The B1G must suspend Kirk Ferentz for three games immediately
This is a rules violation and is by definition, cheating. As we all know, the B1G does not tolerate cheating and has already set a precedent by suspending a coach after receiving video evidence that an employee of the university had in fact broken rules.
This player admitted publicly that the Iowa coaches contacted him during the season.
Kirk Farentz must be suspended.
K
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:26 PM ^
+1 for content
-1 for Farentz
Net 0
Seriously though, I don't see anything coming from this. We all know the B1G went after Harbaugh for a reason.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:31 PM ^
46 - just curious - what do you think the reason for going after Jim was?
Personally, I think there were two (2) reasons. First - revenue sharing. Second, because Harbaugh coached Michigan football was winning solidly on the field - and that impacted the O$U status quo.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:37 PM ^
Because OSU/MSU aggressively pushed the "player safety" narrative and Petitti fell for it.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:52 PM ^
That and he was convinced it was an insurmountable competitive advantage.
All of the "proof" in the Big Ten's letter was just Stalions being near the coaches, which again, proves nothing about advanced in-person scouting or competitive advantage or that the other coaches knew anything about how he acquired any informaiton.
January 23rd, 2024 at 6:00 PM ^
It's almost understandable, at first, given that he came from the baseball world where sign "stealing" is a hot button. And he isn't really a "sports guy", he's a suit, in a brand new role, brand new operating environment... and he had basically the entire conference membership howling for blood. And he fell for it.
What I don't forgive, or understand, was the persistence. But I guess at that point, he had painted himself into a corner, with no viable way out.
The precedent was set, however, so he should have to deal with this in some non trivial way. We'll see.
January 24th, 2024 at 8:28 AM ^
It became a dick measuring contest. Once that happens there's no way to back down. It's why letting the stupid escalate is always a bad idea.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:57 PM ^
Do you really think Petitti is that apoplectically stupid?
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:05 PM ^
I do.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:21 PM ^
No, I think he has a small penis.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:45 PM ^
A petite "D"?
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:53 PM ^
The family named themselves after it
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:36 PM ^
This is a trick question, right?
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:36 PM ^
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his windfall condo profit depends on his not understanding it.
January 23rd, 2024 at 6:02 PM ^
I thought he had already sold the condo... how was that conditional? Genuine question, perhaps my memory is cloudy.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:42 PM ^
You are kidding?
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:49 PM ^
Hi background is more TV than sports, but to the extent it was sports, it was MLB. I assume he immediately saw no distinction between Stalions and the Houston Astros. In Houston's case, the coaches and executives knew about the scheme and approved of it. And MLB itself had recently warned teams to stop doing anything along the lines of what Houston did. (Similary, in the New England Spygate thing, the NFL had warned teams not to do what NE did, and NE went ahead anyway.) There was no gray area; Houston knowingly, intentionally cheated. And as Deion said, it's a huge advantage in baseball. None of those considerations apply to what Stalions did, but Petitti didn't know enough about either situation to draw any distinctions, and Harbaugh / Michigan are not sympathetic victims of the idiocy that went down. Fortunately, we delivered the only real F You we could by winning it all anyway.
January 23rd, 2024 at 5:01 PM ^
It's funny, not that the situations are the same but the Astros, Patriots and Michigan all got embroiled in cheating scandals that everyone said was giving them a significant competitive advantage and in all 3 cases, their play did not drop off at all after the "scandal". 2 of the teams (Patriots and Michigan) won a title the actual year of the scandal and the Astros have made the playoffs in 4 straight years since the scandal, winning a World Series and losing another.
January 24th, 2024 at 8:35 AM ^
I'm as big of a Dodger fan as you will find and as much as I hate the Astro's, the '17 series came down to Kenley blowing a save in Dodger Stadium in Game two and the Astros knowing how Yu Darvish tipped his pitches from being division rivals when Darvish was with the Rangers.
