with their academic goals and if they&#39;re at a number of D-I basketball and football schools they are raking in millions of dollars for their university. Therefore, they are employees*. It&#39;s hard to envision a court claiming with a straight face that Michigan is &quot;not in the football business&quot; these days. That they are using their football business money in bizarre ways is not the NLRB&#39;s problem.</p> <p>The weakest part of the argument here comes from the fact that employee-athletes are all given the same amount of compensation. The decision this paper is basing their argument off cited the uniformity of compensation of GAs at Brown, and the fact that some Brown students got the same compensation without having to do work-like activities. The paper convincingly argues that this fourth test is nonsensical in multiple ways, but that is still a sticking point upon which the whole enterprise might founder.</p> <p>I&#39;m no law-talking guy, but I&#39;d say there&#39;s a decent chance Northwestern gets certified.</p> <p>*[As long as you accept the premise that athletes submit to a high level of control of their activities in exchange for compensation, which is entirely obvious and will be fought against tooth and nail by the NCAA.]</p> <h3> Then what?</h3> <p>Well, then Northwestern and Northwestern only would have a player union. They would have the legal right to collectively bargain with Northwestern for impermissible benefits that would give the NCAA cause to annihilate Northwestern.</p> <p>States across the country with laws on the books that are friendlier to student-employee rights would see local CAPA chapters mushroom. As anyone who&#39;s dealt with a GEO strike knows, Michigan is one of these.</p> <p>At this point, the entire system has to either collapse or be forcibly restructured. What the NCAA looks like in the aftermath is completely unpredictable, at least for schools in major conferences. The one thing that is clear: the firmament will be shaken as employee/student/athletes go from people watching the NCAA to half of the decision-making process.</p> <p>Go team.</p> <a name="more"></a> CAPA ncaa: the bureaucracy ncaa: the hypocrisy and how to fix it no polo Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:58:51 +0000 Brian 84916 at Unverified Voracity Outperforms Expectations <p><strong>The best guy</strong>. When it comes to outperforming seed expectations, <a href="">John Beilein is it</a>.</p> <p><img title="2014_Coaching_Leaders[1]" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; display: block; padding-right: 0px; margin-right: auto" border="0" alt="2014_Coaching_Leaders[1]" src="" width="454" height="417" /></p> <p>He was eighth before last season's run, so this is a list that can change quickly even for a veteran. Beilein also has the relative advantage of having a low average seed compared to guys like Krzyzewski and Calipari, who are impressively high on the list for teams that get such high seeds. </p> <p><strong>Draft bits</strong>. Large chunks of the basketball team are playing or not playing their way into the Interesting Decision section of NBA draft hopefuls. Certainly-gone Mitch McGary's back injury now sees him slip off many first round boards and Nik Stauskas turning into Darius Morris + 45% three point shooting has put him on many radars. </p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">UMHoops</a> runs down the opinions out there at the moment:</p> <ul> <li><strong>GLENN ROBINSON III</strong> has seen his stock drop into the fringe of the first round, as he no longer has Trey Burke feeding him regularly. A lot of the evaluations seem to have some lag in them, as they complain about his inability to shoot. <a href="">Chad Ford</a>: &quot;can’t hit a shot right now and is stuck in tweener land until he develops a reliable jumper.&quot; Okay, but I'm kind of expecting him to hit at least one 18-foot pullup per game these days. </li> <li><strong>MITCH MCGARY</strong> is old, turning 22 in June, and will have a difficult decision. Some guys say he should absolutely return, others go with the tough decision song and dance. McGary either not on first round boards or hanging on at the very end at 29 or 30. </li> <li><strong>NIK STAUSKAS</strong> comes up when people get detailed enough to list second-rounders. He's not in anyone's first round right now, though he's on the fringe of it at Draft Express and moving up into the mid-40s on Chad Ford's board. That, too, may be lag as Stauskas's offensive arsenal continues to expand. (Will the NBA care about his defense? I don't actually know.)</li> </ul> <p>If Robinson continues playing like he has been the last couple weeks he'll bounce back into the late lottery range he was in last year and be gone; if the other two want to be first round picks it sounds like they would both lean to a return. Early yet, obviously. </p> <p><strong>It may have been brutally disappointing and eventually soul-crushing, but at least it was fun for neutrals? </strong>Michigan <a href="">makes the top ten</a> in Bill Connolly's top 100 games of the season, in a loss, naturally. They also <a href="">check in at 24</a> (a win!), <a href="">17</a> (a win… against Akron), <a href="">42 and 43</a> (OT affairs against PSU and Northwestern), and <a href="">92</a> (the inexplicably included Iowa loss that was brutally unwatchable all the way through). That's six games, which seems like a lot for a totally nondescript 7-6 outfit. </p> <p><strong>Gallon continuing on</strong>. Always difficult to make a living in the NFL <a href="">as a 5'7&quot; guy</a>, but Jeremy Gallon just might do that. He's at the Shrine Bowl this week, trying to make a name for himself. He <a href="">is doing so</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>One of the shortest players on the field, Gallon has probably been told he's “too small” his entire life, but he certainly doesn't play like it, displaying a competitive chip on his shoulder in every drill and each snap. Despite his shorter stature (5-foot-7), he has good-sized mitts and is a natural hands-catcher. Gallon has excellent controlled momentum in his routes to catch-and-go in the same motion to be a threat after the reception. As one scout put it on Tuesday: “I know he's small, but look at the production. The kid's just a football player.”