November 16th, 2023 at 3:39 PM ^
As an an attorney, I don't understand how you "resolve ... pending litigation" by simply accepting the punishment already doled out. Why wouldn't you fight it?
It can't result in anything worse, and you might be able to win on the equities. And if you can't beat it, there seems to be a lot of reasons you at least want to punt the remaining suspension down the road until next year. We're nearing the end of a potential championship season with a team the likes of which we haven't had in over 20 years. This makes no sense.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
You are an attorney and you can’t figure out why Michigan wouldn’t fight it??
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
They did terminate the investigation
November 16th, 2023 at 3:46 PM ^
Unless the big ten promised to completely fuck off if we just accepted it I have no clue why we would.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:44 PM ^
Well, Michigan could have lost the case and not ended the investigation, and bad facts could have emerged. And this provides a time-served argument when the NCAA investigation is complete. Plus, it is a distraction for the university and the team.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
Say it ain’t so
November 16th, 2023 at 3:41 PM ^
Petition to make all "B1G" markings on all university uniforms monochrome
November 16th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
any anti-conference sentiment is over now, we're accepting the suspension. They'll waive the B1G banners proudly in 3 weeks
November 16th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^
This is dumb and I don't like it.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
I still believe in Santa.
It would’ve been nice to be a fly on the wall during the decision making process. Santa, Jim, Warde, Regents, attorneys? I wonder who all was involved and what the deciding factor or factors were.
If it truly was to return focus to the team and the players, that’s something I can understand and get behind. If it was to end this because there are more skeletons… I don’t know, what the fuck is going on…
November 16th, 2023 at 4:06 PM ^
Why believe in Santa with respect to this? He started strong, but gave up at the 11th hour. I genuinely don’t get why they would give up if Jim had no involvement. To me, fighting for Jim would’ve given me more faith in him than waiving a white flag before the battle
November 16th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
Dbl post. Damn internet
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
Harbaugh can still coach all week. If Penn State had trouble stopping Michigan's run game, hooo boy, OSU is going to have some trouble. Michigan will win again and coach will be back the following week.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:45 PM ^
Another slightly silver lining is that Day was probably hoping Harbaugh would be there . . . . . an OSU win with Moore coaching is not likely to get the monkey completely off his back. Feldman's argument anyway.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:53 PM ^
Hooray, our best chance to win a national championship in my lifetime ends with “at least Ryan Day won’t be completely happy with beating us”
This whole thing has been embarrassing and pathetic. I would rather get nuked by the conference in a blaze of glory than admit to this shit
November 16th, 2023 at 4:45 PM ^
Same, much rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
man what the fuck. that sucks
November 16th, 2023 at 3:43 PM ^
Stupid. No backbone.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
The only plus is that Paul Thamel did not leak the deal.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
So this all-powerful law firm says...bend over and take it??? great advice. Dewey, Cheatum and Howe could have said that.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:47 PM ^
My attorney friend said the commissioner has “too much discretion.” That’s probably what UofM needs to address, but the best time to do that is after the season. Let cooler heads prevail.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:06 PM ^
It was W&C vs. Sidley Austin LLP.
W&C is great, but I’m not surprised how this turned out. Sidley is great in its own right and probably better in the Midwest.
I think too much was made of a narrow reading of the conference rules. It was never a slam dunk that Michigan would win. This seems like a cost-benefit decision. We’ll probably know more soon.
Rest assured that no one can keep quiet. They haven’t so far.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
I still want Pettiti blood!
November 16th, 2023 at 3:50 PM ^
"but Main Street's still all cracked and broken!"
November 16th, 2023 at 3:45 PM ^
What do we gain from rolling over like this? No coach for OSU now, great.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:45 PM ^
This doesn't feel great for a lot of reasons
No Jim for OSU
Feels like there's something else bad there that UM doesn't want to come out or deal with.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:46 PM ^
The only way I'm ok with this is if the B1G has decided not to stand in the way of M leaving the conference.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:16 PM ^
I really hope that’s the case. I don’t have much hope left after the letdown today
November 16th, 2023 at 3:46 PM ^
Santa is not a wartime consigliere.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:46 PM ^
I’ve been as optimistic as most up until now. The university rolling over now looks weak as fuck.
