About That Podcast
We took down the mgopodcast version of yesterday's Roundtable, which requires some explanation. Unfortunately I'm not sure this explanation is going to satisfy everyone, particularly because Ace and I are currently not of the same mind on many of these issues. If it was just up to me I would not have pulled the podcast, but Ace felt very strongly about it and I did not. If you'd like to listen to the segment and come to your own conclusions it's still on WTKA's site.
FIRST, AN APOLOGY
Calling Michigan State the Fightin' Larry Nassars was a textbook definition of hubris and I should not have done that.
I do still think there was a major gap between the modern universities' reactions. MSU gave Lou Anna Simon a golden parachute and their regents fought tooth and nail against any sort of accountability. Michigan doesn't appear to be running the same playbook. Now, it's a lot easier for Michigan to do that because current higher-ups in the university are not directly implicated; almost everyone is dead. What they would do if they were looking at consequences for their own selves is in doubt.
[After THE JUMP: the segment]
OBJECTIONS NEED TO BE ADDRESSED
I don't think Sam Webb did anything wrong in the segment. We've been doing this for years and one thing that's pretty common on the roundtable is Sam bringing up arguments that he's heard other people make, on all sorts of topics, to get my reaction to them. Sometimes this feels like Sam bringing me stuff that his role as a relatively neutral radio host and recruiting reporter prevents him from addressing as directly or forcefully as he might otherwise want to.
So it's important to note that Sam began this segment saying that Michigan had a "span of indifference across decades, that "Robert Anderson was allowed to operate with relative impunity," and that "the report is a concession, now the question is what comes next." He directly stated that the content of the report was damning and that he accepted it.
Then we said some things about what was next, and Sam brought up a couple of arguments that he has seen or heard elsewhere that challenge the idea that we should take everything down and rename everything. These were:
- That Bo's culpability here was less than Joe Paterno's and that the crime that was enabled was somehow less or different.
- That there are many historical figures, like Yost, who could be subject to a similar re-evaluation.
Sam is sometimes very explicitly clear that he is not holding the viewpoint he is expressing; here he did not pause and have one of his ALL CAPS "this is not a thing I think" moments, but listening to the segment again he is clearly bringing up arguments others have made, and does directly state so in passing a couple times. We then address them. Anticipating counter-arguments and addressing them makes persuasive writing stronger and I feel that's a process we undertake on the Roundtable regularly; I'm glad Sam brought those topics up so we could talk about them.
The results of those conversations were more or less:
- Comparisons to Paterno are invalid and unnecessary because the important thing is what the standard of this university is and whether Bo met it; he did not.
- Maybe memory-holing big chunks of the athletic department's history isn't the best way to go about things and we should consider whether to incorporate Robert Anderson into the public-facing part of Bo's legacy (and Yost's racism into his) instead.
I think both of those things are worth saying and may not have been said if Sam didn't bring up challenges to our point of view. I think that made the segment stronger.
SOME ITEMS WENT OFF THE RAILS
Craig had a passage in the middle of this segment that I did not directly address on the podcast that I disagree with vehemently. He first agreed with what I said and then said "in terms of Bo, here's the problem" before launching into a discussion of how people don't see things the same way and that we can't really know how culpable Bo was based on recollections of conversations from a long time ago.
This may be true but I completely disagree with Craig's reasoning here. ESPN's summary of the Wilmer Hale report:
In addition to a former student worker saying he raised concerns to Schembechler in the 1980s, investigators were told by three former members of the football team that they told the coach that they had a problem with Anderson's treatment.
One conversation may be misconstrued in the memory. At least four—and I'm guessing the report is not complete—coupled with a widespread, jocular attitude towards the open secret in the program…
"We also learned of more than a dozen additional instances in which Athletic Department personnel heard jokes or rumors about Dr. Anderson's examinations, some of which highlighted Dr. Anderson's propensity for performing sensitive examinations for no apparent medically appropriate reason."