</p> </blockquote> <p>This opinion is <a href="">not a solitary one</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>-The best receiver today was Michigan’s <strong>Jeremy Gallon</strong>, who consistently got the type of separation I was optimistic we’d see this week. The smallest receiver here, Gallon needed to prove he can get free route-wise other than on underneath drag routes and deep comebacks. So far, he’s done it this week. Much of it is thanks to his quickness at the top of his routes. He snaps his head around so quickly, transitioning from a smooth, appearing-to-be slow start into a quick burst away from his defender.</p> </blockquote> <p>Gallon's not going to go early at his height but I bet he goes in the mid rounds and hangs around forever as a slot receiver.</p> <p><strong>Yeah, sure Wake Forest, go for it. </strong>Even if ESPN was trying to get the ACC to <a href="">poach Big Ten schools</a>, that was probably some mid-level exec humoring the dude he was talking to at that moment. &quot;Yeah, Wake Forest dude,&quot; said the incredibly bored man, &quot;you should totally turn the tables on those jerks, and it will totally work. A-C-C.&quot;</p> <p><strong>We have the money. You have the numbers. Fight</strong>. They're having some sort of NCAA jamboree in San Diego this week, and the primary topic is schools with buckets of money no longer putting up with the idea that the Indiana States of the world should <a href="">be able to rein them in</a>.</p> <blockquote><p>At the annual NCAA convention, a sub-committee of the Division I board of directors proposed a rough governance model that would give more autonomy to the five power conferences -- the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, ACC -- and give a stronger voice to athletic directors with respect to how student-athletes are supported.</p> </blockquote> <p>IE, we want to give some more money to these guys and if you can't afford it pound sand. This in particular is a good idea: </p> <blockquote><p>The ongoing education element would allow student-athletes to leave school for an extended time, but retain their scholarship so they could graduate. For example, a player drafted could go on to have a career, but not give up the academic portion of their scholarship and they could return to finish their education at a later date. A player leaving early would still give up their athletic eligibility, but not their academic eligibility.</p> </blockquote> <p>Regretful and broke now that you're 25 and your pro career didn't work out? Come back to school and get serious, on the NCAA's dime. Jam that through as fast as possible and make it retroactive.</p> <p><strong>Meanwhile in Emmert complaining</strong>. The jamboree is derided as &quot;all for show&quot; by industry insiders in <a href="">a Stewart Mandel article</a>, with various athletic directors upset. Which ones makes all the difference: </p> <blockquote><p>&quot;A lot of us are concerned about where this is headed,&quot; <strong>College of Charleston</strong> AD Joe Hull said after the first seminar broke up. &quot;We're concerned about where this thing will end up.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>These are the right people to be upset. UConn AD, Michigan alum, and potential future Michigan AD Warde Manuel got in a zinger that Lloyd Carr would approve of: </p> <blockquote><p>And Connecticut AD Warde Manuel cynically suggested the word &quot;revenue&quot; should probably be included among those core values. So at least some people that work in college athletics are just as jaded about the state of college athletics as you are.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="">Other issues on the table</a> include redefining agent rules (please) and changing coaching personnel rules to limit the increasing use of gray-area guys.</p> <p><strong>Chris Brown on Pete Carroll</strong>. Carroll is <a href="">a 4-3 under specialist who has huge corners that he plays press coverage with</a> in a cover-3, which seems like a direction Michigan might be headed what with Mattison's under adherence, Michigan's tendency towards cover 3 this year, their obvious desire to grab jumbo corners (Stribling and <strike>Conley</strike> Dawson), and Jabrill Peppers coming in next year. </p> <blockquote><p>Sherman’s skills allow Carroll to put his spin on old, conservative Cover Three: While this is zone coverage, Seattle’s cornerbacks play tight press coverage on the outside wide receivers as long as a receiver’s initial steps are straight downfield. Notice the coverage drops from the underneath defenders in the GIF below: This is a zone defense all the way, except for those press corners.</p> <p><a href=""><img title="4-3-under-flex-cover-3[1]" style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="4-3-under-flex-cover-3[1]" src="" width="440" height="314" /></a></p> </blockquote> <p>They are not likely to be as good, of course, but Mattison does want to be aggressive—remember the ND touchdown in 2011 where all eleven Michigan players were within five yards of the LOS?