Matt Schembechler to hold press conference tomorrow, not good
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/06/09/schemb…
He's going to say he told Bo he was abused by Dr. Anderson when he was 10 years old. Will be joined by Daniel Kwiatkowski, a Michigan Football player from the late 70s who was abused by Anderson 4 times, and Gilvanni Johnson who says he was treated and abused by Anderson 15 times.
This is awful and heart breaking. My only thoughts are with the victims, no one else matters as much as they do.
I don't know, there are victims who think the current admins botched it pretty badly starting in 2018 when they first found out about it.
Hey look, all the Bo stuff is on sale.
I'm gonna go ahead and safely bet that the "Bo Knows" and "WWBD?" shirts aren't gonna age well....
I got the WWBD shirt as a gift years ago. Off to the trash bin.
Bo Knows is only $5!
Yikes
Yeah I have a couple hard cover books with bo on the front ....those are in the trash I can't even stand to look at them!
I have one of the most cool Bo shirts. I was one of the first people to buy the Bo shirt that was in the manner of a Che Guevara silhouette. The Schembechler family put a stop to it immediately due to copyright reasons. They eventually inked a deal and the shirt was produced mass scale, but until then I would get comments on how cool my shirt was. That's going in the trash.
But I guess I should have known. In the matter of Bo, Che Guevara was a scumbag person that people still seem to revere.
Should change it to "Bo knew"
I fucking just tossed "Bo's Lasting Lessons" in the trash (err, recycle bin).
I'm about to become a father for the first time and the fact that you can currently buy Bo shirts in infant/toddler sizes kind of disgusts the hell out of me right now.
I mean, I think you should give it some time. This is all fresh, really fresh. I'm fairly sure these will be removed soon.
I forgot I have a Bo shirt. I feel so dirty.
Jesus. This is just…I don’t know… “terrible” doesn’t seem adequate.
Heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking. What more is there to say?
I would have never dreamed that this could have happened. If true, shame on Bo and his legacy.
It hits different when you become a parent. I can tell you right now, if anybody abused my child I would make sure they never did it to anybody else again. Its gross and pathetic for somebody to not only ignore your children, but the kids youre supposed to mold into young men as a football coach.
Im somebody who values loyalty and tradition - Take the statue down, and rename it all.
Tear it down, rename it, remove his name from every sign, book, record that exists.
So, consistent with our calls for PSU to get the death penalty, is this it for the football program?
No...not at all. Because Michigan alums are a better class of people...and hypocrites
No because at Penn State the enabler coach was still coaching and the child abuser was still hanging around the facility. In this case both men have been dead for years.
That's why you fire Sandusky and JoePa. I was calling for PSU to get the death penalty, not because it was still going on, but because everyone responsible for overseeing JoePa and Sandusky knew about it and let it continue. The institution of PSU failed the kids. The same is true here. Bo and Anderson were never punished during their lives. If anything, that fact alone arguably makes this worse than PSU.
My question goes more to institutional punishment as opposed to personal punishment. It goes to the culpability of the persons who should have been overseeing the athletic department, Anderson, etc. To what extent should the school itself be punished (beyond the lawsuits that are going to get paid for by MI taxpayers) for the actions of its agents?
That’s a great question, and one that should be asked. The rub is that institutions are living, breathing organizations, how do you punish them? The responsible / culpable parties are long since departed in most cases. How do you punish new people for the sins of the past? It’s pretty easy if those people are still running the school or organization, but it’s difficult to punish an entity when the guilty parties were last employed decades prior.
Everyone is justifiably outraged and they should be. There is no way to make this “right” which is incredibly frustrating. I want the people who hurt or allowed people to be hurt to pay the price, vengeance is the word I’m looking for. That’s hard to do when they are no longer here, and the exact reason why you act immediately if you think anyone you know is being harmed or has been harmed.
The institution isn't just the people that are working there now, and it's not about punishing them. It would be about taking the pound of flesh from the University now that the allegations about what has gone on before are coming out, in detail.
