o The 2023 Michigan Football season has started to turn into a bad parody or remake of Ace Venture Pet Detective with rampant rumors, investigations, innuendo, catastrophizing and daily national media articles about various nuances and details that seem to come out of thin air. I’m expecting to see an article about Ray Finkle sometime this week. “Laces OUT!!” Aren’t we talking about college football here? o If you ever needed to understand just how much money and power was at stake with these games, like Michigan vs. Ohio State, just look at the reaction of people over the past several days. o One key aspect of this whole insane news cycle for the past 10 days is that Michigan has yet to have a real chance to respond or defend itself against any of these allegations. o Private Investigator was hired by someone or some organization o The findings of the PI firm were hand-delivered to the NCAA o That is what led to the NCAA investigation o o These type of ridiculous twitter rumors and personal bashing online is exactly why we started this Podcast. o More twists and turns than a Haunted House on the Mississippi River, more angles than a warehouse full of polygons o However, the focus of this whole thing has always been one person – Jim Harbaugh and whether or not he is going to stay at Michigan. o Anyone and everyone has an opinion on this o Rival fans know that the only thing that is really going to stop the Michigan freight train is a regime change, like when Tressel or Urban Meyer left o Fans are blinded my passion and myopia – Penn State fans that still think Joe Paterno and Penn State were treated unfairly, Ohio State fans that still think Jim Tressel and the OSU program were treated unfairly, MSU fans that….well let’s just leave that band of crazies alone for now… o Florida fan story from the 2017 game in Dallas o This is absolutely following the exact pattern of a political PR campaign to take down a political opponent. Trump is a Russian agent, George Bush stole the election from Al Gore, the Clinton crime family, those protesters are all radical crazies, o Why are negative political ads used so much? Because they are effective. o o National media outlets including ESPN, Fox, USA Today, Wall Street Journal put out just as much clickbait in 2023 as twitter trolls and teenagers on TikTok. There have been several articles just in the last week on national media outlets that had eye-catching headlines and yet the article cited no sources. That is not journalism, yet it is where we are in the 2023 news cycle. o Here is my issue with the NCAA and why I am so critical of this organization. The NCAA is a classic reactionary group. They don’t actually lead or set any type of agenda. They simply respond and react to things that are handed to them. An effective enforcement agency or regulatory body meets internally and decides what problems they want to attack. Almost every organization regardless of jurisdiction, industry, geography has way more problems than they know what to deal with – which crime are we most concerned about? What is the biggest problem that we face? What topical issue is really causing the most harm, the most problems in our company, our industry, our municipality and what can we do about it? Once this is decided, then a plan can be put in place in try and do something about these more paramount of problems, most pressing issues. Other less serious problems will have to wait, as the effective enforcement and regulatory body is focusing its time, resources and attention on these major issues. o Then we have the Keystone Cops approach taken by the NCAA. In 2023, there are some major issues facing college football – tampering, players being paid salaries, NIL corruption, superconferences poaching teams, coaches lying to players, what is legal and what isn’t legal with paying players – literally the future of the game and amateur athletics overall may be at stake. If we don’t get some of this stuff right with coast-to-coast conferences, players being paid, coaches just recruiting off other team’s rosters, college athletics may not be recognizable in just a few years and certainly there is no guaranty that it will be in a better condition with all of these sweeping changes. And what is the NCAA doing about all of these major, major issues? Nothing. Crickets. o What IS the NCAA focused on in October 2023. Sign-stealing. Michigan has an elaborate sign-stealing operation. Who cares about the fact that some schools may not even have athletic programs in a few years? Who cares if student-athletes are going to have to fly from Piscataway to Seattle and back on a weeknight in a couple of years? Who cares if high school kids are being bought and sold by college coaches? Who cares if a recruit was lied to and told they were going to make a million dollars and then after they moved across the country, the athletic team told them that the money wasn’t there, but they can transfer if they want to. Yeah, no worries about that silly nonsense. Let’s focus on sign-stealing. Rampant, uncontrolled sign-stealing that we didn’t even know about 2 weeks ago until some bought and paid-for investigative report (bought and paid for by someone’s rival) that probably is done by every team across the country and likely has minimal impact on even a single play of a game, let alone the actual outcome of a game. That is what we must focus on!! That needs to have a stop-everything that you are doing national discussion. This must stop!! (Oh but wait, everyone does it and it could easily be alleviated by just having radios in the helmets of the Quarterback of each team). So what, we must not stop talking about it every day until this horrible scourge is banished forever from the landscape of our beloved college football game!! o What exactly is the benefit of stealing signs in football? According to nearly every former player and current coach that has mentioned it in the past 7-10 days, there is no tangible benefit. None. This is football. An intensely physical game. This isn’t baseball. Don’t you remember the numerous times in Michigan games and other college football games, where players have said, “They knew what we were going to run, but we knew that they couldn’t stop us.” o I attend high school football games nearly every week. In most games, usually by mid-way through the 1st quarter, I can predict the next play-call 50% of the time or more. So what? o o Ohio State and other rival fans just can’t accept or believe the transformation of Michigan Football that has occurred over the past few years. Things that were put in place years before, finally have solidified, but also Harbaugh and Michigan finally found the correct formula that works. o Finally found the right formula with defensive coordinators after mis-steps with D.J. Durkin and then the Don Brown era, Michigan opened this pipeline of young talented D.C’s from the NFL (Ravens) and it has worked amazingly well for the past 3 seasons. o Offensive coaching changes have worked equally well with Sherrone Moore, Mike Hart and o o How will all of this effect the football team on the field?