—and if he acquires confidence in his secondary, they might end up with something not entirely unlike what Seattle does. </p> <p>Just try not to play Tyler Lockett next year. </p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> Women's hoops <a href="">pop up from out of the tourney to a nine seed</a> on The S-Factor after beating Purdue. Long live <a href="">the Nussmeter</a>. Explaining <a href="">things</a>. <a href="">What's bad</a> about Michigan's defense.</p> <a name="more"></a> 4-3 under glenn robinson iii jeremy gallon John Beilein mitch mcgary nba draft ncaa: the bureaucracy nik stauskas unverified voracity warde manuel Fri, 17 Jan 2014 17:31:38 +0000 Brian 84611 at This Week's Obsession: Naughty and Nice <p><a href=""><img title="goodvsevil" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="goodvsevil" src="" width="564" height="280" /></a></p> <p align="center"><em><font size="2">Right? (No not really)</font></em></p> <p>I could have asked this when <a href="" target="_blank">4th and Long</a> came out, or that time when a recruit gushed about Alabama's honesty and academics, or countless other recent days when the rusty nail of the current competitive atmosphere and my alma mater's place in it took another hammer blow.</p> <p>&quot;Youngstown Boys&quot; finally inspired this question when I caught myself about to tweet something along the lines of &quot;Ohio State is one of college football's most notorious bad-guys...&quot; (inference that Michigan is a &quot;good guy&quot; meant). And I caught myself, because absent the rivalry and unenforced arbitrary rules by the feckless NCAA, what's so &quot;evil&quot; about a guy hawking a piece of memorabilia he was given for throwing passes over JT Floyd's head?</p> <p>Course then we all went on vacation, but a few days after the antithesis of college athletics' weird version of morality won the last BCS title to end the long streak of the antithetical conference, so might as well get this out there:</p> <blockquote><p>Do you believe it's fair to characterize some programs as &quot;good&quot; or &quot;evil&quot; relative to their peers? What standards do you judge that on? Which schools are top- or bottom-five at this intercollegiate athletic morality stuff? Where's Michigan?</p> </blockquote> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p><strong>Brian: </strong>This has gotten considerably more difficult as coaching salaries have spiraled out of control and non-revenue sports have gotten ever more palatial palaces for 200-300 people to observe them in. Literally every move in the past 15 years of college football has been an &quot;I'ma get mine&quot; decision from the university presidents on down save some measures from the NCAA like the APR, so it's hard to get on schools that are obviously paying kids like Clemson and Ole Miss like you used to, because subverting an increasingly dishonorable system is not the same thing as the Pony Express was.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="223" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="treadwell" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="treadwell" src="" width="217" height="324" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">Possible responses: <br />1. &quot;<a href="" target="_blank">Don't post this to Twitter</a>&quot;. <br />2. &quot;<a href="" target="_blank">Lol so little</a>!&quot;. <br />3. &quot;Why are we even pretending?&quot;</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p>I do still get irritated because this is not 'Nam, there are rules, and vigilante justice is still, like, not legal either. It's frustrating to be a fan of a team that is pretty much on the up-and-up--the NCAA came in with the Rich Rod allegations and came back with penny-ante bullshit--that happens to pretty much suck and watch LaQuon Treadwell do LaQuon Treadwell things. This is the reason all Michigan fans should be selfishly interested in loosening up compensation rules for athletes: Michigan has money, but can't use it to make the revenue sports good. If they could...</p> <p>Anyway, the true bad guys these days are the ones who take in anyone who can spell their name in three tries and shuffle them through garbage classes they barely have to attend and then spit them out the other end, helpless once their body doesn't make them money. Who are those people? To some extent, everyone, for the same reason seven-foot-tall guys don't shoot free throws that well: they are on the court because of things other than their free throw shooting. A lot of athletes get to college totally unprepared to be at said college, and it is probably better for them to have a shot at fame and a pro career than to toil away at a JUCO anonymously. But some schools are willing to do whatever to keep guys eligible. I don't really know who other than North Carolina, and even that case is more about subverting individual professors who lack oversight than a university-wide conspiracy.</p> <p>So I've pretty much given up on good and evil with the following exceptions:</p> <p><strong><em>[Annoying, probably financially motivated cliffhanger jump goes here]</em></strong></p> <a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><ol> <li>Wisconsin basketball, always. </li> <li>Ohio State fans are 20% awesome, 40% average, and 40% barely restrained animals, which is about 4x the next-worst college program. </li> <li>Oversigning bastards, which is mostly Alabama but also various SEC outfits like Tennessee this year. </li> <li>Dick Vitale </li> <li>The NBA </li> <li>Title IX </li> </ol> <p>None of those thing are controversial save Title IX, so let me explain. Most of the things that are bad can be fixed by simple changes, but whenever you propose these changes everyone's all YOU CAN'T BECAUSE TITLE IX, because Title IX is broken as it applies to the NCAA. It doesn't account for the fact that a number of programs make money and thus are not charity cases. These happen to be the ones with the most problematic ethics things, because they make money. So the easy oversigning fix--everyone can sign 22-25 a year every year, no exceptions--gets shouted down because it potentially increases the number of kids on scholarship on football teams. Because that's a problem. Too many players going to college for free. </p> <p>As for Michigan, any program that would look at this offensive line and say no thanks JUCOs is probably near the upper tier of academic integritizing and they either aren't paying players or not paying enough. But talking about yourself in these things always has a whiff of...