NCAA Football

[MrRain422]

Meh, none of this will matter because USC is gonna be under sanctions the whole time Kiffin is there anyway.

[OOO]

Meh, none of this will matter because USC is gonna be under sanctions the whole time Kiffin is there anyway.

 

I think USC does well based on my physically proximity to them.

 

My first 2 years as an undergraduate I attended all the games and we won National Championships both years.

 

Then I moved off campus and we lost the national champion one year and next year wentto the rose bowl (won).

 

Now I'm back in Chicago and we've slowly declined (Emerald Bowl?).

 

I'll be heading to Africa in June, and we no longer have Pete Carroll and (as you say) we may be heavily sanctioned.

 

So be it.

[rareair]

Tennessee has relly screwed the pooch with this.

 

i think tennessee will be fine. they screwed the pooch when they hired kiffin.

[cryptique]

developing story

 

My guess is that Michigan escapes this mostly unscathed, but I could be wrong. Nice pickle for the new athletic director to walk into (he's not even officially on the job yet).

 

Michigan football program faces 5 NCAA violations, university has 90 days to respond

 

Michigan’s storied football program faces possible NCAA sanctions after an investigation revealed five potential major rules violations concerning in- and out-of-season practice time.

 

The university has 90 days to file a response, and is expected to go before the NCAA Committee on Infractions in August.

 

"I want to make clear that no accusation against our program is trivial," incoming athletic director Dave Brandon said at a press conference Tuesday. “We take this report very seriously and we will learn from it and we will get better.”

 

Among the violations outlined in a Notice of Allegations received by the university Monday:

 

• Quality control staff members "regularly monitored" voluntary winter and summer workouts and "regularly assisted" with on- and off-field coaching duties from 2008-09.

 

• Football players were required to participate in more than the maximum allowed practice hours by anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours a week.

 

• Graduate assistant coach Alex Herron provided "false and misleading information" to NCAA enforcement staff on whether he monitored summer workouts he was not allowed to attend.

 

• Head coach Rich Rodriguez "failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program and failed to adequately monitor the duties and activities" of his quality control staff.

 

• The athletic department "failed to adequately monitor its football program to assure" NCAA compliance.

 

Rodriguez accepted responsibility for the violations.

 

"I have always felt compliance is a priority for us and it always will be," he said. "We know we can do a better job in certain areas."

 

Brandon, who takes over for Bill Martin as Michigan athletic director March 8, indicated the violations were a product of not understanding NCAA rules and supported Rodriguez as Michigan's coach.

 

"Rich Rodriguez is our football coach and will be our football coach next year," he said. "Nothing leads me to believe there should be a change."

[IATTBYB]

developing story

 

My guess is that Michigan escapes this mostly unscathed, but I could be wrong. Nice pickle for the new athletic director to walk into (he's not even officially on the job yet).

 

Michigan football program faces 5 NCAA violations, university has 90 days to respond

 

Michigan’s storied football program faces possible NCAA sanctions after an investigation revealed five potential major rules violations concerning in- and out-of-season practice time.

 

The university has 90 days to file a response, and is expected to go before the NCAA Committee on Infractions in August.

 

"I want to make clear that no accusation against our program is trivial," incoming athletic director Dave Brandon said at a press conference Tuesday. “We take this report very seriously and we will learn from it and we will get better.”

 

Among the violations outlined in a Notice of Allegations received by the university Monday:

 

• Quality control staff members "regularly monitored" voluntary winter and summer workouts and "regularly assisted" with on- and off-field coaching duties from 2008-09.

 

• Football players were required to participate in more than the maximum allowed practice hours by anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours a week.

 

• Graduate assistant coach Alex Herron provided "false and misleading information" to NCAA enforcement staff on whether he monitored summer workouts he was not allowed to attend.

 

• Head coach Rich Rodriguez "failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance within the football program and failed to adequately monitor the duties and activities" of his quality control staff.

 

• The athletic department "failed to adequately monitor its football program to assure" NCAA compliance.

 

Rodriguez accepted responsibility for the violations.