I’d wager that if Bo was still alive, he would’ve been welcomed with open arms around the team/facilities up to this point (assuming his health allowed for him to do that),
Geez, the last 17 or so years kind of feels like the death penalty.
Let's be real, harbaugh knew too. Either he was a victim or he must have known of teammates who were.
Him defending Bo is unreal
The FREEP article mentioned that Matt sued Bo and the school back in 1999. It sounds like this was not a healthy relationship.
(LINK)
In Jan. 1999, Matt Schembechler sued his father, U-M, campus police and school officials after he claimed they sabotaged his efforts to make souvenirs from discarded stadium bleachers. The lawsuit was thrown out in federal court a few months later.
So ~ individual who was sexually assaulted and had it covered up harbors some ill-will towards the school and leaders who did it and subsequently covered it up???
Truly hope this is not meant to be some method of calling their stories into question?
Seriously? Are you attacking somebody for simply posting facts?
Asking for clarification as this is exactly the type of "defense" many use against individuals who come forward.
Also - your next comment on maintaining a healthy amount of skepticsim is exactly what enables asshats to continue doing horrible things ~ hence why I asked ~ and how you just confirmed.
I'm just posting info that the DetNews article didn't have. I've never heard of this man until about five hours ago, so I thought this was relevant information.
A healthy degree of skepticism is exactly that, healthy. It doesn't enable anybody but it usually prevents horrible things from happening. In fact, a lack of skepticism "enables asshats to continue doing horrible things."
Interesting. Maybe there are good reasons to retain a healthy degree of skepticism.
This does seem rather different than the pattern observed in Anderson's other victims.
Matt Schembechler graduated from Huron High in 1977, which would have made him 10 years old in about 1969, Bo's first season at Michigan, and among Anderson's first victims in the Schembechler era.
I think I have heard the number of at least 800 different victims (which is utterly staggering, how does one even wrap their mind around that).
From my (definitely limited) knowledge, these victims were male college athletes, many of them over six feet tall and two-hundred pounds. Were there other victims who were small children at the time of their abuse?
We also know that predators typically target the vulnerable, and that seems consistent with the fact that nobody who was a big time player has come forward. My suspicion has been that Anderson targeted players who weren't likely to see the field and didn't have an NFL future, knowing that they really needed the scholarship and couldn't easily walk away, that the coaches and university would be less likely to be concerned about their complaints, etc.
Was Anderson abusing little boys in addition to college football players (only a handful of the 800 have come forward publicly, so it's definitely possible many others were younger at the time of abuse as well), and was he able to identify in Bo's first year, that Bo didn't give two shits about his 10 year old stepson? We may learn more at the press conference.
Matt's relationship with the program and with football does seem a little bizarre in this light as well, but stranger things have certainly happened. So Millie marries Bo, who becomes Matt's new step-dad around the age of 9. Around the age of 10 they move to Ann Arbor where Bo takes the job at Michigan, and sometime that year Matt is abused by Anderson. Matt tells Bo about this and is told to toughen up, get over it, etc. Matt graduates high school and goes on to play football at Western Michigan, while hundreds of other athletes are abused by Anderson while Bo continue to do nothing about it.
Later in life Matt continues to spend time around the program (for example, his profile picture on Twitter is a photograph of him with Jabrill Peppers) and marketing himself as a leadership consultant and public speaker (his name certainly would have been helpful in this). But he also sued the program and Bo in 1999, over his desire to sell stadium memorabilia to fund a charity named after his late mother Millie, and around that time he also approached former player Elwood Reid to write a piece about how terrible Bo was.
None of this is to say that Matt wasn't abused, and it's actually not that uncommon for victims to have extremely complicated relationships with the individuals and institutions who enabled the abuse. But these new allegations do seem in my opinion to be quite different from what we'd already heard. I wonder what else we may learn as all of this unfolds.
To piggyback off your predators targeting the vulnerable - it's easier to understand a sick f*** like Jerry Sandusky overpowering little boys and Larry Nasser going after tiny gymnasts, the majority of who were underage.