</p> <p align="center"> <object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie" value=";version=3&amp;rel=0" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed src=";version=3&amp;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p><strong>Ace: </strong>I've given up on the good vs. evil stuff, largely for the same reason as Brian—the greatest evil in all of this is the system designed to generate tons of money for a few (almost exclusively rich) people in power positions based on the work of many (often poor) student-athletes.</p> <p>Before you shout &quot;BUT SCHOLARSHIPS&quot; you might want to read <a href="" target="_blank">this CNN investigative piece</a> published yesterday, coincidentally, by Sara Ganim, the reporter who won a Pulitzer for her work on the Jerry Sandusky case. It details the often large gap in academic achievement between the general student population and student-athletes in revenue-generating programs; while much of it focuses on their college entrance exam scores, there's also the huge issue of moving student-athletes through the system even if they're in no way qualified to earn the degree they receive, let alone prepared to make it useful:</p> <blockquote><p>Former and current academic advisers, tutors and professors say it's nearly impossible to jump from an elementary to a college reading level while juggling a hectic schedule as an NCAA athlete. They say <strong>the NCAA graduation rates are flawed because they don't reflect when a student is being helped too much by academic support</strong>.</p> <p>&quot;<strong>They're pushing them through</strong>,&quot; said Billy Hawkins, an associate professor and athlete mentor at the University of Georgia.</p> <p>&quot;They're graduating them. UGA is graduating No. 2 in the SEC, so they're able to graduate athletes, but have they learned anything? Are they productive citizens now? That's a thing I worry about. <strong>To get a degree is one thing, to be functional with that degree is totally different.</strong>&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>Unless such a player is moving on to the professional ranks, the value of that scholarship is four years of being able to play a sport, enjoy the college experience, and leave with a piece of paper that may or may not hold any real-world value; it's difficult enough right now for college grads with strong academic credentials that translate to their desired field to find a job. That schools—whether it be an institutionalized issue or a matter of rogue professors/tutors—are willing or complicit in being a part of this so they can field a decent football team is far more concerning to me than whether or not Recruit X was able to get a school to pay off his mother's mortgage.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="221" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="8fkbo.AuSt_.156-307x350" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="8fkbo.AuSt_.156-307x350" src="" width="215" height="244" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">North Carolina's professor was accused of receiving $12k for faking a class for athletes. Academic fraud aside, what does it say about a system that there's $12,000 out there someone's willing to pay to perpetrate academic fraud?</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p>Do I believe Michigan has a higher-than-average &quot;moral standing&quot; among these schools when it comes to giving real academic support, playing by the NCAA's rules, and generally doing their best to have their sports programs reflect the values of the university at large? Yes. I took plenty of classes with athletes—including a couple that were sports-related and taken by a <i>lot </i>of football and basketball players—and never witnessed a student-athlete who was utterly unqualified to attend Michigan; that's not to say there aren't some out there, just that I've never even heard about student-athletes reading at an elementary level, which if you read the CNN piece is a surprisingly (or not, depending on your outlook) huge issue in big-time college athletics.</p> <p>Also, while Michigan's athletic department is very compliant when it comes to matters of pay-for-play and the like, that doesn't mean some Wolverines aren't receiving benefits on the side that the program doesn't know about; regardless of the diligence of the coaches and compliance staff, there are always going to be boosters and local business owners eager to provide perks to athletes that, whether either party knows it or not, aren't legal by NCAA standards—that kind of stuff is nearly impossible to keep a lid on. I hope this isn't breaking news to anyone.</p> <p>The posturing about moral high ground is silly to me, since it's done almost entirely by the fans, and quite often those fans have zero idea what actually goes on at their favorite program, let alone anyone else's. Until we collectively give up on the ridiculous ideal of amateurism—an ideal put in place by 19th century upper-class Brits who didn't want to compete on level footing with the working class—and find a solution that fairly compensates student-athletes for the revenue they generate, there will always be widespread cheating in a variety of forms, and I will have a very difficult time getting worked up about it as long as it's of some benefit to the actual athletes; academic fraud, of course, is another matter entirely.