Wolverine Wednesday: Everyone Cheats and Nobody Cares Anymore

This is where we are at in big time college sports now and maybe all sports.  Major League Baseball which is struggling to keep pace with other big time sports in the US just found their former champions were cheating during the World Series.  

Lets quickly look at college football, it's known that Alabama has a "system" that funnels money to players and even the National Champion LSU Tigers had a recent scandal that nobody noticed.   A LSU Booster named John Paul Funes  pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $800,000 from a hospital charitable foundation.  How did he get caught?  He paid $180,000 of the foundation’s money to the father of Vadal Alexander, a former LSU offensive lineman.   Not to mention OBJ handing out $100's after the NC game (which I really don't have a problem with), is just another example that times have changed.  

How about the College Basketball Scandal with the FBI Wire Taps?  How has that effected Kansas coach Bill Self or Arizona's Sean Miller?  The answer is, it hasn't and nobody seems to care.  

MSU's Mark Dantonio brought a known sex offender to his team and the MSU athletics department seems happy to employ him because he won a Big Ten Championship and went to the College Playoffs.   They seemed to have learned nothing from one of biggest sexual assaults' scandals in history of college sports.   Mark's program is in a steep decline and there are more reasons to fire him then to keep him.  

OSU's star transfer QB Justin Fields, hasn't really seen the Ohio State campus as he is taking online classes and heads directly to the football facility.    This isn't breaking the rules but another example of the student fading from the term student-athlete.   OSU is running a professional football program and Michigan isn't.

Why do we wonder why Michigan isn't competing with these programs?  Michigan of course shot itself in the foot for many years with the RR and Hoke hires and then have been on a long re-build with Harbaugh.  No of us are happy how long its taking.    We also want Jimmy and the program to be above the rules.   He admitted last summer, "that its hard to beat the cheaters".  Yes, it is.

Kids go to class at U of M, Michigan doesn't pay players, and you need to be elite on the field and in the classroom.   If you are an 18 year old 5 star and Bama offers you a chance to compete for National Championships, $100K in your pocket (or your parents pocket), have a great shot at getting to the NFL, and very light college class schedule.   How many of you are turning that down at 18?  I wonder why Najee Harris didn't get on the flight to Detroit.

I'm not saying we go Lance Armstrong but if something doesn't change we need to be happy understanding with losing to the programs that are.



from The BIG HOUSE Blog http://mbighouse.blogspot.com/2020/01/wolverine-wednesday-everyone-cheats-and.html