But Anderson doing what he did to big football players who are legally adults and who could easily plant him on his ass? How brazen of a predator could you possibly be?
Harbaugh looks like an even bigger jackass now.
Tomorrow, Gilvanni Johnson is coming forward at the Press Conference, he was a WR who played at Michigan from 1982-86, he was Harbaugh's teammate all 4 years Harbaugh was there. I hope he's not there to say Harbaugh knew too.
If that happens, I don’t see Harbaugh surviving this as our head coach, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
It's important to remember that Harbaugh was just a 18-22 year old during this time. If he was an assistant and knew, that would be different. We can't treat kids as if they have the same responsibilities as adults.
The point is is that he was there during the time that Anderson did these despicable things and being the quarterback and captain of the team it would be nearly impossible for other players like Johnson to not have confided in him these horrific things.
A lot of wrong that will never be righted. The unanimous condemnation and removal of Bo is a meaningful beginning.
At this point, if something is not done to remove his connection to the team, the school, etc it may just be the end of what I want to support or spend my time caring about.
These repeated stories and the impacts to victimes are honestly starting to take the enjoyment out of wanting to watch and care about college college sports to a big degree - love watching college football - but at this point seeing another video on "the team, the team, the team" makes me a bit disgusted. Thinking about the number of times growing up that you would point to Bo or JoePa, etc as great leaders ~ and now knowing the reality is pretty sickening.
Starting to feel the same way I did about the Catholic Church - I grew up in it, went to a private school - etc, but having a young daughter, how do I even come close to wanting to explain that we should support an organization that still continues to have issues with protecting children from predators. Honestly made my skin crawl thinking about having her going through classes, programs, etc and knowing I would have to be the one providing oversight at every step.
So this confirms that Bo was a piece of shit. Take the statue down and rename the building already.
User name checks out.
I think I like Berenson Field House and Thomas Harmon Hall. Harmon Hall is alliterative but we can't have it confused with that traitor Mark.
STOP NAMING BUILDINGS AFTER PEOPLE
This situation was always going to be bad for Bo and his general indifference, and I feel awful for the victims of Anderson's abuse.
Bo's legacy is obviously gone, the same way Paterno's is gone. Without contradiction from teammates, I can understand Jim Harbaugh's statement. It was a different time then. Even if there were teammates who talked about it, Jim was a coach's son and would be the last to know.
It's not like those who suffered said anything about it in the open - that's why Anderson was able to hurt so many people in the first place. The system in place then... it makes no sense now, but it was an extreme interpretation of putting team before individual. Anything that rocked the boat - even trying to doing something about something so obviously evil - was considered some sort of blight on the team concept itself.
When we call upon Jim to install a team concept as Bo did so that Michigan can beat Ohio State again (I question this, because this seems to be a recruiting and style issue rather than a team effort issue), we should keep in mind that this is how that difference was interpreted not that long ago. I am not in favor of this in any way other than trusting that the coaches know who is working hard and who isn't.
What I'd question is whether Jack Harbaugh knew - this sort of thing was not a father/son discussion for teenagers in the early 1980s. He should be questioned. Jim should definitely comment at this point as well - his last statement no longer applies.
A lot of people clearly knew. But I can say as a sports journalist around that time that it was not an open secret - maybe other more senior journalists knew (I was in the same year as Jim), but if they did, they chose not to pursue the story. This is where I think this discussion might need to go at some point. Journalists are charged with the responsibility of reporting the news - even news that might hurt the people they cover on a daily basis. If you read, for example, what Jim Bouton wrote about the fallout from Ball Four, you get an idea of the kinds of things sports journalists knew about, perhaps should have written about, but remained silent.
One of Harbaugh's teammates is in fact coming forward tomorrow. So there is going to be very swift contradiction from one of Harbaugh's WRs.
Has he said anything about whether Harbaugh knew about this? Takes it to an entirely different level if he did.