</p> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p><strong>Mathlete: </strong>You guys are no fun. Obviously Ohio St and the entire SEC are evil. Must be Notre Dame and the pro-Catholic media silencing you. Well I won't be silenced. </p> <p>OK, now that I've got that out of my system, time to go back to my wheelhouse and do some math. I think this is how we want to define evil.</p> <p align="center"><b><em>Evil&#160; =&#160; P(Team willing to bend/break rules for football success)</em></b></p> <p>With that as the general equation, I would define the evil equation as </p> <p align="center"><b><em>[Institutional Football Reputation] <br /></em></b><em><b>Evil =&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; --------------------------------------------------------------------&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; <br /></b><b>[Institutional Reputation] - [Institutional Football Reputation]</b></em></p> <p>The more a school's total reputation is tied to the football reputation/success, the more likely they are to enable/ignore the things it takes to get a winning football team. As a whole, the Big Ten has a pretty high academic average and currently a lower overall football reputation than the SEC or OSU, thus the equation works. </p> <p>Does any of this matter? I don't know. I don't know how I feel about the Ganim article. It's certainly not a surprise, but I don't know that there is a great harm in it either. The players get opportunities they certainly wouldn't have gotten otherwise, the school gets the advantage of their other athletic skills. Now the general exploitation of amateurism by the NCAA, that's an issue independent of academic skill. On a societal level, paying these guys is a non-issue. But if the rules need to change (as I think they do) then they deserve to be applied fairly across the sport. In the end it is just sports. The one issue I have is the revoking of scholarships, forced grey shirts and abuse of medical scholarships. As Brian noted, make strict seasonal signing limits and the problem goes away.</p> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p align="left"><strong>BiSB: </strong>For the most part, I've given up on broad declarations of &quot;good teams&quot; and &quot;evil teams.&quot; All schools do some sketchy stuff, but anymore I'm not sure which is worse. Is Michigan State's wrist-slapping spree in the wake of the Rather Hall potluck smackdown worse than Ole Miss's TOTALLY LEGITIMATE recent streak of landing elite talent? Is it worse than Ohio State's hilariously lax enforcement (and possible complicity) of a bunch of minor stuff? Hell if I know. But when I try to establish any objective criteria, Duke basketball ends up on the non-evil side of the ledger, which we all know can't be right.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="NCAA_Football_14_Cover" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="NCAA_Football_14_Cover" src="" width="244" height="343" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">According to EA this is the first time Denard Robinson ever appeared in the NCAA football series.</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p>I agree with most of what has been said, especially about schools that march illiterate guys with blazing 40 times through Underwater Basketweaving or Trigonometry of Pursuit Angles 101 without any attempt to prepare them for life. But for me a lot of the 'good vs. evil' stuff these days is in the context of the increasing gap between the purported ideal of the &quot;student athlete&quot; and the growing reality that these are employees in a for-profit system. So while &quot;evil&quot; may be to strong a word, I have to add the people who are increasing that gap to the naughty list. </p> <p>When you have an AD, for a completely random example, that increases revenue by a third but by all accounts directs almost none of that increase to student-athletes, that's a problem. When Jim Delany takes on Rutgers and Maryland and claims it is because of anything other than the TV footprint, the whole system looks like a farce. </p> <p>And when the NCAA makes the argument it makes in the O'Bannon lawsuit, it has me rooting for the 'bad guys' when stuff comes up. These aren't the days where Bo Schembechler makes as much as your average accountant, or when Major League Baseball players had off-season jobs in hardware stores. This is HUGE business, and the longer the Powers That Be insist that the basis of that business should continue to eat cake but not cream cheese, the less I care when people tell that system to shove its head up its own monetization stream.</p> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p align="left"><strong>Seth:</strong> Guys, I went long, and deleted half of it, and it's still long.</p> <p align="left">I've gone over this stuff in my head a lot—I think every critically thinking college football fan has to, since we cheer with might and main for a thing we all know to varying degrees has a lot that is wrong with it. My answer is a thing I kenned from Tolstoy, paraphrasing:</p> <blockquote><p align="left">The constants that determine morality are right, wrong, fact, and man's utter fallibility in determining these things.