The State News backs out of the annual tradition of playing The Michigan Daily in touch football
The State News' response:
To me, it seems like the State News is scared to play the Michigan Daily after being beaten basically every year and tried to replace it with something that is very high effort and commitment knowing the Daily wouldn't accept and making us look bad. While I don't think the joint FOIA article is a bad idea, it's a bad excuse for not playing
October 9th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
Why not do both? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
October 9th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
I was going to say the same thing. This sounds like a proposal for journalists to do, you know, journalism. The fun of the annual touch football game is that it's journalists playing football. So, the true equivalent "alternate proposal" would be for the two football teams to write the editorial together, but I don't see that happening any time soon. And if it did happen, we all know which team would carry the load in that endeavor.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:56 PM ^
They have trouble walking up a tunnel and you expect them to write?
October 9th, 2023 at 4:42 PM ^
There is a "can't read, can't write" chant joke here somewhere.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:32 PM ^
Don't forget "can't spell"
October 9th, 2023 at 6:37 PM ^
Do both as above sentiment seems to be.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:24 PM ^
Yeah, just write that thing and then go back to mercilessly shaming their skinny asses about the game. Have cake; eat it.
October 9th, 2023 at 5:51 PM ^
Is dueling columns not already a journalism collaboration they do together?
October 9th, 2023 at 10:11 PM ^
I love this idea. But nobody else upvote since it’s at 69 (nice!).
Edit: Damn! Now can we leave it to honor tromboners?
October 9th, 2023 at 10:48 PM ^
I was gonna up vote this, but looked at the number of likes and was like naw, I'll just leave a comment instead. Good suggestion.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
October Spartans are as soft as November Buckeyes.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^
I think that is actually a fantastic idea and rivalry aside, would be very happy to see this and put less importance on a pointless flag football game that has devolved the competing opinion articles really, really suffer into Not Great columns.
Maybe keep the flag football game but focus on the joint article or fundraising a la the Blood Battle between M-OSU?
October 9th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
Posted a much shorter answer with the same point. Totally agree - have a little fun AND do something collectively to make a positive impact to boot.
October 10th, 2023 at 10:49 AM ^
put less importance on a pointless flag football game that has devolved the competing opinion articles really, really suffer into Not Great columns.
What does the football game have to do with the dueling columns?
October 10th, 2023 at 1:22 PM ^
It's all The Michigan Daily has written about in the columns for the last ten years, and State News countered by talking exclusively about journalism awards, which The Michigan Daily happily engaged in as well.
After we got good again The Michigan Daily never even took the opportunity to make fun of Dantonio.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
They can't do both?
October 9th, 2023 at 3:58 PM ^
Perhaps a symptom of an environment where everyone seems to be going out of their way to disagree.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:16 PM ^
I'll add a word to that: "Perhaps a symptom of an environment where everyone seems to be going out of their way to publicly disagree."
I'm sure if they chatted this out, they'd come to a solution. But now both staffs made the disagreement public (why?), and are making their cases over freaking Twitter.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:20 PM ^
I want it to be known publicly that I disagree with your stance.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:25 PM ^
I want it to be known publicly that I upvoted your disagreement!
October 10th, 2023 at 11:39 AM ^
and that's saying something since you throw upvotes around like aircraft carriers
October 9th, 2023 at 6:50 PM ^
You are dead wrong and its not even close.
The sickest of burns!
October 9th, 2023 at 3:45 PM ^
The flag football game seems fun and i'm all for fun. I am pro-fun. but also...The State News' idea seems productive? I'm also pro-journalists-being-journalists. So...have fun and be journalists. Do both. State News ain't wrong. But football is fun and meant to be played, not just watched. So have fun too.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:47 PM ^
Seems like Morgan Womack, the EIC for The State News, is just a boring wet blanket.
Probably was the Hall Monitor in high school...
October 9th, 2023 at 3:50 PM ^
"What if instead of playing football, we wrote an essay and did homework instead?"
And they call us a bunch of soft nerds? Weak. Just play FOOTBALL.
You could also turn the event into a chairty drive or just do that on its own.
October 9th, 2023 at 8:21 PM ^
See their paper is WEAKKKKKKKK
October 10th, 2023 at 12:19 PM ^
That's some serious disrespekt there.
October 9th, 2023 at 3:59 PM ^
From what I've gathered over the years on Twitter, it seems like The State News believes that The Michigan Daily is very liberal with who they consider to be on staff and basically brings in ringers for this game.
Is there anyone with direct experience on this that can shed any light? If that's true, I can see how TSN would eventually just say this is stupid, I don't want to do it anymore.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:03 PM ^
How many years in a row has Michigan won? It does seem like something strange is going on with it.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:24 PM ^
Michigan has won 17 in a row.
Flip a coin 17 times in a row, the chances it is always heads is 1:131,072. Roughly equal to picking 1 Ann Arbor resident at random.
So it could happen. And U-M may have had a few outlier good athletes go through the paper, so making the game equivialent to a coin toss isn't exactly right.
But still, objectively, 17 straight is an eyebrow raiser.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:29 PM ^
I mean I love playing football but if I lost 17 times in a row, I might be suggesting a joint editorial also.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:29 PM ^
It's called being the leaders and the best.