 

"I have always felt compliance is a priority for us and it always will be," he said. "We know we can do a better job in certain areas."

 

Brandon, who takes over for Bill Martin as Michigan athletic director March 8, indicated the violations were a product of not understanding NCAA rules and supported Rodriguez as Michigan's coach.

 

"Rich Rodriguez is our football coach and will be our football coach next year," he said. "Nothing leads me to believe there should be a change."

 

As a fan and alum of U of M, this pisses me off to no end. I have supported Rich Rod up to this point but he better clean up his act AND start winning right away and in the right way. I find it interesting that Brandon was quoted as he has not even officially assumed the AD position. Was Bill Martin at the press conference? And I will beat all those Sparty's and Buckeye's by saying just think how bad we would have been the last two years if we didn't practice over the allowed limits.

[cryptique]

Another view of the Michigan situation (see below)

 

Also see this link, to a piece written last August. Hmmm.

 

Relax, Michigan Football Fans: The Only Scandal Brewing is at the Free Press

 

by Bryan Kelly

Senior Analyst

 

Written on February 23, 2010

 

It's days like today that make me ashamed to be a sportswriter.

 

No more than a handful of outlets in the Michigan or national media are taking the time to separate the allegations against the Michigan football program—which are serious—from the university's actual findings— which are not.

 

Few mainstream Michigan sports outlets (save for Rivals' John Borton, whose article is behind a paywall, and of course, the always even-keeled MGoBlog) putting those findings into a proper context for the reader.

 

Not when, "SERIOUS MAJOR ALLEGATIONS FOUND: IS MICHIGAN FOOTBALL DEADZO?" will get your click from the Google News crawl instead.

 

Now hear this: Michigan administrators unearthed information that the football team practiced 20 minutes past the NCAA's allotted period. The issue could ultimately come down to whether quality control staff should have included stretching as a voluntary, or mandatory exercise.

 

Twenty minutes? Is that really grounds for Tweets like this to be sent out by the sensationalists that run the Big Ten Conference's Twitter account?

 

Additionally, the line between Michigan's quality control staff and its coaches was blurred by the amount of time the two camps spent with each other. This meant it counted as practice time when quality control staff members were present at voluntary workouts, and some of those practices were added towards the final total.

 

Does the fact that these findings amount to a misunderstanding far short of the dreaded "loss of institutional control," which will bring nothing close to major repercussions, stop obnoxious asses like Drew Sharp and his dying chorus of "editorialists" at the Detroit Free Press from braying about firing Rodriguez?

 

God, no.

 

I can't speak for Michigan Football's quality control staff, but someone at the Freep should be looking into whether the critical line between news writer and editorialist is being blurred on the sports desk.

 

Supposed news writers should not be launching internal investigations into the programs whose beats they follow, or whose players they interview.

 

Michael Rosenberg, who broke the original overpracticing story, dishonestly framed his questions to Michigan's true freshmen by saying they were for a human interest piece on new life as an enrollee in college.

 

The athletes' boilerplate, good-natured responses—that workouts were harder than in high school, that it seemed like practice went on forever—were then turned into grist for the accusatory mill.

 

That's immorality in sports. That's grounds for an ethical violation. There's the fire, people.

 

And while news people shouldn't editorialize the information they receive, on the flipside, editorialists like Sharp—and Rosenberg, I suppose—shouldn't pretend they know how to break news, especially if so much of what they write relies on the tinge of bias.

 

The "Michigan scandal" you'll be reading about in the next few days amounts to a lot of smoke. Smoke; not fire. Misunderstandings are being addressed. Corrections are being made. But insidious intent is nowhere to be found.

 

Oh, well. The witch-hunt for Rodriguez's head by evil men without Michigan's best interests at heart continues. More and more is made of less and less. America's insatiable appetite for scandal continues. You've heard the objections against sensational media, and unfortunately, they're all correct.

 

I rarely address Michigan Football. My intention at the Bleacher Report has, and will continue being to bring a national perspective—even if I slip one too many Michigan recruits in the to-watch-for slideshows.