…means it beggars belief to imagine that Bo Schembechler did not know about the problem. And what's more, it doesn't exonerate him in any way if he didn't. It was his job to know. Schembechler was the sort of infamous coach-tyrant very popular from the dawn of time; there are many stories out there about him holding onto memories and grudges as fuel. Stories about his exacting detail at seemingly every level of the program. Stories about recruits walking in and asking for money, and then being shown the door with their recruitment over.
Schembechler was clearly capable of hearing something he thought was wrong and taking direct action about it. That's not a bad summary of his career. So for Craig to hem and haw about what we know and how the exact details of what was present inside Bo's brain felt both incorrect and beside the point.
For what it's worth, I talked to Craig about this and he wrote a response after:
I believe my comments on the roundtable yesterday were inarticulate. Or more so than usual. I apologize. I do not believe the pain of the victims of Dr. Anderson should be minimized. These victims suffered and the University (and, plainly, some persons employed by the University) enabled the reality. Nor do I believe that their accounts of what happened to any of them should be trivialized or marginalized. Their stories deserve to be heard. To the extent anything I said implied anything else, I apologize again; this was not my point of view, yesterday or today.
If the University decides to take the statue of Bo down, I will not object.
SO WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT?
The university now has to address the contents of the report in a formal way. I'm not zealous about any path they take except obviously they cannot let the status quo stand. If they decide to memory-hole everything, I get it. If they take the route we suggested in the podcast where the statue is modified to include Robert Anderson in some way and the museum portion of Schembechler Hall has a prominent display explaining what happened, that feels fine to me too. But I'm just a guy on the internet. I didn't play for Bo; I wasn't abused by Anderson. It's not my call.
Sports aren't that much fun anymore. It's now just an endless cycle of people in power doing shitty things and people without power being taken advantage of, much like the rest of life.
It's always been that way and was only worse in the past when it was harder to shine a light on the problems.
Yeah, what I think Cam is saying is not that any of this is new, but rather that knowing things happen in your pastime just like in life is taking the joy of the diversion sports traditionally presented out of it.
We always knew Ty Cobb was racist, we were taught that from birth and it was baked into our opinion of him. But now we learn that, just like virtually every other person of the era, Yost was too. And it diminishes our pride & passion in Michigan's illustrious history.
We discover virtually every person in the Canham-era AD, and for all we know all the way up to the University President, knew about this Dr doing invasive & unnecessary procedures for decades. It again diminishes our pride in the greatness of the University.
So, less fun now, less pride in our past. BUT... how this is handled gives us an opportunity to be even more proud of where we are, and where the University is going!
So it's not all bad, just joins the chorus of world events diminishing the importance & joy of sports, not just at Michigan but really across the entire spectrum.
I’m sorry for copying and pasting so much, but this part of Yost’s story is hugely important. I do not think his name should be removed from the building or history books because he learned, grew and evolved as a human being. There’s a lesson for all of us in his story.
https://annarborchronicle.com/2012/03/16/column-the-other-side-of-fielding-yost/index.html
Despite Yost’s error in judgment in 1934, Ward believed Yost had successfully “flip-flopped from being a segregationist” two years earlier when Ward made the team.
Ward recalled his first trip to Chicago with the team in 1932. At the time, black players usually stayed with local families because the pricier hotels still did not accept black guests. Sure enough, when the team tried to check in, the hotel manager told Yost they did not admit blacks, and they weren’t about to start now. According to Ward, Yost became outraged.
“‘We’ve been staying at this hotel since 1900,’” Ward recalled Yost saying, “‘and we’ll pull every [Michigan] team and I’ll get other Big Ten teams to not stay here!’”
The angry appeal to their financial interest was enough to desegregate the hotel for one night. Ward became only the second African-American to stay in the hotel, the first being the singer Marian Anderson.