The Series that really came down to cheating was '18 against the Red Sox. The two out hitting by the Sox that year was out of control and Cora came from Houston. BUT Houston is not the hometown of 80% of sportswriters the way Boston is and therefore the Red Sox thing never got much attention. If you want to find a team that fell off after the cheating...the Red Sox seem like a better candidate.
January 23rd, 2024 at 4:52 PM ^
Absolutely. He also came from baseball, where the Astros had a sign-stealing controversy that mattered.
January 23rd, 2024 at 5:39 PM ^
I get your point. He cannot be that stupid that he really believed it (doesn't mean he didn't act on it anyway.)
However, the comments above are hilarious.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:58 PM ^
I'm very concerned about player safety regarding this Proctor matter. He's a big fellow, and he could hurt someone. A 3 game suspension may not be enough.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:47 PM ^
Saban sicced the NCAA on Harbs first. Before he ever coached a game at Michigan.
The Ohio wasn't too concerned until 2016. Then they got the NCAA to pile on heavier. Once 2021 happened The Ohio pretty much went Russia style nuclear - hey lets put a spy over here - hey lets accuse them of cheating when we're the ones cheating - hey lets get those refs that love our players asses. Harbs has had snipers from all angles aiming at his head for a decade.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:06 PM ^
An interesting point. Saban was 15-17 in the NFL. Harbaugh was 44-19-1.
It might just be part of the reason why SEC coaches didn't want Harbaugh conducting camps in talent rich areas of the country. That was just another "very logical and balanced" NCAA decision / rule created for the SEC.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:24 PM ^
Yup, Harbaugh with equal or better raw talent than all these snake oil coaches would dominate CFB.
Very few can create the culture where development and competition are embraced and bring about brotherhood instead of bitterness. Pete Carroll, another who achieved in both college and the pros (albeit a very very different personality than Jim) was also the rare unicorn that could win at both levels - although his USC squads were stacked with high end recruits.
Don't get me wrong, this UM squad was stacked with NFL talent, but based on the "talent composite" from recruiting sites, they clearly overachieved. A coach and a staff simply don't just "hit" on this many under the radar recruits - statistically impossible.
Jim and staff just know ball, both from identifying talent and developing it for specific schemes. Elite staff.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:36 PM ^
Great points - and, I agree with you.
I reference the 247 Team Talent Composite (TTC) - and, took a look at it recently. Part of my "look" was because of something Joel Klatt mentioned last week - that the playing field was "getting more level" in college football. Candidly, I don't know if that's accurate - however, it is an interesting thought.
Over the last nine years - according to 247's TTC - there was a correlation between talent and achievement / results.
In the 9 years that I have both CFP and 247 TTC data - Michigan is the only team to win the NC with "less than" Top 10 talent. In only three of the nine seasons has a team with "less than" Top 10 talent won - Clemson ('15 season), Clemson ('18 season), and Michigan ('23 season). In five of the nine years - teams ranked first or second in TTC won.
If you remove Michigan (who was 14th in TTC this year) from the nine years of data - the "average" TTC ranking of the eight previous CFP champions was 3.5.
As for Harbaugh and Michigan's staff - I agree with you. They'll outscheme and outcoach any team in College Football. And, it may also indicate how large of a difference culture, development, and effort can be.
I'll always appreciate that Bama had 18 5* players when they faced Michigan - and Bama fans were complaining that their team wasn't talented enough.
January 23rd, 2024 at 4:52 PM ^
So why was everybody including Saban in on thwarting Harbaugh and not other coaches of good teams? So you’re saying Harbaugh was too good of a coach so the successful ones now couldn’t bear the thought of him getting Michigan into a super power? How is Michigan ever going to be consistently good again if everyone, including the NCAA, is against them? Is it a Harbaugh thing, a Michigan thing, or a really good coach thing?
January 23rd, 2024 at 5:47 PM ^
Why is it statistically impossible to beat recruiting rankings in the way Michigan did? Recruiting rankings are not measurable data, they are a dozen people's opinions translated into a number. As many of the stargazers around here point out, many of our best players are our highest ranked ones, so that isn't outperforming anything. As also noted elsewhere, the team composites include the recruiting rankings of freshmen who may never see the field, or players who are injured for that season, and does not consider roster composition (see, State, Ohio WR room) - all sources of "talented" players that are generally irrelevant to the product on the field.
