When dealing with a tyrant (Petitti Snowflake)

Reasonable take. They also avoided entrenching a bad precedent if the commissioner's authority to wield SDE were confirmed in court.

I have been able to outlast the management shitheads above me unless they were owners.  This clown shall pass, hopefully hoist on his own petard.

Imagine how mad you're going to be when juwan smacks izzo around and gets the pettiti hammer 

I believe (hope) this isn’t how Jim wants. To go out. So I for sure see him signing a new contract the week of the OSU game! 

We need to get the fuck out of the Big 10.

And if it turns out the Regents are behind this capitulation, they ALL need to go.

I spent years dealing with, and being accountable to, a wholly unaccountable regulatory enforcement agency. It was a nightmare. I've worked at companies that were penalized for things made up out of whole cloth by the auditors--including an expensive fine based on a claim we proved was physically impossible due to the first law of thermodynamics--and the nature of the beast is, no matter what proof you have, it doesn't matter. No matter how absurd or lacking in supporting evidence their claims are, it doesn't matter. They fuck you at will.

Fighting back within the framework of their own rules is suicide. The B1G is not accountable to their own rules, clearly. They can act arbitrarily and capriciously.

If we didn't expect a good chance of relief from the courts, and having that relief available consistently, then dragging them into court was only going to "poke the bear" and not lead to good things, especially long term. Petty bureaucrats like that will hold grudges a long time. So, if we didn't expect a high probability of success, then we absolutely should take it on the chin and keep our heads down, try not to draw any attention to ourselves and get better at preventative defense (i.e. take a lesson from the SEC schools on how to cover your tracks). Brianna Barksdale wasn't as pissed at the police for arresting D'Angelo; she was primarily pissed at Avon and Stringer for not having a decoy car. Wisdom is knowing that rule mongers will use any rule against you and it's up to you to block them on every front.

Ultimately, this makes sense. The MGoLawyers presented good arguments about how ridiculous the B1G's case is, how it wouldn't fly in court, etc. But that view is through maize colored glasses. Severe skepticism around how much leverage the courts would be willing to exercise over the conference's internal governance was clearly the stronger bet in this case. Absent the courts, you are playing on the B1G's turf where they, like the NCAA, are judge-jury-executioner. It is what it is. Michigan's only viable option has always been to vote with their feet and GTFO--but that's not terribly realistic, either. At the end of the day, winning cures all and we're in a good position to keep it up. Go Blue or Go To Hell.

If you know it is a snowflake, then why do you feel compelled to post it?

The damage is done.  In an age where you can pay players, transfer portal... We get dinged for this, lol.

Who knows what really went down, but regardless of what did, the biggest long-term issue is that Pettiti has now found himself (and a source in the future of) intra-conference political capital in case he needs it, and that capital is at our expense.

You bet that if he gets himself into a bad spot and/or job in question, he has:

1) direct evidence for 13 of the 14 schools that he’ll take action on their behalf

2) a “well” that he can go to that will take it

This isn’t making something go away, this is kicking a can down the road, and inviting him to do it again when he needs to (or wants to maintain good faith with the general membership not named the University of Michigan).

Someone needs to get to editing out “we bow to no one” out of James Earl Jones’ intro.

As an aside, this is the same crap as I have with my other alma mater (Syracuse).  I’m sure that many of you have the narrative of SU basketball cheating.  A player works reffing basketball games during summer at the YMCA and gets paid $200, and a tutor corrects a footnote at the bottom of a player’s term paper and SU rolls over and takes it - multiple seasons of wins vacated, crippling scholarship losses - Same shit, different university.

I wish Michigan was like SU lacrosse in the early 90’s - a coach’s mom co-signs a car loan (no money changes hands) and the NCAA vacates a national title.  So SU refuses to give the trophy back, it goes into hiding (maybe it’s with the ‘98 MClub banner…), and they raise the banner anyway.  F the NCAA. https://www.syracuse.com/orangelacrosse/2015/05/syracuse_lacrosse_coach_john_desko_on_vacated_1990_title_we_felt_we_won_the_cham.html

And while we’re at it with Michigan, raise the f’ing banners.

Every so often a conference goes crazy on penalties. The Pac-10 dropped like a sack of hammers on UW in 1993, when they didn't deserve it and on USC in 2010, when they arguably did. And they didn't leave until they could get more money somewhere else.

The biggest unanswered questions for Michigan are (1) how strong was our compliance program; (2) how much competitive advantage did we get; and (3) were other lower level staff aware of the scheme?

Hopefully the answer to 3 is no - if Michigan is aware of other staff who knew about this program and hasn't suspended them, the NCAA will kill us and we'll deserve them. But nobody other than Michigan and maybe the NCAA knows for sure, especially about 1.

Especially if our compliance program is bad, the *best* we could do by litigating was to get the initial punishment lifted, then get a much worse punishment next year. And if this is the only punishment we get, I think losing Harbaugh and even our legal signs program for the two biggest games of the season (and Maryland!) is in the range that a neutral person might say is fair.

What I'm wondering is what leverage we had (in the short term anyway). Petitti had the support of most if not all of his other member institutions. Who's to say if the Harbaugh ban got overturned he wouldn't put in some more punitive measure like a post-season ban. He's shown he will act without due process on spurious grounds.  To me the settlement seems more like a cease-fire than Michigan admitting defeat.

Long term, I believe relationships have been permanently damaged, and I would not be surprised to see Michigan leave the conference (at least for football) as soon as possible. I also expect a Harbaugh extension to happen if he does not go to the NFL.

If Jim is onboard this would be easier to swallow but if CR is to be believed the Regents did an end run and the lack of support may force Jim out to the NFL due to this foundation of sand under him unless he is privy to a strategy of our eventual league withdrawal or a plan to force Little Titti's ouster.

I still feel the other B10 member animus in support of this has to be the threat of Jim's position on sharing revenue and league wide already laid plans for its expenditure at current planned for levels unhindered by a major reduction. Title IX fairness funding for facilities and such comes from this windfall doesn't it?

I'm never buying another BIG10 anything ever again in life, for any reason!!! Ever.

BET