Could NCAA case impact Denard's Heisman run?

Huh?

One word: Freep

That should tell you everything you need to know.

What?

No

Seriously?

If you put something before the cart that is before the horse, what do you have?  We need a phrase for that.  That's what's happening here.

The Freep is putting the cart tracks before the cart before the horse.

Easy fellas.

Well obviously the only reason Denard is capable of being one of the most electifying players in college football is directly related to the extra 15 minutes of practice he had each day during his freshman year.

I've run out of things to say about that raving bunch of jackanapes.

Reading anything from that paper is rougher than dating a hot girl with a bad laugh.

Wathakepolanhogopa kekgxhsjsbzhsv. That's my opinion...

A couple of years ago one of my professors, who is from North Carolina, said in class:

"Detroit has the worst newspaper in the country."

Again he is from NC and this was in Denver, CO.

Clearly the freeps reputation proceeds itself.

My former professor is a published author and is very well respected around the country. 

They can have his heisman.

XOXO,
Reggie Bush

First, it wasn't even a Freep-staff product.  It is an Oakland Tribune story.  And so this reaches a basic, bottom-level of newsworthiness for the Free Press... how?

I'll be honest; I've never heard of the Oakland Tribune writer before.  I'm not sure I even know what the "Oakland Tribune" is.  Is it "Oakland" County, Michigan?  Or Oakland, California?  Isn't our local "tribune" called the Royal Oak Tribune?  [Edit. - Monte Poole is a national sports columnist for the Oakland  -- California -- Tribune.  And I now see that Freep.com has moved the story off of its home page, since this thread was started.]

Then, in the article itself, the writer seems to wonder out loud how, why, or if an NCAA investigation would affect a Heisman vote at all.  The Heisman Trophy is not voted on, awarded by, or controlled by, the NCAA.  The writer says that the NCAA's investigation of Michigan wouldn't affect him at all.  So what's that all about?  Then there are the inconvenient facts that the NCAA's deal with Michigan will be history by the time the Heisman vote occurs in December... and on and on...

Thanks, Freep.  We thought perhaps you had forgotten about Michigan.  We should have known that you'd never miss another chance to exploit a "Michigan/NCAA investigation" headline, no matter how tenuous the story.  This wasn't even a "story" in the ordinary news sense.  It was a days-old column by a staff columnist from another paper.

What a monstrous trash-heap of an institution.

If Michigan's medical school found the cure to cancer, this is what I'd expect from freep:

"U-M's School of Medicine found the long-sought cure for cancer. If only it were that simple. Any chance of the cure actually working is complicated by circumstances surrounding Michigan’s football program..."

Because Denard credits teammates, coaches, family, God, and pretty much everyone but himself for his success, the fallout from the Bush Heisman should go in his favor.  I think the Heisman Trust is going to pay a lot more attention to a word that appears in their mission statement: integrity. 

Despite the blatherings of instate "journalists" who are still fighting Rosenpuke's war, nobody in the race so far screams "integrity" louder than Denard does with his deflection of accolades.  Right now, Denard's story is more compelling than that of any of the candidates.  If he continues to perform well and stays healthy, Denard has a very good chance of winning it this year.

Just when you think the Freep can't get any more stupid...

The Freep is probably the worst media outlet in the country, maybe the world.  There is a reason for the ban.

Kirk Cousins could murder someone, go to jail for 15 years, be accepted back at MSU (come on, you know it could happen), then win the Heisman, and the Free Press would write an article about what a great story it was for Cousins to turn his life around. 

We go 30 minutes over practice time and the Free Press tells us Denard has no right winning the Heisman because we're filthy cheaters. 

The Free Press is getting really old. 

What would that mean; getting "hammered hard"?

Naturally, it almost goes without saying (but perhaps it should not) that the Michigan investigation is now widely known to have been started under the dubious circumstances of a wretchedly flawed, and laughably tainted newspaper story that the University of Michigan was not afraid to call out in a formal response to the NCAA as being "grossly exaggerated if not flatly incorrect."  We know now what the NCAA investigators found, and put into its Notice of Allegations, all of which Michigan has already responded to with what I would frankly call a slap on its own wrist.  Not because Michigan didn't take the matter seriously.  But rather because the real allegations (unlike the newspaper's allegations) were mostly piddling, laughable kinds of technicalities.  Deserving of no more than a slap on the wrist.

Of course the one thing that I take seriously, and which the University has not only taken seriously but formally contested with the NCAA was the one single allegation made against Head Coach Rich Rodriguez.  That Rodriguez failed to encourage an atmosphere of compliance within the program.  We'll see about that one.

And in the end, there is nothing that even remotely touches on Denard Robinson or any other individual player.  Not the slightest reason to suspect that there is any reason for the NCAA to have any concern about Denard, and virtually no sensible reason to suspect that Michigan might "get hammered," whatever that might mean.

So I think that we are mostly right in thinking of this column as a fundamentally silly, baseless and unimportant one.  Not sad, not true, and mostly just stupid.