WTKA Roundtable 2/1/2018: Man Up Comment Count

Seth

WTKA cover 2-01-18

Things discussed:

  • Superbowl: Does Philadelphia have enough talent to defeat one-handed, 80-year-old zombie Tom Brady with a bunch of Ed Fengs at receiver? No. No they don’t.
  • Not talking about MSU: A lot of talking about MSU. Izzo’s response is wanting. The optics of John Engler as MSU president (problem with it isn’t politics but cronyism).
  • What Michigan can do: Take the lesson in transparency and make the FOIA office the example for the country instead of a whataboutism target.
  • Dantonio/Izzo: The ESPN investigation started in 2014 when Title IX office demanded every public university go back through their old sexual assault cases (e.g. the Gibbons one) and is separate from Nassar. The connection between the two is the institutional rot that allowed both to occur.
  • Kudos to MSU students, faculty, some of the media (e.g. Jemele Hill) and some of the people we interact with online (Izzone, Jerbear, Vanini) who’ve been advocating strongly for their school to come clean. Some of the local beat writers like Hondo Carpenter, Graham Couch are part of the problem.
  • Why are they culpable if they were duped? For YEARS they didn’t watch him, didn’t investigate it, didn’t take action.
  • Dennis from the OC: You can run for these leadership positions—filing deadline is May.
  • Caller: Insular attitude leads to this culture of hiding offenders.
  • Superbowl: Nike Foles has a trio of good backs, the best OL in the country. Ed thinks New England will blow them out. None of the guys said this but I’m saying it because I have some thoughts and I’m writing this podcast up: Philly has to man up and not be afraid of New England’s pick routes—the Patriots are masters of putting you out of your gameplan and that’s the worst thing you can do against them (see: Jacksonville, who’s one the best man defenses in the country, going to softbatch Cover 4 in the 4th quarter). Your best weapon is Brandon Graham vs. not great pass protection. Take the occasional pick play in the face, and keep Brady under pressure.
  • Blake Griffin to the Pistons: Over/under on how many games he plays before he breaks down. Long term this isn’t the answer except if it goes sour they can tank and get a real star to pair with Dre.
  • Michigan-Minnesota: shocked how bad they’ve fallen, except Ed says he’s not shocked. M picked apart NWern’s zone but Dunc didn’t make his shots.

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Audioboom.

Segment two is here.

THE USUAL LINKS

Tone and direction are important, and you set those.

Comments

Njia

February 1st, 2018 at 5:36 PM ^

I think it's pretty easy - MSU stonewalled, foot-dragged, obfuscated, and generally played "keep away" with ESPN's FOIA requests. If anything, they made themselves look really, really guilty.

There was probably no shortage of payback for ESPN, either. Once MSU decided that they were going to make it as hard as they possibly could, ESPN's editors probably made the decision to hold no quarter and make an example of MSU.

jmblue

February 2nd, 2018 at 2:52 PM ^

Back when I had a premium Rivals subscription (close to a decade ago now), I remember Dotman would give the most cryptic hints about big news to come.  Obviously, he had to protect his source, but he would go over the top with his little coded message - and then get mad when people asked for clarification.

I remember him also basically taking the Jay Bilas approach to our basketball program - Amaker could do no wrong in his eyes and Beilein could do no right.  He finally came around on Beilein though.

LickReach

February 2nd, 2018 at 11:15 AM ^

I understand why he was on the cover but it still gets right underneath my skin especially so close to a block M.  There should be a "v." or "versus" around there somewhere.  It would cushion our collective rage click on your informative and entertaining podcast.