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:

1. That Bo's culpability here was less than Joe Paterno's and that the crime that was enabled was somehow less or different.
2. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.