bagmen
We got what we thought were great coaches, changed our schemes, had the benefit of OSU losing Urban, and were playing winning football. And yet, we still saw our best players get wiped all over the field. The only conclusion I can make is that OSU simply gets better players than we do. I can’t imagine that changing unless college football rules are changed so it is no longer an amateur sport and M starts paying players too.
When did OSU start paying their players to the extent they do? Does that line up with the last 15 years of record in The Game?
December 1st, 2019 at 1:06 AM ^
I've got like, $36 and some change...
December 1st, 2019 at 2:22 AM ^
Hang the fucking banners!!!! Start paying for players!!!!!!!
December 1st, 2019 at 9:24 AM ^
Bagman:
December 1st, 2019 at 1:13 AM ^
If you study them closely, their level of preparation is off the charts. Their recruiting is very good too. I think they are like in the top 5 every year. As long as they keep winning, they are going to continue to get top recruits. Meanwhile, we are falling more and more behind. It might help to recruit and develop a solid QB recruit. I would have thought harbaugh make our QB play better, but he hasn't really. We just suck now. We are not elite.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:23 AM ^
QB development has been a backbreaker. Having the 2016 # 6 QB -Peters and #1 Patterson (Haskins was 8th) and getting 3-4 games of solid QB play is mind boggling. The talent has been there but for whatever reason they didn’t develop.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:28 AM ^
It’s recruiting. Harbaugh needs to hire an elite recruiting staff. He needs to get out of Michigan and recruit better high school players who play against better high school competition. Harbaugh has to find a way to recruit because these classes full of fluff are extremely deceiving and it shows against the better teams.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:13 AM ^
Take a lap for this shitpost
December 1st, 2019 at 1:15 AM ^
Neg me to oblivion. Start paying or keep losing...
December 1st, 2019 at 1:20 AM ^
Preparation is a lot easier when you're going up against an undersized, technically limited D-Line and Metellus is the deep safety.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:28 AM ^
I think it is more that the highly ranked recruits want to play for a team that will reach the playoffs. OSU is that team and Michigan is not. We will never narrow the talent gap as long as OSU goes undefeated and makes the playoffs or even win the NC. We really need the playoffs expanded to 8 games.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:29 AM ^
Tressel. It started there
Most forget or weren’t alive yet when U of M dominated OSU in the 80s and 90s. Even when they were on an apparent national championship run, we’d beat them. Three times they were undefeated, but we beat them. It’s why they fired Cooper - despite having the second most wins of any OSU coach, he couldn’t beat us, so they fired him. Desperate to win, they turned to someone who cheated. Tressel won at Youngstown State (the area where I grew up) by getting key players paid.
The evidence was there before tattoo-gate... Troy Smith. Terrelle Pryor’s cars. He wasn’t a great coach, which is why he usually got whacked in bowl games against other cheaters (hello, Urban!), but he had better players than clean programs like us. Lloyd Carr would never cheat or allow it, and the delta began. Tressel got caught, so they got another, Urbz. He was also a very good coach, unlike the mediocre Tressel, so that took the benefits of their cheating to another level.
To be clear, I define cheating broadly... not just bagmen, but also skirting academics (“We didn’t come here to play no school”) or recruiting criminals or having assistant coaches who... well, you know.
It’s hard to beat the cheaters, to quote someone who knows.
Some of the evidence is real (zat you, Chase Young?), some circumstantial. It all adds up where we are. Ryan Day has inherited all of that. He’s a good coach and knows what to do with it. This won’t change until the players get paid, as they should, and the playing field is leveled (somewhat) again. Until then, we should appreciate the fact that our coaches go out their every day knowing the deck is stacked against them yet try to find a way. We should appreciate that our players chose the proper path. And we’re still winning 9-10 games year anyway, unlike USC, Texas, Florida State, Texas A&M, Miami (YTM), UCLA, etc.
Who’s got it better than us? Depends on whether you want to sell your soul, doesn’t it? The tide will turn.
December 1st, 2019 at 3:08 AM ^
It goes back to Maurice Clarett.
December 1st, 2019 at 5:21 AM ^
Hear, hear!
December 1st, 2019 at 7:09 AM ^
This...totally. There is no disputing the talent differential, and the means to that differential. I honestly thought this team would be 8-4, so they exceeded my expectations. Hopefully the program can fall into some talent at key positions that could make a difference in the tough games.
December 1st, 2019 at 1:31 AM ^
100% right. Chase Young got paid and so do all their good players and everyone in the SEC and Clemson. Screw it, but being an old, conservative guy who believes in pure amateurism, its been overrun. I'm swallowing hard about Cali but their law paying players is the only way out now to level the playing field and give us a fair shot.
December 1st, 2019 at 2:03 AM ^
Man the shit posting and excuses run rampant after a big loss.
Does anyone think that maybe some kids go to OSU because of their elite coaching and like to win?
December 1st, 2019 at 2:11 AM ^
Gene $mith is a bad man.