There are other examples of Yost’s surprising change of heart from his racist past. He successfully lobbied to get black track star DeHart Hubbard into the university; he volunteered his influence and field house to support an athletic exhibition to raise funds for the Dunbar Center, a local organization that promoted social betterment for African-Americans; and he started Benny Friedman, a practicing Jew, at quarterback in the mid-1920s, then helped him become athletic director at Brandeis University.
This is not to suggest Yost became a pillar of social justice. But, for the son of a confederate soldier born six years after the Civil War, the examples above do indicate Yost at least recognized the changing times, and had begun to change with them.
"We always knew Ty Cobb was racist, we were taught that from birth and it was baked into our opinion of him."
Except we don't. Read Charles Leersen's recent biography of Ty Cobb and come back and tell me you "know" he's racist. You don't know anything about Cobb or Yost.
Thank you!! Cobb was the victim of a bullshit piece of "journalism" that baked in myths. Link. In the good old days, people wanted heroes and villains and definitely not complex humans. So people were lionized despite their shortcomings (just like the topic of this thread) while others were unfairly raked.
Thank you! I have always been a huge Ty Cobb fan (grew up in Detroit largely before the 1961 piece) and have always considered him to be the best player ever. Much of what I have read confirms what the linked article says, and I am glad to have that point of reference.
I was hoping someone would post this about Ty Cobb. By all factual accounts he was the absolute opposite of a racist, especially back in his day. Thank you YT.
It’s fascinating how reputations can be built or torn.
Mind-blowing article! Thanks for sharing.
Yup, Cobb had his rep destroyed by Al Stump, a consummate fabricator and swindler. Temperamental? Yes. But Cobb was neither a racist nor a psychotic. Glad I got my head turned around about him a few years back. Fuck Al Stump. Cobb was a great fucking player too. In the top 5 all-time, no doubt.
Did you ever read (or watch) The Junction Boys? It's basically a story about how Bear Bryant physically abused his first team at Texas A&M in some incredibly dangerous ways (like having grueling practices in the heat without water). It ultimately lionizes Bryant for doing so because the team was tough enough to win a few more games a few years later.
Like half the team and most of the upperclassman quit before the season started.
The shitty things aren't new. The shitty things are now being reported, unlike in the past. If anything fewer scandals like this are happening because there is more oversight.
But since we're talking about events of 40 years ago, it's hard to say that sports aren't fun now. These things happened then. It's just that the world's willingness to listen to victims and the internet's ability to create a platform for the powerless, has changed our awareness. Sports just used to be about everyone involved in their broadcast/publication not bothering pay any attention to anything but wins and losses and the single dominant narrative.
This. Or some of it, anyways.
Society was different back then in a number of ways. Back then there was a sense that you could get away with things; obviously, there was no social media like there is now, or internet for that matter. All the norms from 'back then' were based on norms that those folks had to experience and live with in their past. I'd like to think that slowly things are getting better, and have been getting better, but yeah, slowly. We are talking human beings here. Now, with social media everywhere nothing gets hidden and things are coming out. Things are going to continue to come out, from both the living and the dead. Hopefully, as time moves forward there will be less racism, sexism, whatever; we probably have to get rid of a generation or few of people for the impact of social media to cause society to come to an even newer 'norm'.
Yeah, we're in an era of moving a lot of rocks and finding that what's hiding underneath ain't all that pretty. It's pretty wormy and gross.
So I’m 87. Do you want me to die today or should I wait until tomorrow so I can say goodbye to my kids and grandchildren. In my opinion social media is a very destructive force. Anyone can charge anyone with anything with the safety of anonymity.
Having said that let me add Bo and I are of the same generation and we all knew that sexual assault or sexual invasive behavior was totally wrong. However victims were often ignored and reporting was much more difficult giving perpetrators a veil of silence. I’m glad conditions have changed. Yost like Jefferson lived in eras when social values were different and their conduct should be judged by the norms of their times. From the dawn of human history until the 19th century human slavery was the norm in most societies including Africans in Africa. And slaves were routinely sexually abused. Doesn’t make it right but it does make it history which we must accept just as must accept that not every one loves us.