</p> </blockquote> <p align="left">I got that from Great Books. I had to take Great Books because I wanted a college liberal arts degree from the University of Michigan, and Michigan won't hand over that kind of degree until you've not only read <em>War &amp; Peace </em>but proven through several mediums that you can grok it. I got &quot;grok&quot; from Heinlein, another Great Books author. I got &quot;kenning&quot; from Stephen King, whom I read while sitting around my frat house, often stoned, failing Great Books.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="6a00e553e551d188340147e139fc2b970b" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="6a00e553e551d188340147e139fc2b970b" src="" width="304" height="186" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri">A thing about stakes: a 5-star from Jeannette can make or break the career of a guy with a $3.5 million salary atop a $4 million buyout before he's coached his first game; if that player has a handler who wants to know if you'll match a free Corvette and a tricked out apartment, well, did you come to play big boy ball or not?</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p align="left">The path we take through college, and what we get out of it, varies by the individual. The college you go to is supposed to match your utter capacity for learning. I believe it's not so much about learning, but in learning how learn. A degree from a Big Ten university should put you in the 90th percentile of American kenning, and whether or not an employer is impressed by it, critical thinking is THE THING in just about anything you do.</p> <p align="left">There is undeniable good in athletic scholarships. Marlin Jackson was born with the mental capacity to ken Tolstoy, but came from a place that perverts good intentions and destroys those with them. He rode the vehicle of his athletic ability to the same classrooms, and now uses his mind and fame and money to <a href="" target="_blank">rescue hundreds of kids</a> from the dangers of places like he came from. Q.E.D.</p> <p align="left">There is also an undeniable bad in pretending that a lot of athletes are at school to learn to grok anything besides offense and defense. Michigan gets to be snooty about it because in a world where the only thing of value you can give a recruit is your degree, our school with the more valuable degree can effectively pay more than any other with comparable athletics. The reason the SEC, despite sitting on the nation's best talent,* historically couldn't keep up with the northern schools was they couldn't offer anything close to that type of education. The academic gap between Michigan and Alabama is the same as the athletic gap between Alabama and Eastern Michigan. That many athletes Michigan would want can't really ken the things Michigan wants to teach is irrelevant because 18-year-old humans are the worst at recognizing their limitations.</p> <p align="left">That gap, incidentally, is still well small enough to fit comfortably within that between the letter of NCAA law and the enforcement of it. You probably don't need to be told this, but the body in charge of regulating college athletics is in fact the very worst kind of bureaucracy. They're understaffed, and their investigators are mostly there as a stopover before taking a compliance position at a BCS program. They're also powerless: it's a mostly self-regulatory system, devised for a time when college presidents generally hated their athletic departments and therefore could be trusted to conduct a thorough investigation out of sheer academic pomposity. They do zero proactive regulation, waiting for schools or rival coaches or big news stories to find cases for them, which they invariably screw up unless the school itself retains that old arrogance (*ahem, Michigan). Their definition of a job well done is the appearance of relevance. They are, for nearly all intents and purposes, not.</p> <p align="left">So no on good and evil, but we can at least agree on the approximation of a consensus morality wherein righteousness isn't about who pays for cream cheese, and evil isn't throwing a sports hero some extra chicken wings in his carry-out order, and that selfishness in demanding a competent league-wide compliance system doesn't undermine the righteousness of it.<br /> <table bordercolor="#ffffff" width="250" align="right" border="5"> <tbody> <tr class="odd"> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"><a href=""><img title="Baltimore Ravens Training Camp August 5, 2009" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="Baltimore Ravens Training Camp August 5, 2009" src="" width="244" height="338" /></a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <td><font size="2" face="Calibri"><em>The Blind Side</em>, both book and movie, raised a serious question for NCAA reformers: what do you do with a guy clearly born to play pro football but who's also clearly not going to get anything out of college at this stage in his life?</font></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </p> <p align="left">I believe I can approximate a factual-like-thing that Michigan's coaches are among the top echelon of programs that follow not just the dodgy regulations but the spirit of collegiate competition, and that part of that comes from the selfish reason and part of it comes from the Tolstoy/Schembechler-ism that facts are facts and right is right, so long as you can recognize it. But can we honestly pretend Dave Brandon's covetous athletic department is absolvable because it follows a set of unenforced, arbitrary rules governing what extra benefits their unpaid labor can receive?</p> <p align="left">Title IX** is a convenient excuse for a more systemic problem in the NCAA, i.e. that the right thing to do to serve the students they're supposed to serve is often directly contrary to the right thing to do for the rich guys and rich organizations they actually serve.