Either the program is dirty and this deal is meant to hide more from coming out, or…I can’t think of another plausible reason to sit down and take it like this.
wtf UM “insiders” saying “UM has a binder of stuff” and “they’ll go scorched earth before accepting a penalty”. Insert well we’re waiting gif here.
the capitulation is more embarrassing than the actual allegations at this point because of all the bluster thrown up in the defense since last weekend. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic
November 16th, 2023 at 3:46 PM ^
That powerful law firm sure earned their money
November 16th, 2023 at 3:53 PM ^
Looks like both sides came to their senses and decided that mutually assured destruction was not the best path forward. Both Brands were being damaged and they needed to come to an agreement on how they were going to move forward together.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:02 PM ^
Exactly, the whole "fight them to the bitter end" posturing looks sad now
November 16th, 2023 at 4:11 PM ^
Agree 100%. I have been watching this former OSU player and neanderthal Kirk Barton, who had his media credentials pulled, end up being more credible than our so-called insiders and it is embarrassing. If we have a binder of ammo what the hell are we waiting on? The threat was there but we tucked our tail up and caved again.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:25 PM ^
Henschke and Hole look silly today. Whoever was feeding them info either wanted to get a certain message out or something changed dramatically since all the bluster of last week
November 16th, 2023 at 3:48 PM ^
AGAIN osu gets what "they wanted" out of the situation. ALSO -- we all KNOW that the CFP will put them back into the "Final 4 Playoff teams" even if Michigan beats them in the Big House. They want to GIVE the CFP to osu. It's so obvious.
As a fanbase, we need to have a crowdsourced approach to spotlight on osu football for the next 50 years looking for ANY minor indiscretions.
We need resources (including PI firms and Public Relations) to call out osu "cheating" and then weaponize any suspected information in the media every week.
Drip Drip Drip....
Go Blue.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:48 PM ^
I am just curious as to why they would do this now, that's all.
I actually think that the University and Jim probably would have eaten a two-game suspension had the two been Penn State and Maryland and there may have been not much fuss about the length, just grumbling about the circumstances, and rightly so, of course. That they've agreed to this is rather unexpected to me and I would love to know why. My totally unevidenced and thus functionally worthless guess is that there is a dimension to this as yet unknown to the public, because otherwise it seemed like they were ready to fight.
As for the fight, it seems possible that they became less confident in their chances, but again, I haven't the slightest in reality so feel free to totally ignore that guess too.
Larger point being, I just want to hear the logic used beyond what is in the statement.
November 17th, 2023 at 12:02 AM ^
I think the logical conclusion is that there is assuredly something behind the scenes that hasn’t been made public yet and that it’s not flattering to say the least.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
Why didn’t we take the 2 game suspension weeks ago then?
November 16th, 2023 at 4:25 PM ^
Was that an option the big ten offered? Honestly asking because I can't remember. Was that when they met with Santa Ono?
November 16th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
So it feels like the university knows it was going to get nuked from further investigation and agreed to close the investigation with the Big Ten, but it doesn’t say anything about the NCAA investigation? Wanna take a wild guess what they’re going to do to us if they find any more evidence?
November 16th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
only thing I can think of is more damaging stuff was found and Harbaugh chose to lay on the sword to protect his staff
November 16th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
So much for Michigan vs. Everyone
Should probably cancel that order for the $75 hoodie I ordered last Saturday after the Penn State game. More like Warde vs. Michigan
November 16th, 2023 at 4:18 PM ^
I’m not a fan of Warde at all. With that being said, this is on Santa not warde
November 16th, 2023 at 4:30 PM ^
I ordered one on Saturday, too, and I still don't have any update on it being shipped out. I might jump on canceling that.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:37 PM ^
I ordered a t-shirt but now I'm going to burn it.
November 16th, 2023 at 4:39 PM ^
Also ordered a shirt and just went to the MDen site to see if I could cancel, but they don't even have an option on the website to do so. Idk why I ever try to order from them when order fulfillment is always slow, they never have listed items in stock, and almost never add anything new. Haven't had fitted hats in like 2 years.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:51 PM ^
I hate getting emotional over this, but I feel like we were all played by the University.
November 16th, 2023 at 3:57 PM ^
Or were we played by each other? Cases get settled before trial all the time, it's not at all unusual. Did we all jump on the "We're going to sue the Big Ten into oblivion" train because that's the fantasy? There were some legal opinions on this board that said they thought the case would be dismissed. Did we only believe the legal opinions we wanted to believe?
November 16th, 2023 at 4:23 PM ^
The statements and comments from university, warde, and the regents would lead a rational person to have some belief that we were going to fight this. It’s not mgoblog imagined the injunction or regents conversation about leaving the b1g. There were reasons reasons to believe that we would take on the b1g.