dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
dumb dumb and dumber

Yes this is an essay about the University of Michigan Football team and sign stealing but let me make it understood that this is in no way a defense or justification or an excuse for what was done and what might be done to penalize Michigan.

As far as I am concerned, there are no allegations of cheating because they did it, Michigan cheated.

As Mr. B. Bunny might say, they were caught, crimson fisted, and again as far as I am concerned, they deserve anything that might come down the road whether its a finger waving now-now-now don’t do that again or if the team has to give up (vacate is the accepted term in sport) any number of wins, championships and records for any games played while this was going on.

What this essay is about it asking the question, “How could they be so DUMB?”

Anyone one who has read this blog should know that I like Michigan football.

Anyone who says I might be a Michigan Fanatic as never been to a Michigan football game and seen what a fanatic really looks like.

As I always say, I come by this honestly.

I graduated from Michigan.

8 of my 10 brothers and sisters graduated from Michigan.

We make up, according to the Alumni Association, the largest block of siblings with Michigan degrees.

4 of my siblings married Michigan grads that they met while being in school in Ann Arbor.

A large number of my nieces and nephews hold Michigan degrees.

My Dad graduated from Michigan.

My Grandfather graduated from Michigan.

We grew up with Michigan football on the radio in the house on fall afternoons.

As a fan I embraced the Michigan Record Book.

Longest streaks of consecutive sellouts, largest home crowds, ratings in the top 25, strings of winning seasons and the all time leader in College Football wins.

So many of those records disappeared under the coaching of Rich Rodriguez, the Morgantown Miracle Worker.

Even the all time streak of games with a sellout crowd string had to be changed to all time streak of games with crowds over 100,000.

But we kept the all time win list.

I have been watching this closely.

At one time, I predicted the goal of 1st team ever to win 1,000 games would be reached in early 2023.

That was before COVID and that threw my schedule but now, starting back in 1879, Michigan is but a few games short of being the first time to win 1,000 games.

… Unless.

Unless those in authority decide that Michigan’s cheating deserves a penalty that takes away any wins where this cheating took place.

Somewhere between 30 and 40 games.

And wouldn’t that just be perfect.

That team down south is right behind us and take away 30 wins from Michigan and …

And this is what gets me the most.

Michigan DID NOT NEED to do this.

And, yes, I originally typed that sentence as WE DID NOT NEED …

I have been long teased about using ‘WE’ when talking about Michigan.

I need anyone who might feel otherwise to point out any game in the last three or four years and say that Michigan NEEDED to cheat.

Think of all the movies, Paper Lion, Longest Yard, North Dallas Forty and the like and think of the work and the effort and the pain that players put up with to play this game.

And somehow someone felt that all that work by the players and coaches wasn’t enough and all that work and effort and pain was first put at risk and then made a mockery of by cheating.

DUMB

DUMB DUMB DUMB

How could they have been so dumb.

Regardless of how this all plays out, the damage has been done.

In the movie, Margin Call, about the 2009 bank collapse, Daniel Day Lewis in the role of the CEO says there are three ways to win in business.

You can be smarter than everyone else.

You can be first.

Or, you can cheat.

Michigan always claimed to be smarter than everyone else (that just makes it harder to understand how they could be so dumb.)

Michigan always claimed to the leaders, to be best, to be first.

They didn’t have to cheat.

draft michael jordan
we need a center – then … play
Jordan at center ...

In 1984, after coaching Michael Jordan on the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic team, Portland general manager Stu Inman called Knight for advice on the upcoming NBA draft,” Bilas revealed, before giving out a simple piece of advice.

Knight counseled Inman to take Jordan, calling Jordan the best basketball player he had ever seen.

Inman told Knight the Blazers already had Clyde Drexler and needed a center.

Knight responded, “Then play Jordan at center.”

ESPN’s Jay Bilas as quoted in “Then Play Michael Jordan at Center”: Bobby Knight Displayed His Surety in MJ’s Talent by Telling Portland GM in 1984 to Play Him at Any Position by Rishabh Bhatnagar on thesportsrush.com, November 02, 2023

too much one-track mind
to engage in every piece
of speculation

“I’m with you in the situation. You just have to let it play out, cooperate with the investigation and watch how it plays out,” Harbaugh said. “The speculation part, as I said, I have too much of a one-track mind coaching the team to be able to engage in every piece of speculation. I just channel my inner William Wallace. That’s the visual I think of to keep a one-track mind.”

Jim Harbaugh on was he aware of the sign stealing by the numb numb-nuts on his coaching staff.

I think, back in the day, this was called the ‘non-denial denial.’

As a Professor of mine said about JFK … “He took the blame for the Bay of Pigs … After all, there was no other President at the time.”

Oddly enough I would have heard this lecture back when Jimmy Harbaugh and I were in school together … along with 30,000 other students.

