I wish the whole world would read this Dan Wetzel column
Then maybe some of this lunacy would end.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:41 PM ^
I want the whole world reading Dan…
The whole wide world, reading Dan…
I want the whole world reading Dan;
Enough about C-Stalions.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:43 PM ^
The guys who were initially banging the drum (Feldman, Wetzel) are walking it back. What is the upside now though?
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:32 PM ^
They were wrong.
We’re all going to part of one of the biggest sports documentaries of all time when this is all said and done. (No doubt what more than a few of us have written here will be a part of it).
For people who make a living writing and speaking about this, their words will be remembered.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:41 PM ^
This week they need all the clicks from M fans they can get. No money in playing the cheater narrative anymore
January 4th, 2024 at 8:18 AM ^
This is exactly it, but they won't get clicks from me (Wetzel not so bad).
Winter is coming, and The North remembers.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:42 PM ^
I thought Wetzel was one of the only ones who was fair all along. Wasserman and Pete and Feldman and Mandel seem to be the ones who need to (and are to varying degrees) walk anything back.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:49 PM ^
Agreed. Wetzel has been M friendly the whole way, unless one was expecting him to call the whole thing garbage from the jump. But he never seized on it being the biggest scandal of all time or nullifying their success.
January 4th, 2024 at 12:55 PM ^
Yeah, Wetzel has definitely been fair throughout the entire process. It’s slander to throw him in with Feldman or Mandel
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:47 PM ^
I'm definitely not reading the comments.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:58 PM ^
Michigan haters want this scandal to strip the achievements of our team this season. They could care less whether the college footballl world's response to the sterile Stalions allegations was an extreme overreaction or that it gave Michigan any measurable advantage at all let alone a projected 21-point edge per game while according to Big Ten officials jeopardizing player safety in the process.
If this issue is going to be investigated and consequences administered beyond what Michigan has already been subjected to based on preliminary review, then let the heavens fall.
Because the only real penalty that will have any meaning is denying Michigan a national championship after the fact. And we get to play for that accomplishment --which, believe me, will never escape anyone's memory regardless of any pending NCAA threat, like some forgotten unpaid college tuition debt.
Michigan just played in the most watched college football game of our lifetime and bullied in the trenches an all-time coach and opponent . Michigan drives college football. Let the rest of them eat cake.
But if it has to be, I DO want to know who started this. How it became a thing and how our rivals launched a coup to try and ruin an all-time Michigan record season.
Stalions hiring people to stand up with phone cameras and drawing meaningful intelligence from such an undisciplined amateur operation seems to me to be one of the dumbest ways to gain a competitive edge.
Hiring the former linebacker coach of a team you are about to play and who could give you way more direct understanding of opponent information than any sophisticated sign-stealing scheme seems the way to go.
So that's what Nick Saban did. And nobody thought anything of it, just like reaction to Big Ten coaches allegedly providing TCU with sign-stealing reports gathered a year ago as Michigan was about to play the Horned Frogs in a semi-final matchup.
This isn't over. And Michigan can't forget how it was treated with total disrespect by the conference and its members. Michigan against Everybody is what it is.
January 4th, 2024 at 9:27 AM ^
Michigan can never forget how the conference as a whole backed by a few, namely osu broke it's own rules to punish our program, players, staff and head coach!!! The continuous hit job pieces by talking heads and espn putting them on continuously was a complete and total joke!
Let us also recall the very real allegations where we know our IT systems at Michigan had been hacked. Where we also know that teams began accessing video footage of other programs via the cloud and via Catapult Systems.
Let us also recall that someone had investigative services following our program, players and coaches down to low level assistants! If they are following one, they are likely following all!
January 4th, 2024 at 2:59 AM ^
I get what you’re saying Wendy, but it’s pretty fun! Mostly Buckeye fans with nothing left other than hollering “Cheaters!!”
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:49 PM ^
They don't need to read Dan. Just about everyone is saying this now. And if we win on Monday, more people will say it, more frequently, with more force. Winning will take care of itself.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:59 PM ^
Yes. I think the view around here is skewed because we're focusing on what OSU/MSU/PSU fans say. The Ohio State win ended this. The Alabama win cleaned up any stragglers.
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:10 PM ^
Thank God the Stallions story didn't break next month. It helped us in some ways that it hit in October before the big games.
January 4th, 2024 at 10:57 AM ^
It was very precisely timed so that the outrage and punishment would impact the OSU game. They held the story until it was advantageous to reveal it.
And OSU succeeded. It was a wildly successful smear campaign, it got exactly the response they wanted. Now, nobody’s pushing it anymore (except James Franklin, who will ride this until he dies) because it was always bullshit and the only purpose was the punishment. OSU doesn’t actually want an investigation into sign stealing.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:50 PM ^
Jim Harbaugh just owns the kingdom. Unfairly criticize Michigan?