</p> <p> The players themselves are an underrated part of this whole morality play, since some show up with their hands out and the expectation that they're owed something for their abilities (the recruiting process doesn't help disabuse them of this notion), and others arrive with the dream of saving every poor kid in the Youngstown-Sharon metropolitan suckhole. It's hard, not impossible, for coaches to tell one from the other. I doubt any of us are in a position to do so, at least not until the facts are posted in a twitpic.<br /> </p><p align="left">I balked when John Bacon suggested the way to fix the NCAA is bar true freshmen from playing and create a functional minor league system for gifted athletes who have no interest in learning Tolstoyian morality or what it is to grok. Those who are in it to play in 100k stadiums and have a degree to fall back on will take that deal; those who are in it as a necessary stopover before the pros would at least lose the pretense. Everybody might benefit from learning how to learn, but I think it's well established that plenty of players value a little bit of pay for their play over a quality education, and that people are willing to provide that pay, and it's not up to us or the NCAA to make that decision for them.</p> <p align="left">I've come around, because I can't think of a better way, but doubt it will ever happen. These are the same people it took 15 years to convince to have a playoff because their golfing partners might lose incremental revenue, and then it was only because they had a solution that makes more money.</p> <p align="center">-------------------------------</p> <p align="left"><em>* (Pat Forde's insistence on the role of demographics is a total red herring; the people who've moved south in the last 20 years aren't producing many football players).</em></p> <p align="left"><em>** (As any fan/friend/father of female athletes can attest, Title IX has done a lot of good too. The problem I think is it makes an outdated distinction between boys and girls instead of revenue/non-revenue, and that's not that hard of a fix.)</em></p> ncaa: the bureaucracy ncaa: the hypocrisy and how to fix it ncaa: the scandals recruiting is weird and scares me this week's obsession Wed, 08 Jan 2014 20:25:19 +0000 Seth 84373 at Unverified Voracity Is Afraid Of The Mississippi Black Hole Again <p><strong>Number one breakout. </strong>ESPN's Travis Haney compiled a list of 50 breakout players for the upcoming season based on &quot;a <em>lot</em> of input from coaches&quot; and <a href="" target="_blank">your new favorite quarterback is #1</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>“I recruited him,” said one of the Big Ten coaches who played against Gardner late last year. “I know how good he can be. I would say I have been looking forward to him getting his chance, because he’s a really good kid, but they’re on the schedule again this year.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Frank Clark also features at #35.</p> <p><strong>Swag</strong>. We are totally <a href="" target="_blank">losing Michael Ferns to Mississippi State</a>, you guys.</p> <p><img title="image" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="image" src="" width="564" height="564" /></p> <p><strong>Following up on earlier assertion</strong>. I mentioned in passing in a previous post that I felt Bill Connolly was way underrating LeVeon Bell and way overrating Michigan State's offensive line in his Spartan preview for the year, and as I was looking up various things about Derrick Green I came across a <a href="" target="_blank">stunning stat on Bell</a>: </p> <blockquote><p>Le'Veon Bell gained 921 yards after contact in 2012, most among players from AQ schools. Bell gained more than 50 percent of his yards after contact and averaged 2.4 yards after contact per rush.</p> </blockquote> <p>Bell got 2.3 yards before contact and 2.4 after. That is a man doing work to clean up for a terrible offensive line. And quarterback: Bell's 382 carries led the nation by 26.</p> <p><strong>Countdowns to kickoff</strong>. Taylor Lewan:</p> <p> <iframe height="270" src="" frameborder="0" width="480"></iframe> <br /><a href="" target="_blank">Countdown to Kickoff 2013: Day 28 - Taylor Lewan</a> <i>by <a href="" target="_blank">mgovideo</a></i> </p><p>Lewan is a thousand times more boring than he used to be. Leadership! </p> <p>Also <a href="" target="_blank">Quinton Washington</a> and <a href="" target="_blank">Jeremy Gallon</a>. True story: bought a chair at Art Van this summer, marveled at the size of the guy they had hauling stuff around, realized that I knew who this was: Quinton Washington. Woo minimum wage, for one more year. </p> <p>Also, the first day of practice:</p> <p><iframe height="270" src="" frameborder="0" width="480"></iframe> <br /><a href="" target="_blank">Michigan Football First Practice Fall 2013</a> <i>by <a href="">mgovideo</a></i></p> <p>Derrick Green's first carry went for 50 yards and birthed a unicorn. </p> <p><strong>Wide receivers block, then they receive.</strong> In-depth ESPN article on the <a href="" target="_blank">blocking aspects of playing out wide</a> comes highly recommended for interesting quotes and such. Minnesota safety Brock Vereen is either worried about his knees or an expert at backhanded compliments:</p> <blockquote><p>“They act as if they are more excited to block than they are to catch a pass,” Minnesota safety <a href="">Brock Vereen</a> said. “Sadly, I’m not even exaggerating.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Michigan's dumped cut blocking for a lot of reasons, but the primary one is the fact that defensive backs just get up too darn fast these days: </p> <blockquote><p>“They are like those Weeble Wobbles that you had growing up,” Hecklinski said. “You can throw a great cut and he’s right back up making a play and golly, that’s a great cut.