Michigan Tuesday: It Cuts Like a Knife but Feels Alright

Since we started with the music theme yesterday, I thought I would continue it today with an old Brian Adams song. 

Drivin' home this evening
I coulda sworn we had it all worked out
You had this boy believin'
Way beyond the shadow of a doubt
Well I heard it on the street

I heard you mighta found somebody new - yeah
Well who is he baby - who is he
And tell me what he means to you - oh yeah


I took it all for granted
But how was I to know
That you'd be letting go


Now it cuts like a knife
But it feels so right
Yeah! It cuts like a knife
Oh, but it feels so right


There's times I've been mistaken
There's times I thought I'd been misunderstood - ooh yeah
So wait a minute darlin'
Can't you see we did the best we could -ooh we could


This wouldn't be the first time
Things have gone astray
Now you've thrown it all away

Today we learned what penalties Michigan will self impose regarding the allegations made by the NCAA and the Free Press.  I wish I had a full day to read the response, if you do please enjoy! 

Here is the recap of the penalties:

• Michigan has cut back their Quality Control Staffers by 2.  They will also limit their roles in 2010.  They will not be able to be in coaches meeting, attend practices, or games. 
• Michigan will cut 130 hours out of practice and training times over the next two years.  BHB: exactly what an 8-16 team needs, less work.  Thanks Free Press.
• Michigan also has new processes in place to make sure this never happens again.
• 2 years probation
• Alex Heron was fired.  QC guy that lied about his involvement.

Michigan has researched this to the fullest extent and even hired a third party NCAA investigation firm with former NCAA investigators.  Michigan believes this penalty fits the crime. 

Many including the Michigan Brass believe the NCAA will accept these penalties and move on during their meeting on August 13th.   If I wanted to play Devil's advocate: the two things that still stick out a bit is RR's past history (is this a first time or a repeat offender?) and does Michigan fall under the repeat offender policy because of the NCAA probation Michigan Basketball program was under back in 2003.  Michigan was just weeks away from being off probation when the allegations came to light.

Michigan also sent a firm message to Rich Rodriguez: 

"The university agrees that it failed as a whole to adequately monitor its football program to assure compliance regarding the limitations upon the number, duties and activities of countable football coaches and the time limits" for practice," it said. "The university also agrees that Rodriguez failed to satisfy the monitoring responsibilities required of head coaches."

Michigan also sent a firm message to the Free Press:

"The University is satisfied that the initial media reports are greatly exaggerated if not flatly incorrect."

RR pleads the fifth on Michigan's former compliance process:

Rodriguez's response was submitted by his attorney, Scott Tompsett. He said the coach was "very disappointed that his administrators failed to provide the job descriptions on multiple occasions and he is disappointed that the compliance staff never brought their failure to his attention. Rodriguez has always had an open-door policy for anyone to bring matters to his attention."

Why not more severe penalties like loss of scholarships or a loss of coaches? 

"That's usually a result of something deemed to be an offense that created a competitive advantage," Brandon said. "Those kind of sanctions are also typically related to academic fraud, gambling, recruiting violations and extra benefits."

To net this thing out:

• The Freep was only a little right in their story.  They were a lot wrong.  You be the judge if you want to read that publication ever again. 
• Michigan has done it's research to the best of it's ability and believes the NCAA will accept their penalties. 
• Michigan also believes these are minor incidents that combined could been seen as major but there wasn't any intent to gain an competitive advantage or any academic cheating.   It was a miss communication between the compliance office and the coaching staff.
• This doesn't bring this case to a 100% close, but I would say it's 90% done with most experts believing the NCAA will accept these penalties in August.

"We're not happy to be in this process, but we're handling it in a professional and transparent manner before we move on," Brandon said. "The NCAA will hear our case in August, then will deliberate as long as is needed -- and that could be weeks -- before making a decision that we can agree with or choose to appeal."


Let's hope the experts are right and this is the end of the story.