Medfordblue, I was certainly not talking about EVERYONE of previous generations, just the ones that we are writing about here that got away with bad things, or promulgated bad things. There are fine, fine people in every generation; unfortunately, there are also some real bad ones. Heck, for all I know there are more bad apples now than ever before, but maybe with social media these bad apples will think twice about screwing people over. You go enjoy your grandkids and live a long, blessed life, Go Blue!
As much as it feels lousy to learn learn about these things about a university that we love, we can take pride in how the fan base and hopefully the university reacts today. We can take pride in the fact that there is now, today nearly universal condemnation not only for Dr. Andersson but also for those who joked about and tolerated his abuse.
"The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice." We can take pride in today's response, which confirms that we are furthering the direction of that moral arc, even if we look at the past with horror.
This feels very much like a "when you know better, do better" situation.
There wasn't the level of scrutiny (or, at least not public scrutiny) back then. It doesn't make it right. It makes it a fact.
We have the ability now to right those wrongs. We can ask the tough questions NOW. And when those tough questions bring to light wrongdoing, acknowledge it. Face it head-on. It's okay to have complex feelings about your love of Michigan when things like this come up.
I agree with you, Cam, but I will add that I'm pretty sure these things have always gone on, but now it's much easier -- and much, MUCH more acceptable -- to bring them to light. It sucks, especially since like a lot of Michigan fans, I felt that one of the appeals of Michigan over others was the fact that we do things in a more appropriate way.
That appeal is gone now. To be clear, Michigan is now in the MUCK with PSU and MSU, and I'm less of a fan because of it.
EDITED to ADD: I got to this topic late and most of what I said has already been put out here. Sorry to double up on a lot of this.
Thanks Brian for providing your thoughts not just on the topic at hand, but also why you decided to remove the podcast from the front page.
But I have to say, I re-listened to the segment this morning and I cannot for the life of me see what Craig did was so wrong. At least not to the point where you had to remove the podcast from the front page. Was it inarticulate? Sure. But he was definitely NOT defending Bo in any way shape or form. Perhaps stating that in the notes section for the podcast that you don't agree with Craig's take is enough.
But, like you, I'm just a guy on the internet. This is not my blog, so I'm not really complaining that you removed the podcast.
I put this the thread yesterday that got almost instantly locked but I don't think Craig raising the point that the main participants are long deceased (on the university side) and the fact these events took place up to 40 years ago is not going to lend an ideal situation in 2021 to figure out the 100%, full and complete truth of who knew things or didn't know things - notwithstanding what they did or didn't do about them - is an unreasonable stance. Now, some may find that irrelevant or disagree with the premise but I don't understand why that made the whole podcast disappear - he never denied anything.
You totally understand it if you’re honest and take the time to think about it.
people are afraid.
They don’t wanna be disliked and crave being accepted and liked even more than they are afraid.
They removed it for fear of rejection of opinions that wouldn’t fall in line with the internet mobs.
It’s common. Some folks know they do it and others aren’t even aware because they are so programmed.
In many instances it’s low level cowardice and narcissism dressed up as virtue and empathy.
Just like on a thread from a couple days back this one too is filled with erase/cancel/remove and the like.
it is overreaction which is typical today.
This podcast was removed because that’s who we are now in this society and it’s also why we are failing.
Someone above said sports aren’t fun anymore.. bullshit. Sports are fun. The people who watch them and report on them aren’t fun.
Society as a whole is unbelievably imperfect but that same society judges everything through a lens that asks for perfection.
Most folks are fence sitters. They won’t take a stand and hold a position even if they feel deep conviction on it because they don’t want to ever be on the wrong side.. or what society views as the wrong side.
This blog is dominated by those personality types.
Just stop it with this cancel culture narrative. Ace is a victim of abuse and they took it down because he said it seemed insensitive to him and therefore it may be difficult for others. I applaud such empathetic leadership from the blog.