Oh yes, he channels William Wallace.

Oh Boy!

I cannot watch that Braveheart movie with thinking one simple thing.

If either Mel Gibson or Mr. Wallace had watched Humphrey Bogart in the Maltese Falcon that movie would have had a much different ending.

As Mr. Bogart said: “If all I’ve said doesn’t mean anything to you, forget it and we’ll make it just this. I won’t because all of me wants to — regardless of consequences — and because you’ve counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others… I won’t play the sap for you.”

As Mr. Hammett wrote it, Sam Spade said, “It’s easy enough to be nuts about you.”

He looked hungrily from her hair to her feet and up to her eyes again.

“But I don’t know what that amounts to. Does anybody ever?

But suppose I do?

What of it?

Maybe next month I won’t.

I’ve been through it before — when it lasted that long.

Then what?

Then I’ll think I played the sap.

And if I did it and got sent over then I’d be sure I was the sap.

Well, if I send you over I’ll be sorry as hell — I’ll have some rotten nights — but that’ll pass. Listen.”

He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her.

“If that doesn’t mean anything to you forget it and we’ll make it this: I won’t because all of me wants to — wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it — and because — God damn you — you’ve counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others.”

Come on Jimmy, don’t play the sap for these guys.

They are counting on that .

Don’t play the sap.

(Full disclosure – this interview was on October 30th and I back dated my post as I missed a day)

a tale of two games
a mirror … offers two choices
reflect … or correct

This essay is about the Michigan – Michigan State football game but the Michigan – Michigan State football game is incidental to what this essay on the Michigan – Michigan State football game is really all about.

I grew up into being a newspaper junkie.

In 6th grade, my teacher at Grand Rapids Crestview Elementary School, Mr. Vanderwheel, had us watch a movie on HOW TO READ A NEWSPAPER.

One of those odd movies where the feller OFF SCREEN NARRATES and ASKS QUESTIONS to the feller in the movie.

The feller broke the 4th plane and admitted to audience he didn’t know nuthin about an upcoming election and the narrator convinced him to buy a local paper and then walked him through reading the paper.

Buy the end of this short movie, the feller in question was reading TWO newspapers everyday to look for confirmation of facts or new or conflicting information.

From that day, I have refused to accept almost any information without two sources and let me tell you has that caused me a life time of grief.

Always asking, has anyone confirmed that?

Always asking, has any other source been found for that?

Just look at the Sally Hemmings history, where all the sources are citing each other.

Oh GEE WHIZ.

ANYWAY, it became my habit, before the world wide web, to go downtown in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I lived, to Elliott’s Newsstand down by the Bus Depot and buy out of town newspapers.

At home my Dad already subscribed to HOME delivery of the Detroit Free Press and the Grand Rapids Press.

And at Elliott’s, I would look over papers from all across the world.

I would often grab a Chicago Tribune or some exotic paper like the Los Angeles Times or the London Financial Times (it was pink) or the Atlanta Journal Constitution (because I loved that name) and almost always, a copy of the New York Times.

The paper that considered itself the paper of record of the United States.

In other words, if it was in the NYT, there was no need to question anything about it.

Well kinda sorta kinda.

But I did think that the NYT was the big time.

To make it into the pages of the New York Times was about all you could ask.

So I was pretty pleased when on October 13, 1986, I paged through the NYT to find the article, Signs of Fall in Michigan: Faces of Maize of Green (CLICK HERE), by Isabel Wilkerson.

It was a charming article.

It was really a charming picture of what I had grown up with here in the State of Michigan.

Ms. Wilkerson wrote: There are other great rivalries and perhaps equally rabid fans, but there is no match for the crowds the Big Ten draws. More people come to see University of Michigan football than go to see that of any other school in the country, and, with a turnout of 106,141 on Saturday, this year’s Michigan-Michigan State pairing drew more people than any other college football game so far this decade, officials said.

In the end, the Spartans would fall to the Wolverines, 27 to 6, but, as fans on either side would say, the game is, in many ways, secondary.

From Dawn Till Night People pull into campus just after dawn for a game that begins at 2:30 P.M. They set up the grills and potato salad for daylong tailgate parties, bicker over whose marching band is superior, and linger well into the night, drinking and playing touch football until they can no longer see the ball.

For 11 all-too-brief Saturdays, Big Ten football is a welcome distraction for people from small Middle Western towns and is an eagerly anticipated excuse for otherwise sane adults to act 12 years old again.

I loved the article and I loved the scene and the setting and the way it was portrayed and the story behind.

It’s much more than football, it’s the food, the partying, the people. It’s like a cult.

It made us, both sides of the coin, so cool!

Just goofy … goofy innocent, know what I mean?

And it was in the New York Times so it wasn’t a fabrication or a fairy tale, it was all true.