December 1st, 2019 at 3:24 AM ^
Are you a buckeye fan? Be honest?
December 1st, 2019 at 8:46 AM ^
Read up on the history of early college football. The concept of amateurism is a joke. Many players weren’t even students enrolled in the universities and were being paid.
The simple fact is that college football has been about big money for a long long long time. The Michigan athletic department is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. If you want amateurism, drop divisions and make it a club sport. I’m not saying you need to go out and cheat, but college football, even at Michigan, hasn’t been about “amateurism” for a very very very longtime.
December 1st, 2019 at 10:30 AM ^
Neither have the Olympics, and everyone is perfectly fine with that at this point. Civilization did not collapse when they dropped the charade of "amateurism".
December 1st, 2019 at 3:33 AM ^
We should get some bagpipemen. Kids today love the bagpipes, right? Think of "The Victors"...played on bagpipes! Recruiting gold!
December 1st, 2019 at 5:23 AM ^
Yeah! We'd tell them we'd like them to meet some bagmen, but first they have to sign, and after they do we'd usher in a corp of bagpipemen playing 'The Victors'! Genius!
December 1st, 2019 at 3:43 AM ^
To be fair there is no evidence that UM doesn't pay it's blue chip players also. It wouldn't shock me that every major program are buying players, and at this point I don't think the NCAA gives a shit really unless you are a program that isn't one of it's cash cows. It could be the case that the program has just been perpetually buying lemons, and OSU has just been lucky that the players they bought panned out.
December 1st, 2019 at 5:26 AM ^
To be even fairer, there's no evidence that Michigan pays it's players. We're no Ohio State; if that shit was going on around Ann Arbor it would be front page news.
December 1st, 2019 at 7:15 PM ^
For there to be evidence you would have to get caught somewhere. Some organizations, and people are either good at, or lucky at not getting caught.
December 1st, 2019 at 10:27 AM ^
Psssst: Here's how it works . . . unless they are Ole Miss stupid, the school and its coaches never directly pay the players.
There is a network of alumni and agents and opportunists floating around out there that put $$ in players' pockets, including Michigan players.
Clemson even uses churches because they have tax-exempt status, off the record finances.
They all make sure there is plausible denial against any direct connection to the coaching staff.
Coaches know this goes on and look the other way. And they could not stop it if they wanted to.
December 1st, 2019 at 7:28 PM ^
I know how it works dad.
December 1st, 2019 at 2:22 PM ^
How the hell do you prove that you're not doing something? The fact is that Ohio State's actually been busted multiple times and there's always been a ton of smoke there. Michigan football has never been busted for any major recruiting violations, academic scandals, or for violating amateurism statutes. It is not true that every program cheats on a large scale. That's just something that fans of schools who are constant cheaters say to justify believing that their school is noble and deserves everything they get.
Well, they're not and they don't. Chase Young shouldn't be playing amateur football right now. And if the NCAA did their jobs most of those kids from Texas and Florida wouldn't be in Ohio either.
December 1st, 2019 at 7:37 AM ^
If everything was 50/50 and the teams had comparable talent, you could say that at least 50% of Michigan starters could also start for Ohio State? But I'm afraid that less than a 1/3 of our starters could start for them. Maybe a couple WRs, a couple of OL, one DE, one DB?
December 1st, 2019 at 7:40 AM ^
Asst Coaches don't matter, schemes don't matter, when there is a talent issue, and a motivation issue.
December 1st, 2019 at 9:28 AM ^
This doesn’t explain why Harbaugh never wins as an underdog, or why the team continues to make stupid mistakes every game
December 1st, 2019 at 9:35 AM ^
We started playing our new offensive scheme this year. OSU has been running the same offense for over 10 years.
December 1st, 2019 at 10:19 AM ^
I don't exactly know about the past, but Ohio State has reached Alabama-level critical mass where they don't even have to pay players to go there.
Hell, they could get 4-stars to pay them to go there.
December 1st, 2019 at 11:11 AM ^
Ohio State's main recruiting advantage over us is not the bag $$. Money finds its way into the pockets of all top D1 recruits, directly or indirectly connected to the schools.
The main difference is academics. From Andy Katzenmoyer to Adolphus Washington to Cardale Jones, Ohio State makes it clear to elite recruits in word and deed that you don't have to "play school". Somebody will take care of that for you. You can just come in and hang out for three years on your way to the Pros, and work on your craft with no real academics to get in the way.
Michigan, and especially Harbaugh, makes the players "play school". They have to go to actual classes and perform actual class work.
Let's not kid ourselves, Michigan players are still not regular students. They get a lot of individual help and they can take a lot of cake courses. But they still have to do some level of academics.
It is flat out more fun to be an Ohio State University football player than it is to be a University of Michigan football player. Football is extremely demanding and time consuming, and academics are an additional burden on top of that.
OSU has a lot of appeal to many elite recruits who typically believe their future is NFL $$$. Classes are just an abstract burden that gets in the way.