I’ll “just stop it” when it’s no longer an issue.
It is an issue.
I’ll be honest and blunt, I’m tired of hearing from posters about Ace’s abuse as if it’s an excuse. It simply isn’t.
I myself am a victim, and many of us are victims in our lives from many things. It doesn’t change the truth or what I stated and it will never excuse “cancel culture” as you call it. There is no greater cure to the ills of society than openly talking about them and also creating an environment that allows all opinions and ideas to be discussed intelligently and honestly.
Stop using “he’s a victim” to justify Ace’s thoughts or response. I (and based off of statistics probably many others on the blog are to) am also a victim and think completely differently.
There was nothing remotely wrong with this podcast. You guys were having an honest discussion on a difficult issue.
just because people think differently or maybe are even wrong is no reason to dismiss, belittle, or attack them.
I truly enjoy Ace’s sports opinions but it seems like anytime Ace opens his mouth or tweets about something other than sports he shows what an immature sad individual he is. Not because of his views but because of his tone towards opposing views.
At some point Brian needs to decide if Ace adds enough value to his business to warrant his employment. Maybe the traffic to the site indeed does say that but if not he really needs to think about letting this dude go. I know I will no longer read Ace articles after many incidents of behavior I don’t want to support. Hopefully a day doesn’t come where I have to swear off the blog entirely.
Brian and Seth keep up the good work. I hope this didn’t hurt your relationship with Sam.
I don’t think you understand the basics of cancel culture. In fact it seems like you are describing the exact opposite.
Did you not read Brian's post? He basically said this was Ace's call. Whether you agree with that or not you have to admit that Brian is a pretty great boss for taking down content that hits so close to home for one of his employees.
Of course I read it. Did you read my post? I said I was cool with removing the podcast from the front page. I just offered up a potential compromise if something like this happens again in the future.
But your post got me thinking. It seems that Ace, between what he posts here and on Twitter, is particularly sensitive to several topics. Will Brian coalesce every time Ace has a gripe?
while coalesce almost works in this context, i believe the word you are looking for is acquiesce
(sorry i can't help it)
#michigandifference
Front runner for sexiest post to ever grace this blog.
While I agree that taking the podcast down seems bizarre, especially because it’s just an easy link away, I think your extrapolation to take a swipe at Ace is unnecessary. Brian took down a post about sexual assault because his employee who has been sexually assaulted felt strongly about it and Brian thought that made sense. To suggest Ace will own all editorial decisions because of his temperament is a stretch and mostly just a lame effort to take a shot at Ace. And I’m not a fan of a lot of Ace’s non Michigan opinions (or more accurately the way he expresses them).
I in no way took a swipe at Ace. I didn’t even extrapolate anything. I merely asked a serious question.
If you read on in this thread you’ll see that I talk up his writing. And if you think what I said in my previous post was unnecessary, you should read the rest of the thread. Lots of people took far greater and more direct swipes at Ace.
I strongly believe Michigan failed across the board re the scumbag's doctor's actions. I believe Bo failed and is an asshole. But I listened to the roundtable and didn't detect much that was objectionable. Craig's bit about the vagaries of memory was a little borderline, but I think his words were just a bit clumsy, rather than ignorant. It was a pretty thorough and fair-minded conversation, all in all, and I don't feel like it needed to be pulled -- though, of course, it's not my website and the editors are free to do as they please.
I think a little wiggle room can be given in the situation when there are four people on Zoom doing live radio within 48 hours of the release of the report. They are all clearly still working through their thoughts, learning from points that others brought up, and trying to put nuanced thoughts into words, in real time. It is a tough situation for football and basketball analysis, and they talk over each other, get into disagreements, cut one another off before one can finish a thought with complete context, and so on. It's even harder to do with such a sensitive subject and I thought they did as well as they could.
My only criticisms were some of the dry jokes that everyone on the Roundtable are nomally so good at felt out of place with such a serious subject. There were at least twice while listening I felt a little icky at everyone laughing at each other. But that's a minor critique, not something going nuclear over.