(For transparency’s sake I have to mention that the NYT has always had something of a love affair with Michigan but the paper comes by it somewhat honestly. New York city has the highest concentration of Michigan Alumni outside of the State of Michigan in the world. See … back in the day, the Ivy League schools had a quota, a limit on the number of Jewish students that could be admitted and the accepted place to go after those Ivy leaguers closed their doors, was in Ann Arbor … ).

I loved that story and I cut if out of the NYT and for years it was taped to my wall.

Fast forward almost 40 years and I still read the New York Times and a butt load of other newspapers on a daily basis.

For a newspaper junkie, the World Wide Web is both the best and worst of all worlds.

I swiped my way through the pages of the NYT and once again, there was a story about the Michigan – Michigan State game.

Instead of kindly Signs of Fall though, this new headline read, “A rivalry too toxic? Michigan, Michigan State grapple with the future. (CLICK HERE)”

Austin Meek writes in this article, “The Michigan-Michigan State rivalry fits a familiar archetype in college football: the massive research institution on the hill and former land-grant agricultural college down the road. The schools have played each other since 1898 and have been conference rivals since 1949, despite Michigan’s backroom maneuvering to keep Michigan State out of the Big Ten.

“I think Michigan State fans look at Michigan as arrogant and pompous and unjustifiably elite,” said Greg Dooley, a lecturer at Michigan who grew up rooting for Michigan State and teaches a course on the history of college athletics. “I know Michigan fans look down a little bit at State. State prides themselves from a football perspective on toughness, being a little more blue-collar, and deserving of being on the same playing field with Michigan.”

The rivalry has always been intense, but it’s grown more hostile in recent years. In 2007, Michigan running back Mike Hart, now the school’s running backs coach, famously referred to Michigan State as “little brother.” Mark Dantonio, Michigan State’s new head coach, fired back that
“pride comes before the fall,” signaling a new era of hostilities between the programs.

The last game ended up in brawl that ended up in hospitals and court rooms.

What happened to this game?

What happened to this weekend.

Where did all this hate come from?

Not rivalry hate but gouge your eyes out hate.

Like I said, this essay is about the Michigan – Michigan State football game but the Michigan – Michigan State football game is incidental to what this essay on the Michigan – Michigan State football game is really all about.

These two stories, and I invite you to read them, are stories from the same place from the same event and are so different.

A mirror of our times.

So much hate.

How did this happen?

Why did this happen?

Mr. Meek quotes CBS announcer (and Penn State Grad) Todd Blackledge saying, “The game’s too good. The rivalry is too important. It’s too special to have it marred by something that’s unnecessary.”

Beyond the game, I want to say, I hope I can say, this country is too special to have it marred by something that’s unnecessary.”

The game, these stories are a mirror.

As the Rev. Al would say, you can use a mirror to reflect yourself …

Or you can use a mirror to correct yourself.

I mean, you saw it
if I knew the answer, it
wouldn’t have happened

When asked what happened in the game between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers on Thursday, September 28, 2023, Green Bay Head Coach, Matt LaFleur said:

I mean, you saw it.

We got our ass kicked.

If I knew, it wouldn’t have happened,” he said, clearly perturbed.

It wasn’t good enough.

They whipped us.

They manhandled us.

Again, if I knew the answer to that, it wouldn’t have happened.

Winston Churchill once said, “Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.“

I think Coach LeFleur would agree.

We got our ass kicked.

They whipped us.

As an addendum to that, I would like to add that old words, when short, are best of all when you can hear them for a second time.

So let me repeat what Coach LeFleur said:

I mean, you saw it.

We got our ass kicked.

If I knew, it wouldn’t have happened,” he said, clearly perturbed.

It wasn’t good enough.

They whipped us.

They manhandled us.

Again, if I knew the answer to that, it wouldn’t have happened.

Gosh but BOY HOWDY how much of life can we say that about?

But the Lions beat, handily, the Packers.

Pray do not mock me.

I am a very foolish fond old man, Threescore and upward, not an hour more nor less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind … but in the last 47 games against Green Bay, my team, the Detroit Lions, have won but 15 times.

Mitch Albom, in his column, referred to the “… the old ghosts of Lambeau.“

They have now won 4 in a row against the Packers.

While the entire rest of the world seems to be going down the tubes, the Lions seem be on the the upswing.

I guess that adds up to the way it should be.

In 1959, the Chicago White Sox won their first pennant in 40 years.

After the game that clinched it for the White Sox was over, the Fire Chief of the City of Chicago turned on the Air Raid/Weather Alert sirens to celebrate which led most Sox fans to think that it figured that the SOX finally win and Russia drops the big one.

Right now the Lions haven’t won anything … yet.

But I hope I hear more coaches say, If I knew the answer to that, it wouldn’t have happened.