NIL seems especially tailored to a school with a cosmic level brand name like Michigan, which has fallen behind it’s pier programs in competitiveness. Now the nebulous cheating, much discussed on Michigan fan sites/shows but hardly ever quantified, is above a board. The black market is gone.
Instead, Michigan fumbled around while other programs preemptively went out to hire outside consulting, or even establish their own in-house mechanisms, to take advantage of this brave new world.
This led to Michigan athletes independently soliciting opportunities with no guidance or assistance from the athletics department. I also know of Michigan coaches who try to get some guidance and assistance from the University at the outset, and came back with nothing.
Finally, after a couple of days of this tomfoolery, a brand new member of the football program announced the school had signed with a premier NIL Branding firm to assist the athletes. However, the University never said anything official about it, and neither did athletic director Warde Manuel.
Speaking of Manuel, I am told that when one of his coaches asked for guidance and assistance, he rebuffed them “we have to hold off and make sure this is all above board” .. bureaucratic double-speak. Isn’t this an institution that prides itself on it’s progressive thinking?
An assistant AD Claimed Michigan wasn’t being more aggressive because it had to make sure it’s policies were aligned with a new Michigan state law. However, that law doesn’t even take affect until next year!
Thus, Michigan could’ve aggressively worked NIL carte blanche from the jump here, Especially as we are watching numerous recruits in the incoming football class take visit here and then committed elsewhere. And coming off of a 2-4 face plant, we need all the help with the recruiting pitch that we can get.
Michigan could’ve also gone right back to legislature and ask them to make him more lenient NIL law, In line with its competitors and in light of deals currently available to its players. But again, that would’ve actually required for site and the very progressive thinking the University claims as it’s brand.
Instead, Michigan didn’t help its athletes, didn’t guide it’s athletes, is already getting outmaneuvered by schools it is trying to be, and is providing negative recruiting content for our rivals to use against us.
This happened for the following two reasons.
Athletic director Warde Manuel is soft. That’s why Jim Harbaugh is still coaching here. That’s why Jim Harbaugh was permitted weeks upon weeks to look for an NFL job on our time and time last December. That’s why the fab five banners still aren’t back up, despite the fact we hired a basketball coach from that era. He didn’t do everything he could to keep John Beilein. Manuel’s one claim to fame is he got lucky as hell with Juwan Howard. We thought at the time that Howard only got the job because he was a former player. It turns out, we only got a coach that good because he played here. The rest of our list from that coaching search is either going into the season on the hot seat, or just had to change jobs. In short, Manuel’s leadership is lacking.
The other reason is more systemic. Michigan, on an institutional level, is drunk on its own self righteousness. That’s why it had scientists last year telling the Big Ten it wasn’t safe to play college football, but then couldn’t offer anything specific as to why. We’re just supposed to take their word for it. That’s why our university president, who took six years to even visit the football building, thought he was uniquely qualified to stop the Big Ten from playing football.
See, Michigan cheats, too. Just the opposite way. It cheated self, and its friends. No major college brand more holds their fans and media at arms length, or with more distrust and disdain. Michigan pride itself on not just being better but superior. It’s not enough for us to be other teams, we need to feel morally superior while doing so. Because it’s just so immoral to give a single mother a job or a car in exchange for borrowing her babies spinal cord and cranial cavity to make money off of for four years, since we don’t want to stoop so low as to break those precious NCAA rules. You know, the same NCAA that has broken every anti-trust rule in American history. That gilded cage.
But then, when that canard is done away with the players are treated as actual Americans, that same self righteousness does it work the other way. Doesn’t permit us to go ahead and do it legit now. Because, fellow Michigan fans, it wasn’t about any of that high reminded rhetoric. It was simply about sanctimony. It mattered more to feel superior than to achieve better.
And here’s where that’s gotten us, 15 years with no football titles, and now a decades long scandal courtesy of a dead pederast predator who’s left a trail of tears in his week. I love this team. It’s brought as much joy to my life as anything outside of my faith, family, and freedom. That’s why I’m speaking up. This crap Hass to end, or eight threatens to end us. I never bought a ‘sanctimony national championship’ sure at the mDen, and neither have you. Nor would they ever sell one. Yet this schools brass is drunk on it.
So I close with this bright idea. How about we take the words of our fight song more seriously than our self righteousness sanctimony, and see what happens?