 

But this behavior is beyond the pale. Supposedly accredited newspapers—the Freep —are blatantly attempting to shore up their page views by resorting to yellow headlines and whack journalists who are no doubt encouraged to speak irrationally.

 

In doing so, they've lost sight of their first and most important goal: reporting the news, not creating it (not to get all Richard Nixon on you, but that is their purpose, right?).

 

In turn, their writers—good or bad, beat or editorial—have lost their integrity, and their minds.

Shoot, I may not have much journalistic integrity myself, but maybe it's one of those cases where it takes one to know one.

[PigSooie]

So, they practiced too much, and still had that record?

 

 

[IATTBYB]

So, they practiced too much, and still had that record?

 

 

We probably would have done better if Lloyd was still our coach and our QB hadn't transferred to your school.

[bleedorange]

Has anyone been following all the conference expansion/realignment stuff as much as I have? This entire saga has been riveting, especially since Texas is largely at the center of the storm.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Has anyone been following all the conference expansion/realignment stuff as much as I have? This entire saga has been riveting, especially since Texas is largely at the center of the storm.

 

I am baffled at the whole thing. I'm an OU fan, and I'd be fine with them joining the Pac-16, but I don't really understand what the Big Ten is doing. They must have a 14 or 16 team expansion ready to go, because there's no way it makes sense for them to add just Nebraska (or NU and MU) right now.

 

The Pac-16, with the east and west divisions as rumored, actually makes a fair amount of sense. OU has already played at UCLA, at Washington, and at Oregon over the past 5 years, so it's not like west coast road games are such a huge deal. They'll just start playing non-conf games closer to home.

 

Winners, as I see it: Colorado, Texas Tech, Pac-10 schools not in Arizona. CU and Texas Tech get to play in a conference that's probably 2 tiers better than either of them deserve, and the other Pac-10 schools get to pretty much do what they've been doing but with a much sweeter TV deal.

 

Losers: Arizona schools, Texas A&M, the Big 12 leftovers. Both the AZ schools and TAMU will have a tough time recruiting, up against both the west division in CA and OU/UT in OK/TX. As for the Big 12 leftovers, Kansas, K-State, and Iowa State are pretty much screwed. Baylor, too, but they had it coming.

 

For OU, UT, and OSU, I think it's a tossup right now. I for one welcome our Pac-16 overlords.

[bleedorange]

I want to go to a new Pac-16 so badly, I can taste it.

 

I think the Big Ten would still be happiest by just adding Notre Dame. There was a report today that Notre Dame would possibly reconsider joining the Big Ten. If that happens, then I think everyone stays put. If they can't get Notre Dame, then they have to make a huge splash with NU, MU, Rutgers, and maybe some more Big East schools (or go back to Notre Dame who may need to get out of the Big East before it crumbles completely).

[bobbob1313]

Fuck it.

 

If we're changing everything, let's just make it 10 conferences of 12 teams each, shorten the regular season to 11 games + a conference championship for every conference, and then a 12 team tournament with each conference winner and two at large, top 4 ranked teams in the tourney get a bye. Just get rid of all the time in between the conference titles and the bowls.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I want to go to a new Pac-16 so badly, I can taste it.

 

Let me guess--it tastes like a pot brownie.

 

But seriously--I'd be fine with the Pac-16, I just want this to be over. If Nebraska ends up in the Big Ten, I can wish them a fond farewell, although I hope OU gets one last shot to beat them on their way out. But my fervent hope is that Missouri, who started this mess, is left begging to be in the Horizon league after the Mountain West spurns their advances. Of all the nerve...

[Rusty Shackleford]

Well, that was a whole lot of nothing.

[cryptique]

Am I correct in thinking that the Big Ten currently has twelve teams, and the Big 12 currently has ten?

 

(And by "currently," I mean "as of 2011, or whenever this all goes down.")

[uncool2pillow]

Yes, are you suggesting a name swap?

[cryptique]

No. I just find it rather amusing.

[bleedorange]

Yep. Got a whole lot of money out of the deal for everyone, though.