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>&quot;Golly,&quot; says the man eating everyone's lunch on the recruiting trail. #TheMichiganDifference. </p> <p>The article gestures at one of the main reasons Michigan's wide receivers were so pumped up to block: with Denard Robinson on your team, any play could be a 20 yard run you fail to turn into 80, and then your ass is roasted. Hopefully they maintain the same urgency as Michigan moves to a system more likely to get you five (after contact, and by &quot;contact&quot; I mean &quot;<a href="" target="_blank">safety murder</a>&quot;) than 50.</p> <p><strong>Hoke advocates earlier official visits</strong>. <a href=";view=article&amp;id=1095:hoke-roundup--thursday-s-most-interesting-moments&amp;catid=22:football&amp;Itemid=104" target="_blank">Makes sense</a>, will never happen for the same reason a baseball season that makes sense will never happen:</p> <blockquote><p>“Having an official visit date in June would help football,” Hoke stated. “I know some of our friends in the Pac 12 and the SEC probably don’t want the young man and his family coming up to Michigan during the first two weeks in June, because they’re hoping it’s 10 below zero when those official visits take place.”</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>A rather large win</strong>. Wolverine Historian puts up the '95 Minnesota game:</p> <p align="center"><iframe height="315" src="//" frameborder="0" width="420" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p><strong>Mack Brown offer letter</strong>. I just find this interesting. It's an official offer letter from Mack Brown to a guy named Lorenzo:</p> <p><img title="large[1]" style="border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px" border="0" alt="large[1]" src="" width="564" height="423" /></p> <p>[<a href="" target="_blank">bigger version here</a>]</p> <p>Items:</p> <ul> <li>The first bullet is basically Michigan's much-discussed and much-misunderstood &quot;policy&quot; about commits taking visits: you are committed if you are not taking visits, and if you visit elsewhere Michigan will not consider you committed. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll pull your scholarship <em>offer</em>, but your spot is no longer reserved and they may recruit someone else or just reconfigure their class. Why recruiting sites, opposing fans, and Michigan fans keep going on and on about it is a mystery to me. </li> <li>Texas is explicitly offering four year scholarships, and seems to state that a fifth year is also guaranteed… but I think the fine print there means the firm handshake is still an option if the Head Coach wants it to be. </li> <li>The pointlessness of the rule where players cannot get written offers before August 1st of their senior year is brought home in the first paragraph: Texas is &quot;pleased to reconfirm our commitment to the football athletic scholarship you committed to earlier this year.&quot; The lack of written offers has led to the rise of the incredibly annoying &quot;uncommittable offer&quot; and prevents players from getting the exact stipulations of their scholarship offer in writing until long after many of them have committed. And it obviously does nothing to slow down the pace of recruiting. </li> </ul> <p>The only way to slow down the pace of recruiting, by the way, is to let kids sign whenever they want. Eighth grader offers will come to a screeching halt, for real.</p> <p>SBNation has <a href="" target="_blank">a roundup of offer letters from around the country</a>, featuring Comic Sans from Virginia Tech, &quot;formally&quot; spectacularly misspelled as &quot;formerly&quot; by Virginia, and Illinois claiming that those who attend there will play &quot;championship football.&quot; That latter might be true if in fact the Big Ten has been relegated to the second level of English soccer. Which it probably has after last year. We done got relegated you guys. </p> <p><strong>Quite a rise</strong>. Four Michigan players <a href="" target="_blank">make the final roster</a> at the USA World Juniors evaluation camp: JT Compher, Tyler Motte, Boo Nieves… and Andrew Copp. I think 14 of the 18 forwards on the roster will be on the WJC team, so Copp's gone from JJ Swistak But Big to a guy with a very good chance of making the WJC team in 12 months. Wow.</p> <p><strong>Amen</strong>. <a href=";utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WolverinesSports+%28Michigan+Wolverines+Sports%29" target="_blank">Hoke on ND</a>:</p> <blockquote><p>&quot;I do not like the fact it's going away,&quot; Hoke said.</p> <p>Asked who is a fault for all this, Hoke responded simply: &quot;We would like to continue the series.&quot;</p> </blockquote> <p>Realignment has replaced the ND game and games against Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Northwestern with Rutgers and Maryland. </p> <p><strong>Etc.:</strong> <a href="" target="_blank">Harmon Of Michigan's theme song</a> is a &quot;Hollywood-style rendition of the Victors,&quot; and MVictors has it. Michigan Hockey Net posts the famous <a href="" target="_blank">2002 Denver-Michigan West Regional Final</a> at Yost. Michigan players <a href=";utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WolverinesSports+%28Michigan+Wolverines+Sports%29" target="_blank">on the O'Bannon case</a>.</p> <a name="more"></a> 1995 minnesota devin gardner devin gardner is formidable jeff hecklinski leveon bell mack brown michael ferns michigan state mississippi is a black hole nothing escapes mississippi state multi-year scholarships ncaa: the bureaucracy quinton washington taylor lewan unverified voracity wide recievers Tue, 06 Aug 2013 18:59:14 +0000 Brian 80369 at