Sign it!
Sign this huge contract so we may pay you a fortune!

I’m not sure what will end first, this Dick-Rod-Not-Paying-His-Buyout thing or the Democratic Nomination process, but both have reached rarefied levels of stupidity. While Hillary Clinton is vowing to continue fighting, Dick Rod is claiming he was “coerced” into signing his West Virginia contract.

Former West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez says Gov. Joe Manchin and three members of the university’s board of governors pressured him into signing a new contract before the start of the 2007 season, even though it had a $4 million buyout clause he didn’t want.

Let’s take a look at the definition of “coerced.”

Main Entry: co·erce
Pronunciation: kO-’&rs
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): co·erced; co·erc·ing
Etymology: Middle English cohercen, from Anglo-French *cohercer Latin coercEre, from co- + arcEre to shut up, enclose — more at ARK
Date: 15th century
1 : to restrain or dominate by force
2 : to compel to an act or choice
3 : to achieve by force or threat

We’ll leave the first definition out of this. I assume Dick wasn’t restrained or dominated by force. That may be a leap, considering he was in West Virginia, but it’s a prospect I’d just rather ignore. So let’s go with 2 or 3. Dick was either compelled or threatened. To sign a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to do a job far less important to humanity than about 95% of the jobs that exist in the world.

Here’s how I figure this “coercion” probably went.

Governor Manchin: Sign this contract, Dick.

Dick: No!

Manchin: Do it, or else!

Dick: Or else what?

Manchin: Or else we wont pay you millions of dollars to do a job that, ultimately, falls incredibly low on the totem pole of global importance.

Dick: Well, it looks as though I’ve no choice in the matter!

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Holy Flaming Batsuits, Robin, I’ve found the dumbest writer in the history of communication. Illiterates probably berate this woman. Her ancestors, thousands of years ago, probably drew cave paintings of buffalo with which everyone else on the planet confused toucans. Her name is “Lisa H,” and she “writes” a blog on FoxSports.com’s community blogs. You know how they say a million monkeys with a million keyboards, given enough time, could write the works of Shakespeare? Well it would take one monkey to write the equivalent of Lisa H. in an afternoon. And I’m not talking one of those fancy zoo monkeys that knows how to signal for food. I’m talking the monkey still in the forest that eats rotten bananas, can’t figure out that whole “use stick to fish ants out of hole” thing, and even Jane Goodall wouldn’t want to save. (Yeah. I know. Moneky /= Gorilla. I don’t care.)

In “Lisa H’s” “20 burning questions going into football season,” Lisa writes:

14- Will Weis finally get Notre Dame on track?

No. The problem with Notre Dame is not the players. It’s their coach. How desperate is Charlie Weis? He turned over the offense to his OC. Considering that Weis is known as an offensive genius, this is concerning. There is nothing good to come out of this- if the offensive output gets better-and when you are ranked dead last in offense, is there anywhere else but to go up?- then it makes him look overrated as an offensive guru. If the offense still remains the same, then Weis made a poor coaching decision.

Either way, Weis is in a giant hole. Their sked is difficult, and there are only two guaranteed wins, with a third possible one against Pitt. Couple that all in with mumblings about some discontent in South Bend during Spring practice, and you can count on Weis updating his resume. Unless he beats USC, of course.

It’s like she takes courses at the Dan Rather School of Journalism and Making Shit Up. The only mumbling that occurred this spring were in her head while she tried to sound out the Dollar Menu at Wendy’s.

And did she actually use “sked” in place of “schedule?” I think I just heard the sound of a 1000 English teachers blow their brains out.

Way to go, Lisa. You just set the world of the written word so far back that they’re considering works by Pat Forde from his probable 3 years in the 5th grade for a Pulitzer. You have to be less intelligent than the beer I just drank. If you’d lived in the 17th century, villagers would have burned you as a witch, knowing full well you weren’t actually a witch, but unable to help themselves since they just couldn’t take all that stupid any longer. If you don’t eventually die by accidentally suffocating yourself with a plastic shopping bag from the grocery store, millions of dollars will be lost in Vegas.

I’m big on the internet, but I have to admit, the internet, and the enabling of people like terrorists, religious zealots, white supremacists, and Lisa H to share their so-called thoughts make me wonder if we should just unplug the entire damn thing. Giving Brian Cook a voice is bad enough, but this? I need another drink.

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This really is just a confusing story on ESPN.  I’m not really sure what the point is, and after reading it I think I only get about 50% of what’s going on.  I only post and comment on it to 1) point out again that DickRod somehow manages to get tangled up in messy stuff constantly.  It’s fun!   And 2)  to mess with our loyal scUM reader or 2 out there. 

It just seems that Fraudy McFrauderson tends to associate with shady people.   This will not serve him well over time. 

Richy, you should listen to my grandpa, who always said: ”Son, don’t leave your alma mater and cheerleader girlfriend behind in the dead of night, shred your papers, refuse to pay your buyout and then go offer jobs to people from WVU that are accused of being racist.  The last step is the one that will get ya.”  Or something like that. 

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So ND just spammed me about the new “The Shirt” for 2008 and I have to say,  Wow.

WOW.

I mean, I am excited.  Most years we have some horribly ugly and gaudy thing with some lame configuration of 9 different images all jammed into the back with a pithy saying like “shake down the thunder”.  Don’t get me wrong - I like the tradition of The Shirt and that designs are based in long-loved and storied ND traditions.  I love the ND pride inherent in The Shirt and the philanthropic nature of the project. 

But most designs are just plain ugly, and after wearing it to 1-2 games in a season, they all end up in my ‘only wear to sleep’ drawer.  