The rankings industry exists for the sole reason to sell subscriptions to fans, therefore it stands to reason that they cater to the schools who have the biggest number of fans willing to pay for a subscription, and generally these fan bases want to be told they are getting the best players. So they tell them what they want to hear within some level of reason...to sell subscriptions. Then every year after the draft they all put out some variation of the same article that is dripping with confirmation bias that "proves" how good and accurate recruiting rankings are.
I don't think it is a coincidence that Michigan greatly outperformed recruiting rankings in an era where COVID turned them upside down for ~18 months.
January 23rd, 2024 at 4:48 PM ^
So if that’s the case, then when will Michigan ever win again? If this happens every time Michigan is good, where OSU does more against us off the field than we did, while we mad much more dirt, and this happens….when are we going to be able to be good and nothing happens?
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:48 PM ^
The simplest explanation is that the rest of the Big 10 hates Harbaugh. Why? First of all because he is not part of the "good-ol-boys-coaching-club". Perhaps the most insightful example as to how Harbaugh is not in "the club" was the whole James Hudson transfer situation. Every other coach in American is fine playing the game, checking the boxes, and signing their name to whatever is needed to make a transfer go through. Jim actually took the document seriously and said, no, I'm not gonna play that game. Based on all we know about Jim, this is most likely based on who he is. But to Luke Fickell (and every other coach) this was him being a dick. Combine this with the second fact - he's a really good coach of a really good team at a University that is universally hated by rivals and you get whole big pile-o hate from the other Big Ten coaches and ADs.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:54 PM ^
I don't remember the Hudson drama, just that he transferred (the only thing I feel like I remember is that he didn't like us trying to move him from DL to OL, Cinci promised him he could play DL, and then moved him to OL anyway). What happened there?
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:01 PM ^
Michigan didn't sign off on the excuse that Cincinnati and Luke Fickell were trying to use to get an exception from sitting out a year after transferring. Short story, Hudson told Cincinnati he transferred due to depression, Harbaugh said that Hudson told him it was due to playing time and never said anything about mental health. So Michigan could not collaborate it because they were not aware of it and allowed the NCAA to decide.
This is where Harbaugh also said that players should have a right they have never had and be able to transfer once without sitting out. Which ended up leading to the transfer portal. Does it all make sense now? Harbaugh is known for opening doors that everyone else wants welded shut.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:09 PM ^
Another story I have heard about Harbaugh is back when he was coaching Stanford, he complained to the league about USC having game officials at their practices. He felt that gave USC a competitive advantage. (He may be right about that.) But Pete Carroll’s response was if it’s such a big advantage, why was USC leading the league in most penalty yards. What’s your deal, indeed.
January 23rd, 2024 at 3:12 PM ^
I believe the biggest reason is something harder to define. People always call Jim "odd" and "abrasive" and comment on his personality all the time like it's just something we're supposed to assume is true.
However we want to define that, there are people who interact with him and don't like him and then try to bully him because they're dumb babies. I think the latter is hard to do to an extremely successful adult millionaire, but in my opinion the relationship with the NCAA and Big Ten is one where they are trying to bully Jim Harbaugh, as stupid as it sounds.
January 23rd, 2024 at 8:37 PM ^
Yeah, I agree and my post was meant to be a bit sardonic. Obviously they arent going to suspend him, his name isnt Jim Harbaugh.
Side note, they wont suspend Farentz because he understands the nuance of building alliances or as I always reference, playing the game of survivor in real life. As much as we all know that the NCAA has a hard on for Jim I kind of feel like he kind of brings it on himself. Farentz on the other hand is a master gamesman and understands the survivor concept.
Something I learned recently that proves just how good Farentz has been at Iowa. Iowa has more players on NFL rosters than USC, UCLA, Texas, Texas A/M, Tennessee and Auburn. Crazy
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:29 PM ^
A bit of a tangent - or perspective - from the OP's comment. "by suspending a coach after receiving video evidence that an employee of the university had in fact broken rules"
What rule did an employee of the university break?