October 10th, 2023 at 11:02 AM ^
Sure it's unlikely but streaks still exist that aren't atypical - UM beat IU 24 straight years until 2020, OSU beat UM 15 out of 16 times until recently. I'm sure there might be some "ringers" with the Daily's staff but we're also talking about one program where the students get credit and some pay for being on a paper while the other is, AFAIK, unattached to the school. And over 17 years we're talking about so many iterations that you'd think they'd have suggested such a change a long time ago if they really though UM was cheating with any consistency.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:09 PM ^
I've played in this game, granted years ago in the late '90s, and we did not need any ringers at that time to beat MSU's staff.
Not sure if the Daily's team in more recent times needed outside help, but our sports staff at the time was fairly athletic and was able to win handily.
October 9th, 2023 at 4:11 PM ^
I wrote and edited for the Daily in the late 90s too, but wasn't fully staff (contributor, yes). I was not eligible for the game back then. I believe I would have helped. My intramural team was quite good back in the day!
October 9th, 2023 at 4:54 PM ^
I was very close with the Daily in the late 90s when I was an UG. I actually dated the editor in chief for a while. The head football writer was a big dude and knew how to throw a football. The other sports writers were fairly athletic too. So it doesn’t surprise me.
October 9th, 2023 at 5:49 PM ^
I applied for an accounting job there and was surprised when the application asked for my 40 time. Needless to say I didn’t get the job.
October 9th, 2023 at 7:26 PM ^
I wrote for the Arts section when I was there. No one in Arts had any athletic ability whatsoever.
October 9th, 2023 at 7:48 PM ^
Heather Kamins?
October 9th, 2023 at 8:23 PM ^
Yep!
I was also close with TJ Berka and Chris Grandstaff among several others there.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:53 PM ^
Was that Darren Everson? (not the EIC you dated, but the football writer)
The tallest guy out of the football writers was Barry Sollenberger - I got grilled by Lloyd Carr in the Daily offices because of one of the columns he wrote...
October 9th, 2023 at 4:41 PM ^
Dhani Jones had photo credits with the Daily.
Anyone can join the Daily staff whereas MSU has a J school. It’s possible they only allow J-school students on staff.
That has always been the case. Wasn’t an issue until the last decade or so apparently.
October 9th, 2023 at 6:57 PM ^
This seems like crazy talk. Academic standards are holding back an MSU football team?
October 9th, 2023 at 7:58 PM ^
The reason the game isn't competitive is the Daily is drawing from 5x the number of students. The peak athleticism is irrelevant--nobody's an elite athlete on that field. A few people are fair athletes who maybe played in high school.
The Daily is a fully functioning newspaper with a staff of about 250. It attracts students from all over the country because it is one of the best routes to one of the few available high-profile newspaper jobs. WaPo, WSJ, NYT, ESPN all recruit out of there. If you're a top student journalist--meaning you go to the camps and compete for the KC Star scholarship etc.--you're looking at Princeton, Medill, and Michigan so you can work on the Daily, because the hands-on experience is very hard to get anywhere else.
The threshold to be a staff member IIRC (it's been awhile) is you have to belong to a section, so columnists and irregular contributors don't count, but editorial board members do. It's not hard to get on staff; it's hard to move up and get enough assignments to make it worthwhile--think walk-on vs starter, and then the editors are the Corum/JJ types. You're up against people from everywhere who've made this their life, and are here to develop their chops by refining their skills on the job. Most of them are going into careers in journalism.
The State News is down to about 50 students these days. They're a typical university student newspaper that is technically independent from the journalism school, but isn't really. They have a few famous alumni.
October 9th, 2023 at 9:55 PM ^
Interesting. Never knew it was that large and respected relative to other big schools. I did hang out with Mike Rosenberg a bit my freshmen year and it was interesting to see how quickly he rose in the profession.
October 10th, 2023 at 6:29 AM ^
Huh, I never knew the Daily staff was so much larger. Always assumed it was roughly 1:1.
Honestly I don't blame the State News for getting tired of the tradition then. Whats the fun of just getting killed every year by a team pulling from 5x the available bodies? I'd bail too.
October 10th, 2023 at 11:44 AM ^
RIght - if the "5x available bodies" is correct, that's not unlike a Class A school playing a Class C school in Michigan High School football. Those match-ups sometimes but usually don't occur.
October 10th, 2023 at 7:43 AM ^
Didn't go to either school, but I have a bit of experience in this area (journalists). Michigan is definitely a print school as Seth mentioned. MSU, to their credit, is more of a broadcast school. I'd imagine the odds would be evened up if you included MSU's other journalism students in the mix.
October 10th, 2023 at 12:44 PM ^
This is total bullshit.
Aside from its photos, the Daily has been a rag for 25+ years. I think most high end news outlets would rather hire someone with great writing ability than somebody that covered who got MIPs. The quality of writing has been low for a very long time. Quality writers can come from a variety of schools. Plenty of people that plan to be writers are choosing to go to Columbia, Harvard, etc., over Medill and certainly over Michigan.
It's a student newspaper that is struggling for relevance.
October 10th, 2023 at 10:53 AM ^
I was on the Daily staff and played in the game two years running in the early 2000s. There were no ringers at all. They actually seemed to care about the game more than we did - they made some kind of a trophy for it.