Agreed about the laughter, but I never felt like anyone was trying to make light of what happened. When people talk about really terrible stuff, sometimes they will resort to levity to de-escalate tension and process their thoughts.
Agreed.
While I consider howls of "cancel culture" to be the latest of many invented moral panics and almost completely disingenuous, I do agree with people like Bill Maher who believe nuance in public conversation is almost dead. Context, intentions, and state of mind matter in judging actions (I'm not exonerating Bo here, I felt let down and I'm fine with removing the statue, etc).
Craig was introducing some nuance to the conversation and suggesting not everything is so black and white, good-or-evil (or "Manichean" to Michigan this up a bit). Maybe he's wrong, but that's all he was doing.
Nice post, Brian and good comment WindyCity.
Bo’s own book with friend of the site John U Bacon gave his opinion on leaders who claim they “didn’t know” things they 100% should have known. Using lawyerly weasel language to argue that we can’t know that Bo knew how bad the abuse was is something Bo himself would have condemned in any other leader.
I think this is a really great post Brian. Going all the way back to your Sympathy for the Devil post about Frank Clark, I think you have historically done a great job of being levelheaded on tough topics, and your last line here says that perfectly, "I'm just a guy on the internet. I didn't play for Bo; I wasn't abused by Anderson. It's not my call."
I also think this is a good job of not turning a one-day story into a two-day story. This is probably the kind of thing that, handled passively, could run a business into the ground. But the way you guys seem to be directly addressing it, the post and podcast, itself, will probably be out of everyone's memory come July.
Again, great work to all you, Brian, for the writing, and all you guys for the effort you put into the blog that goes unnoticed.
I think removing the podcast actually turned this into a story that should not have ever existed in the first place.
In reality, it did exist, though, and an MGoBlog either 1) without Ace or 2) with an unaddressed tension between Ace and Brian would lead to a much longer story than a post on a random Friday, in my opinion.
For what it's worth, I never even listened to the second part of the podcast and only listened to the part about Clink and the golden years of 2007-2009 parts, so I don't really know what all the uproar was about. It was great stuff as usual.
Perhaps we're talking past each other on this, and if so I apologize.
With that, the main focus of all these posts should be on the actual report, the associated shortcomings the university played in findings in the report, and how to fix it. About 90% people, by proxy of the posts in this blog, are aligned on this. Which, BTW, is a crazy to think that this blog could come to virtual consensus on anything these days.
However, by posting the podcast on the front page long enough for people to react/post, then subsequently removing it, creates a story that not only should not exist, but detracts from the more important topic (of which is described in the paragraph above). For example, if they didn't remove the podcast from the front page, would Brian feel compelled to explain it in a full post today? Probably not.
Lastly, please do listen to segment 2 of the roundtable. I'd be curious to get your thoughts.
Gotcha. Thank makes sense. I'll check it out.
I just listened to a little bit of it and then turned it off. I've had a really good day and this topic would just put a damper on it, as selfish as that sounds.
I would probably fall closer to your side of keeping the post up rather than taking it down, mainly because Hip Hop music and South Park have made me pretty numb to getting offended by things, and I would bet any money I wouldn't have found anything insensitive. But it's not my call. I support the MGoStaff. Based on the summary Brian typed up here, it sounded like everyone was trying to take emotion out of it and present many different perspectives. That seems like a good thing to do.
Lastly, on College GameDay this year David Pollack said something along the lines of, "don't nitpick everything these kids are saying [on social justice stuff]. Vocalizing your thoughts is actually a really difficult thing to do well. We are considered professionals at it and still have a tough time." I remind myself that a lot when someone says something to me that causes an emotional reaction.
Well, removing the podcast is such an ACE thing to do. The guy is about as thin skinned as it gets.
I am fine with Brian's desire to respect Ace's feelings on this issue. Sexual assault is awful and can be traumatic for anyone, regardless of how tough they are.
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