Not so with 2008!  This thing is beautiful in its simplicity.  And while it does add another color (white) to the ND stable that already contains Blue, Gold, and every shade of Green you can imagine, I am sold. (Side Note:  Can’t we all just settle on a single color for everyone to wear to every single home game ever people?!!???!?!?!?!?!!)

Pre-order yours today!

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Reading this letter, I find myself wondering if University of Phoenix students who don’t actually live in Phoenix have an inferiority complex.

On behalf of the students of the University of Michigan at Flint (and also students at the Dearborn campus, I’d venture to say), I would like to express my utter disappointment in the recent change in purchasing priorities for Michigan football tickets. Under the new policy, priority will be given to University students attending the Ann Arbor campus over students at the Flint or Dearborn campuses, which smacks heavily of a “we’re better than you” mindset.

When the University established its branch campuses in Flint and Dearborn, it was with the goal of expanding the University and spreading values already in place. And as the Flint campus celebrated its 50th anniversary, we believe it has done just that - until now.

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The Michigan (sucks!) football team’s intrasquad football practice will not be open to the public.

The scrimmage, which will signify the end of spring practice under new coach Rich Rodriguez, will be held at Saline High School, about 10 miles from Ann Arbor. UM spokesman Dave Ablauf said the decision was made to close the scrimmage to the public because Saline’s stadium seating capacity – about 8,000 - was too small to accommodate an expected large crowd.

Hrm. So 1000s would likely come out to watch the scrimmage, the small stadium can accomodate several 1000s… what’s the problem here? It’s not as though they didn’t know a bit in advance that they’d have to hold the scrimmage off-campus. Not as though they couldn’t work the logistics of it all pretty easily. Not as if they couldn’t have run a phone-line for a day and just pre-sold all the tickets.

So is it really a matter of crowd-control? It’s not a matter of secrecy. Fraudriguez could keep the game-play very vanilla and not really let anyone in on his “wizardry.” So that’s not the concern. Could the concern be that the coaching staff just doesn’t want the skunkbear fans to see just how bad it all really is?

Nah.

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Why else would people keep leaving the Micigan (sucks!) program?

I’m enjoying the tears with an Allagash White. Join us, wont you?

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I think Brian is broken. Normally he makes some effort. Sure, it’s the sort of effort you see from a three-legged horse trying to pull a sleigh over ice or a Michigan (sucks!) football player taking an English Lit course, but it’s still effort. This time, there was no effort. And it’s sort of ruined our afternoon plans.

I failed to notice that, before his reposting of his “Destroy Harbaugh” post on mgoblog, Brian posted this. I link because I don’t care if he gets some traffic from HLS. There are lots of people already reading mgoblog because, well, there are a lot of stupid people in the world.

This is the equation we’ve set up in all varsity sports to some degree or another:

Large Group of Academically Underqualified Persons +
40-hour-per-week year-round commitment +
Grad rates at or above the University average =
X

Solve for X, and you get the kind of stuff detailed recently by the Ann Arbor News.

I mean, duh. The only group of people dumb enough to believe you can take star athletes whose uninspiring high school GPAs are almost entirely fraudulent already, give them a full time job, and then get those star athletes to graduate without hijinks are dickwad Notre Dame fans driven mad by their program’s 15 years of total irrelevancy. And, apparently, some but not all Penn State fans.

The Ann Arbor News knows this, of course, and knows that a similar examination of any program in the country would turn an equal or greater level of academic offense. So the editor puts on his I Are Serious Cat face and rumbles about “perception” and “reality” and how Michigan believes that it is better than everyone and isn’t this troubling, isn’t it? And we get sidebars about how poor Brent Petway couldn’t get into the music school when he discovered its existence… two years into his time on campus. Thanks a million, AANews.

This was going to be a big long article about the place of the athlete in the modern university; in it I would link the piece I wrote last summer when Jim Harbaugh was shooting his mouth off about the general studies program and the like, but when I re-read it I realized I didn’t have to or want to change it, so I’m going to bump it to the front page here in a few minutes.

Try and guess with which part I’ve taken issue.

But wait, maybe there’s a reason ND fans know that ND athletes can, in fact, be viable, nay flourishing STUDENT-athletes.

Here’s what the members of our 1987 STARTING LINEUP are doing today.

Chief of Staff to CEO of multi-national corporation
Senior Vice President – Investments, at major international bank
Senior Vice President - Sales, at international biotech corp.
Real estate developer
Offensive Line Coach - Jacksonville Jaguars
Senior Vice President – Brokerage Services, at major U.S. Bank
Director of Diversity, major U.S. corporation
Chaplain, Jacksonville Jaguars
Heisman Trophy Winner/Analyst/Entrepreneur
Commercial Airline Pilot
Attorney/Partner
Special Agent, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms
Vice President, major U.S. mortgage broker
Senior Vice President, Equities Sales at Wall Street firm
Executive Officer of (non-profit)/Adjunct Professor of Law
NFL retiree
CEO of capital acquisition firm
CEO of major food chain supplier
Special Agent, United States Secret Service-Presidential Protection Unit/currently Investigator for Congressional committees
Financial consultant
Director, Product Management and Marketing Communications at major U.S. corporation
Commodity trader

Places like Auburn, Alabama, Miami, and Michigan (sucks!) have given up on the student athlete. But they don’t want to give up on the big-money that comes with big-sports success. So they create kinesiology majors, give these kids an “A” for “trying,” and then dump them back into the real world as soon as they are no longer able to help develop revenue without any actual preparation for success beyond football/whatever-other-sport-they-played. It would be pretty funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

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