Crimes and Misdemeanors

Submitted by Swayze Howell Sheen on November 17th, 2023 at 3:23 PM

(Spoiler Alert: If you haven't seen the movies Crimes and Misdemeanors, there are spoilers herein; go watch the movie first!)

So before Woody Allen became a persona non grata, he used to make good films. Dare I say, excellent films. Funny, thoughtful, interesting. A number of them stuck with me. One in particular: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).

The film tells a few interleaved stories. There is the one of Woody Allen's character, who is competing for a woman's attention with Alan Alda's character. There is the one of Martin Landau's character, a successful doctor who is having an affair. And in the backdrop, a kind of third story, of a rabbi played by Sam Waterston. 

Well, the Woody Allen character doesn't get the girl - she'd rather be with the prick played by Alda; the doctor has the woman he's having an affair with killed -- rather than tell his wife and ruin their lives -- but gets away with it; and the rabbi slowly goes blind.

The UM version: a team/coach that is so desperate to create a narrative about why his team is losing to another, that he'll hire some PIs to dig up dirt; they'll craft a PR campaign that the media amplifies for weeks; the other team will end up firing its staff and looking bad, while barely getting to defend itself.

Sometimes, the Good Guys don't win. You don't get the girl; the killer gets away with murder; the righteous go blind; the team from Down South plays some dirty tricks and gets away with it.

But, a ray of light: the ending isn't written yet. It takes place November 25th, noon. Can UM rewrite the ending? Or will the Bad Guys get away with it?

 

Comments

Wendyk5

November 17th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^

Loved the movie. What's going to be the equivalent of Sam Waterston going blind? Let's hope it's not us fans having to go back into the dark days of mediocrity. I refuse to fall into the pit of pessimism, I'm just trying to stay neutral here and not get ahead of the events as they're happening. 

Neuro_Blue

November 17th, 2023 at 7:28 PM ^

Interestingly, he basically remade it in 2005 as Match Point. Changed a lot of stuff, including the setting from NYC to London, but a lot of the thematic elements are comparable. Both are fantastic films, IMO. 
 

 

DHughes5218

November 17th, 2023 at 11:50 PM ^

Do people still think it’s OSU? I think that’s giving them way too much credit and/or power. Didn’t the Big Ten or the NCAA already say that there’s no evidence of their involvement? It just seems to me that it’s much more logical that it turned up during the Weiss investigation versus OSU’s coach hiring someone to hack our computers. The university wouldn’t just give access to an outside firm so they would’ve had to hack them and I would think our university has people monitoring and looking for system breaches. The simplest and most realistic explanation is the Weiss investigation. 

Hensons Mobile…

November 18th, 2023 at 8:15 AM ^

Do people still think it’s OSU?

Last I heard, Hole still says yes but you can take that with as many grains of salt as you like.

Didn’t the Big Ten or the NCAA already say that there’s no evidence of their involvement?

After doing minimal to no investigating on the matter (because it's irrelevant to them), the NCAA made a statement that there is no known connection.

It just seems to me that it’s much more logical that it turned up during the Weiss investigation versus OSU’s coach hiring someone to hack our computers.

We still don't know how the Stalions files were actually accessed. I think most people agree it's not some high-tech computer hacking. It may have been illegally done, it may have been legally done, or--as you say--it may have been part of some other investigation. Although how we get from FBI uncovers NCAA violation to private PI firm obtains these documents is not an easy jump to make.

brad

November 19th, 2023 at 11:33 PM ^

I thought the Washington Post article at the beginning of the scandal pointed out that they received the info from a PI outfit of some kind, not from the NCAA or other institutional investigation.  That is the origin of all of our thoughts that this was a scheme to take out M Football hatched by Ryan Day because he knows he can't beat Harbaugh.