"It's almost an unfair advantage." Tony Pettiti, the knife is so sharp you don't even realized you've been gutted.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:54 PM ^
That "unfair advantage" word play by Jim was BRILLIANT. It was sarcasm and mockery all in one.
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:00 PM ^
I'd expect no less from America's Team.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:51 PM ^
The Wetzel article is crap. He still wants to make it seem as if Michigan broke the "spirit" of the rule when there is no evidence that any rule was broken. OSU and Rutgers sending their stolen M signals to Purdue in the 2022 Big Ten Championship clearly broke the "spirit" of the rule far more than anything Stalions has been proven to have done. All that is known so far is that he paid for some random dudes to use iPhones to take sideline films, but no one knows what was done with whatever film those dudes managed to take.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:27 PM ^
Not even just the spirit because he lobs the full on accusation later on:
“Everybody does it” is not a reasonable excuse for what Stalions was doing. The advanced scouting rule exists. Michigan got caught. If the NCAA wants to apply additional penalties beyond Harbaugh's suspension then so be it.
FOH, Wetzel.
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:32 PM ^
I agree, but in all fairness to Wetzel, even Sam Webb claims without hesitation that what Stalions is accused of was a violation. If the homers are saying it, can we expect better from the national press?
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:51 PM ^
“It’s almost been an unfair advantage.” Jim Harbaugh may be the best coach I have ever heard who knows exactly what to say to troll his rivals. I love that guy.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:54 PM ^
All these writers are terrible. Mgoblig is enough.
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:55 PM ^
All hail the mgoblig!
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:15 PM ^
Noblesse oblig, amirite?
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:01 PM ^
MGobligatory
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:56 PM ^
I know most of you are on MgoBlig.com but you are really missing out on MgoBlig.lycos.askjeeves.compuserve.net
January 3rd, 2024 at 9:55 PM ^
I'm not impressed... He continues to state that Michigan broke a rule that mattered and that other teams probably do the same thing. He's just couching it differently, now.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:11 PM ^
"It's almost an unfair advantage" may be one of the most diabolically devilish retorts ever by one so encumbered.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:49 PM ^
These players follow Harbaugh’s leadership and respond to how he handles things.
His coaching job this season has been exceptional.
Now let’s put the cherry on top.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:13 PM ^
Can they stop writing about this? One tweet that says "Signgate is crap". That is it. It doesn't need an article and be talked about over and over again.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:21 PM ^
These hack writers are putting in 10% of the effort in these “walk back” articles than their original Stallions ones.
January 4th, 2024 at 9:27 AM ^
That should make us all that much more thankful that Michigan beat OSU last month. If you thought that articles and commentary leading up to The Game were bad, it would've been 10x worse had Michigan lost.
Guys like Thamel, Finebaum, and every vulture down in Columbus and EL looking to continue picking at the carcass had write-ups primed and ready to go for weeks before that matchup kicked off, and had Michigan lost, they would've been released immediately following the game. They were all itching and begging to hit that Publish button.
I don't doubt that those write-ups would've been as bad as you would've ever seen about Michigan, regarding not just how it was proven that Stallions was the only reason for their success, not just how Harbaugh is the cheating scum of the Earth, but that the character and integrity of every single player on the roster would've been immediately judged as fraudulent. They would've all been guilty by association, and that narrative would've been pushed for weeks and months. It would've been pushed at every possible opportunity, until that was all that their legacies would ever be outside Ann Arbor.
Instead, Michigan won. And all those stories got deleted, never to be seen or heard from again. Aside from Joe Paterno not coming to coach Michigan, that might've been the biggest bullet Michigan ever dodged as a program.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:32 PM ^
I would probably diary this post, but since I am in Bolivia, this is the best spot I guess:
Pondered why Michigan's semi-final, Rose Bowl win over Bama Monday was easily the most joyful sporting moment in my life, despite other moments such as Michigan's '89 and '97 national championships.
This is what I came up with:
1. Age - At my age, who knows how many more events like this are left? Made this more meaningful.
2. Hiatus - Those early championships were during decades long runs of Michigan sporting excellence, whereas this victory came after a 26 year hiatus from Michigan football accomplishing something this epic on a national (as opposed to conference) stage.
3. Disparity - Over the last 15 years, the diminished quality of Michigan football had coincided with the unparalleled rise of the SEC especially in terms of recruiting, to the point that these teams essentially toyed with Michigan whenever they played each other.
- Lopsided losses to Bama (twice), Georgia, Mississippi State and South Carolina come to mind.
- Monday I would not have been surprised if Bama had crushed us yet again, once again demonstrating that the SEC talent disparity was just too much to overcome.
