Catholepistemiad, can you fill in again in a couple of weeks when I’m on vacation?

I’ll concede this on RR: he USED to be a winner. Lately? Not so much. And on him being ‘clean’, I just don’t know. So many issues have popped up since his move, that it would be surprising to me that the guy didn’t have some serious skeletons. I know that some folks dismiss them, but the cheerleader thing, shredder gate, stealing recruits, the buyout fiasco, real estate deals, snake oil salesman, now the NCAA ‘witch hunt’. Not all coaches have all of those kinds of things going on, so I don’t know that I’d call him clean…where there’s smoke…(but I don’t expect you to agree)

RR is not a scumbag. You know it. I get it. You have to say that. It’s fun to pile on the guy for some reason because there’s been so much drama with his contract dispute. The cheerleader rumor–my goodness. I seriously doubt that it’s true. To my knowledge it’s never been reported and confirmed by a reputable news service. All I know is the guy is still married with two well-adjusted kids. He’s never been dinged by the cops, the NCAA or anyone else for that matter. This latest NCAA thing is such a witch hunt by the Free Press. I’m sure ND players only work 20 hours a week on football. What a crock. RRs been coaching the same way for 20 odd years and has clean. Now all of a sudden he’s going to start skirting the rules when he finally is at a school where he doesn’t need to due to unlimited resources? Yeah, that makes sense. Saban is a scum bag. Weis is an overmatched arrogant douche, but he’s not a scumbag. RR is a winner, and a family man. I know those labels are no fun when posting about a rival, but they’re true. M tore down its house and is building a new one. They were tired of 8-4 and 9-3. That’s what they did in hiring him. I suggest ND do a little of the same.

2) RR is a scumbag. You’ll never get me to say anything else. A dude that’s married forever but that hooks up with cheerleaders is not impressive to me. The litany of scumbaggy things he’s done since his move from WVU is too long to list here, but just search “RR” or “DTK” on this site and you’ll get a bunch of hits. And if you call 3-9 and this year’s debacle winning, you should be all up on the ND bandwagon and our weak performance recently. If your only ammo is RR’s previous jobs then I’ll put CW’s 3 SB rings up against RR’s success at WVU any day of the week (and look, I don’t even want to support Weis here, I’m just answering your lack of logic with my own)

3) I will NOT quit hating on UM (it’s one of my favorite past times), but I can do that AND consider our Athletic Dept inept, can’t I?

4) You seem like a somewhat reasonable guy, and you’re pretty articulate and you actually do research, so please know that 99% of what we post on here is all in good fun and that we’re busting your chops (and reading you busting ours) with a smile on our faces. Just letting you know since you’re new here – some people get quite up in arms with our snarky attitude.

Further, oh my God, spin much?

I have never visited the site before. A friend of mine who went to ND cut and pasted DMQ’s post in an e-mail to me, so I checked out the site. So, no I do not have the historical perspective to understand that you are not on the “Meyer Train.” Forgive me. I find it a little comical to think that he would actually have you is what I was saying regadless of his rumored thoughts to contrary, which he has dismissed.

I also find it tragi-comical that graduates of Notre Dame are taking on the White Man’s Burden and holding themselves out as the last great protector of African American males. Really? C’mon guys. You did read that UM went all the way to the Supreme Court to defend its extremely proactive affirmative action admissions policies? You did see that didn’t you? Don’t make UM out to be Ole Miss circa 1964. I can’t think of another institution that has gone out of its way to be more inclusive of African Americans and Jewish students and so on. ND is a great many things to this world, but keeper of the flame of diversity isn’t one of them.

Michigan had 626 black men on campus out of 12,518 men overall. That’s 5%. 60 of those 626 black men were athletes or 9%.

Notre Dame by comparison had only 165 black men out of 4,444 or 3%. 32% of those black men were athletes.

So, 91% of the black men admitted to UM are there for academic reasons. Only 68% of black men admitted to ND for academic reasons alone.

Sorry boys, you cherry pick some great kids who happen to be black and play football well, while at the same time, you aren’t beating the band to get more young black men in the doors who don’t run a 4.4/40. I mean really. A lily white private school in conservative Indiana run by Irish Catholic men is keeping a lookout for America’s black men. I get it. You’re joking.

DMQ apparently wasn’t pleased with the generalized student athlete breakdown I did and wanted it limited to black men who touch pigskin. Ok. According to the same database that I used before, the national graduation rate for black males is 38%. That is attrocious by anyone’s standards. UM last year graduated 54% of its black football players which was in line with similar PUBLIC schools: Cal 53%, UVA 61%, Texas a paltry 38%.

At similar PRIVATE schools, ND graduated 93% of its black football players, Northwestern 91%, Duke 88% and Stanford 88%. That’s tremendous and laudable, but I do think there will always be a disparity between the public and private schools for the reasons I stated previously.

Nevertheless, UM’s incredible leading role in inclusive admission (whether you agree with the practice or not) prevents you from assailing it as some Cracker College that disposes of black men like trash. At worst, it’s in line with Cal and UVA. At best, it’s 14 percentage point higher than the national average.

And Biscuit: RR is a scumbag and a losing scumbag? Family man, married forever, a walk-on at WVU from a poor family, good student in college, has won more games than Weis will ever win at ND even if he’s allowed to coach the full 10 years. In 7 years at WVU he was 60-26 with 3 impressive bowl wins. Gastro Plaintiff is 35-24 during his internship. C’mon. His contract dispute was a mess, but not because of him, that was UM’s fault. They wrongly assumed that since John Beilein’s buyout was negotiable, so would the buyout for RR. WVU went nuts over him leaving. Why? Because he’s an incredible coach and he just dumped them for a prettier girl. My guess is that if Weis leaves ND…no one would be pissed. There you have it.

Give me three hail Mary’s, quit hating on UM and look toward your incompetent athletic department. Quit looking for the flying saucers in Area 51 and bitching about Armando Allen’s out of bounds foot. Hire a good coach, shut up and play ball. Because as your literary lion of a coach says, there are “No Excuses.”