This is a real question. Since, it is unclear to me at this time exactly what "the rule" is. Regarding Advanced Scouting - what is - and is not - permitted? Even the NCAA's guidelines on this are not very clear and distinct.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:35 PM ^
Yeah, this was my first thought. It still is unclear that any rule was broken, at least with what has been released publicly...
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:50 PM ^
33 - we're on the same page.
The B1G determined it was the Sportsmanship clause - which is completely subjective. Oh - the player safety item too.
Regarding Advanced Scouting - it's been noted more than once - if any advantage could be gained, it would be minimal. And the reason for the 30+ year old rule was to create a level playing field because of cost. Even the NCAA discussed removing the rule in its entirety during the past two years.
It is very unclear what any violation of an NCAA rule was. After all - it wasn't like Harbaugh worked with a local Lamborghini dealer to ensure Maize & Blue Lambos were available for every player prior to their commitment. Or, that Michigan (to my knowledge) spend $ 800K on an OV - like Texas did for Manning - which was perfectly fine to the NCAA.
Who sits on the Rules Committee for the NCAA?
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:58 PM ^
Yeah, and I feel like there's legitimate substance to the "gray area" defense. E.g. is hiring someone to record a game a violation of the letter of the rule? I certainly don't remember seeing any definitive proof that Stalions personally attended any games (the CMU stuff seems like it's faded into obscurity). Etc.
January 23rd, 2024 at 7:29 PM ^
The rule is, on it's face, too vague to be enforced.
The NCAA rules specifically apply to school employees.
One rule is: In person advance scouting of future opponents' games is a violation.
Another NCAA provision states specifically: Sign Stealing is legal.
The NCAA has ruled that it does not violate any rule to pay professional videographers and experts (using professional videoing equipment) to video college football games of future opponents and then helpfully edit the video. So this does not constitute prohibited in person advance scouting.
Stallions apparently asked numerous people to use their phones to make a video of games of future opponents and give the videos to him.
In light of what the NCAA has ruled, it is not reasonable to say that what Stallion did was prohibited by the no advanced scouting rule.
January 23rd, 2024 at 9:27 PM ^
I have always wondered about the "professional" definition. Does someone have to earn money doing a task to be called a professional? Then how about someone buying top-end gear and using them, but not getting paid? Still professional? The quality of the product is very high and one can do a ton of things with them, but still free. How about no video? How does someone stop phone cameras from recording video?
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:58 PM ^
Yeah, and I feel like there's legitimate substance to the "gray area" defense. E.g. is hiring someone to record a game a violation of the letter of the rule? I certainly don't remember seeing any definitive proof that Stalions personally attended any games (the CMU stuff seems like it's faded into obscurity). Etc.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:30 PM ^
Is contacting a player to give them encouragement when they are going through a rough time really tampering?
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:33 PM ^
No it's "pampering".
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:41 PM ^
Is that like buying them a cheeseburger?
Edit: sorry GRBlueFan, I should have scrolled down farther.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:35 PM ^
By letter of the law, definitely. Is buying a commit a cheeseburger when they are on campus really a violation?
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:37 PM ^
It could pretty easily cross into tampering. "Sorry you are having such a tough season, but there's always room for you here at Iowa." That could be enough to be seen as encouraging him to leave and offering him a spot elsewhere. The "NIL" could be worked out later or by another party.
IF the NCAA and the B1G actually cared about the integrity of the game, they could at least investigate what was said and/or offered.
January 23rd, 2024 at 2:45 PM ^
No need to investigate - that precedence is set within the B1G. And Michigan agrees with it because they dropped the lawsuit against it.
January 23rd, 2024 at 5:40 PM ^
I hope they dropped the TRO and not the lawsuit (if there ever was one.)
January 23rd, 2024 at 7:06 PM ^
Is there anything left to litigate? The penalty's already been paid, and in a form that doesn't allow for reimbursement if it was wrong.