- That we made so many mistakes and still beat the SEC champion, who also happened to be Alabama, still befuddles. I am still processing it. To those saying this was a bad Bama team, well this Bama team was your SEC champion who beat Georgia and all other SEC teams!
- The specter of this SEC disparity, that loomed over all of our conference accomplishments in recent years was exorcised!
4. It was Alabama. The undisputed kings of the last 15 years.
5. Social media. If I play a friend in a game of chess, and I win, cool, we had fun and onto the next fun activity. But, if before we played, we had trash talked each other for months about how we were going to kick each other‘s butt in chess, and brought all kinds of pride and boast into the match, that chess game would have taken on an entirely bigger magnification of importance. This is where we are today with social media. 30 years ago, those football and basketball games were great, but fans were not subjected to 24/7 social media haters, doubters and critics like we have today. Just an entirely bigger magnification of importance.
6. Sign stealing scandal. Building off of the social media point above, each victory that Michigan has had after being accused of gaining a significant advantage through illegal sign stealing, has served to diminish the smoke, and the validity of all of the haters, from ESPN to Paul Finebaum, to Pete Thamel, to every hating Spartan and Buckeye on down.
7. Streaks. JH had lost what, 6 straight postseason games? Saban had won what 6 straight CFP semifinals?
8. Record. First 14 victory season in the storied history of the winningest program in all of football.
Glorious.
Such joy. Singular joy.
BEAT WASHINGTON!
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:28 PM ^
What lopsided loss to South Carolina. They came from behind on 2012 and 2017. Did I miss one?
January 4th, 2024 at 12:52 PM ^
January 4th, 2024 at 4:55 AM ^
thoughtful post. one minor nit to pick: winning 3 B10CG's is winning 3 straight postseason games. they sure aren't regular season games.
yes, joy. boatloads of joy.
p.s. why are you in bolivia?
January 4th, 2024 at 7:36 AM ^
I never considered conf champ games 'post season' games. Not regular season either. Bowl games are post season to me, but your thought furthers my belief that conf. champ games shouldn't exist.
January 4th, 2024 at 12:56 PM ^
A few years back I posted news that Eric All’s season was over after an injury, but I added a link to one of the forbidden pundits. Didn’t know he was forbidden but that’s my fault so I’ll do the time.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:51 PM ^
Count me as one who doesn't want any sign article written. It's going away on its own.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:51 PM ^
Wetzel seemed to be one of the few (only?) national journalists who had the right perspective of this from the beginning. He wrote this piece in early November.
January 3rd, 2024 at 10:58 PM ^
A real story might be how we owe gratitude to Ryan Day for seminating the signgate. It forged the team and coaches like none other. Think of the confidence instilled in the players AND the coaches, especially Moore. Now THAT would burn the OSU fanbases ass.
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:02 PM ^
I wonder why JJ said what he said, about having to get up to their level? Hopefully he was just trying to be funny, and take jab at oSU? But with the way the sports world was initially reacting, and then the die down, why would he say something like that to potentially restart the fire. Because honesty, I am sooooooo tired of hearing the BS, especially from oSU fans.
January 4th, 2024 at 7:57 AM ^
Pretty sure he was talking about the play on the field. In 2018 and 2019, Michigan wasn't as good as OSU on the field.
January 3rd, 2024 at 11:21 PM ^
Washington could kick a last second fg from 64 yards to beat Michigan and it will be "see they ain't nothing without cheating."
January 4th, 2024 at 12:26 AM ^
I don't think Stallions friends going to games of future opponents and trying to record signs with their cell phones benefited Michigan one bit. Stallions himself was a good in house sign stealer and could diagnose well. In game sign stealing is legal and most every team does it. It's just sad that Michigan may get severely punished over this and our University probably will not fight back much, unlike SEC schools who tell the NCAA to go fuck off.
January 4th, 2024 at 12:20 PM ^
Stallions himself was a good in house sign stealer and could diagnose well.
How do we even know this?
January 4th, 2024 at 6:41 AM ^
I think most of the rest of the world except for OSU and MSU fans have moved on. 11W keeps shouting BUT THEY CHEATED from the rooftops, but nobody except them really cares anymore. Michigan is proving further on a week-to-week basis that Stallions wasn't the reason for their success.
That all got put to bed the minute Michigan beat OSU, and slammed into the face of any remaining stragglers at around 8:45pm EST on Monday night.
I'd suggest OSU fans focus less on Sign-Gate and more on the existential crisis their program is facing.
January 4th, 2024 at 11:12 AM ^
I was also under the impression that no one cared about the Connor Stallions stuff at this point other than 11w/RCMB types. Michigan in the national championship game is a nightmare for them so they need to take comfort wherever they can.