Quote of the Day: “Aren’t they expected to scout future opponents and review game tapes?” Leah Biggs, who I can confirm, knows absolutely nothing about football.
As I have said many times in this blog over the years, the NCAA is possibly the most inept organization in the country. Yesterday, they continued to prove it by notifying the B1G and U of M, that they have opened an investigation into the U of M football program for violating NCAA rules of in person scouting and sign stealing of a future opponent.
I didn’t even know there was such a rule because of the absurdity of thinking it can be governed and policed. It is so absurd the NFL provides space, usually in a private press box, for future opponents’ scouting personnel. See the quote below from Lion’s head coach Dan Campbell as reported in the Detroit News today.
“Yeah, we all look at that. We have a number of guys that look at TV copies and everything else, just like they do. They’re doing the same; every team’s doing it. (You) see if you can pick up any little nugget, code words, quarterback says something, linebacker’s making a call, O-line, D-line. Any nugget you feel like you can pick up, you would like to use, but there again, you’ll always sprinkle in on both sides of the ball dummy calls, and that’s part of it.”
In the MLB, each potential playoff team sends advance scouts to games of all of their potential future playoff opponents in order to gather information they can use.
In high school it is common for coaches to share game tapes of future opponents and have advanced scouts at the games of future opponents.
As Leah said, “Aren’t they expected to scout future opponents and review game tapes.”
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My favorite AG continues to lower the standards for someone in her position. As mentioned in my blog on Wednesday, I quoted an article by Charlie LeDuff of the Detroit News about AG Nessel blowing through the firewall which her own staff set up so she could not interfere in a fraud investigation of a member of her 2018 transition team.
The saga continues. Here are excerpts from Gary Miles, Editor and Publisher that appeared in today’s Detroit News.
I received an email from the acting chief legal counsel representing Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel alleging errors in Charlie LeDuff’s Wednesday column. This piece laid out how Nessel had breached an internal legal firewall as her office investigated Traci Kornak, a Nessel friend, for alleged billing irregularities in the care of a West Michigan patient.
Because I was moving between meetings, I hadn’t yet opened the email when, at 3:53 p.m., Nessel’s office sent to 30,531 press release subscribers a missive entitled, “Department of Attorney General Responds to Incorrect Claims Published by The Detroit News in Letter to Editor Gary Miles.”
This unusually legalistic, public and personal approach to pointing out alleged mistakes was curious, but did not alter our process of immediately reviewing the piece for possible errors. We have found none. We did find at least two false or misleading statements in the AG office’s letter, which I have pointed out in a reply that I will send today.
Worthy of additional scrutiny is a postscript, of sorts, on the press release. It asserts that pieces published in the Opinion section are “not held to a news standard of accuracy and are not required to be grounded in any facts.” I don’t know whose editorial standards Nessel’s office was citing, but it certainly wasn’t citing ours. We do expect commentary to be grounded in facts. In fact, the false or misleading statements in the letter the AG’s office sent to us render it ineligible to run on our Opinion pages as a letter to the editor.
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As reported by the NY Times, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio lost an internal vote to continue as his party’s nominee for speaker on Friday, plunging the House into further uncertainty and sending Republicans searching for a new leader.The vote came hours after Mr. Jordan failed for a third time to win election as House speaker, leaving his party with no consensus on a way forward and the chamber paralyzed in the face of growing pressure to get back to business.
In the understatement of the day, former speaker Kevin McCarthy said, “We will have to go back to the drawing board,” Unfortunately, they continue to use the same drawing board. Even Picasso couldn’t make art when he started with a bad drawing board.
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I read an enlightening interview with Republican House of Representative Don Bacon, of Nebraska by Jan Coaston of the NY Times. Here are two questions and answers.
Jane Coaston: Help me understand the start of the current mess. How did we get to the place where Kevin McCarthy couldn’t get the votes?
Don Bacon: First, I think we have unreasonable people who are more about themselves. I accept that if I agree with somebody 80 percent, I’ll still back them. These guys were wanting 100 percent. No. 2, we should never have agreed to the single-vote motion to vacate the chair. I thought it was wrong in January, but the speaker thought that was the only way he could get enough Republicans on the board to become speaker. In hindsight, that was a dire mistake.
Jane Coaston: You’ve called out the Freedom Caucus and its influence and obstruction on who leads the House, but I want you to help me think about this. What is the Freedom Caucus doing that is working for them? Why is it working? Why are they doing this?
Well, it’s not all the Freedom Caucus. In other words, it’s fragments of it. But they’re driving very conservative bills out of the House. For example, on the debt ceiling, we passed a very conservative bill that was a negotiating position, and they thought that should be the final bill, but you’ve got to work with the Senate.
I find a lot of them don’t realize how our government really works. They think they can actually force the Senate to do their bidding, and we all know that this place operates on consensus and middle ground. When it’s all said and done, especially when you’re talking about negotiating the Senate version, versus the House version, you’re going to get something in the middle. I’ve talked to some of them; they do not accept that premise. Their feet are not on the ground.
I think a lot of these guys play to the clicks. If you live in an echo chamber and you’re only talking to people that agree with you, I think, well, you have an unrealistic view of what’s going on, then.
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This weekend, I will be rooting for Jim Harbaugh and U of M against MSU, while I will be rooting against his brother John Harbaugh as the Lions take on the Baltimore Ravens.
Feel free to share my blog or to sign up to receive it directly in your email. See the sign-up below the Video of the Day.
Quote of the Day: Leah Biggs, see story above.
Orchid of the Day: The colors up here in Northern Michigan.
Onion of the Day: The NCAA. See above story.
Second Onion of the Day: The extreme right members of The House of Representatives whose action has created the clown circus going on in Congress.
Question of the Day: Should the NCAA be completely overhauled and even disbanded?
Video/Image of the Day: A variation on the smoke following each vote of the Cardinals when choosing a pope.
