UM alums: Please stop your blame game

The lunatics have been unloosed across Michigan, which is a wonderful place for them to squat. They fit in nicely among the self-righteous, pretentious men and women who call themselves UM alumni.

Yet even these loonies and alums have reached a nadir when they label solid journalism as muckraking and partisan. They seem to be searching for any excuse they can grasp to deflect attention from an athletic program that has its troubles.

Now, I would be among the last people to call Michigan a "renegade" program. While I have little affinity for the Wolverines – how could I? I’m an Ohio State alumnus – I won’t chuck stones just to chuck 'em. I will say, however, Michigan might have issues today that undermine its holier-than-thou reputation. The journalistic evidence points in that direction.

A lot of the recent evidence comes from the reporting of Jim Schaefer, a man who I befriended while picking up my master’s at Ohio State two decades ago. Like me, Jim bleeds Scarlet and Gray. Unlike me, a sportswriter, Jim has his journalistic principles intact.

In Jim’s world, right trumps partisanship, a comforting thought to hear. He would no more let his affinity for the Buckeyes guide his journalism than I would bungee jump or go deep-sea diving.

Just call me chicken, ‘cause I’m no risk-taker.

Yet here Jim is, having his journalism questioned. No matter that the man has a Pulitzer Prize displayed on his mantel. Forgot about the fact that Jim’s reportial skills took down a corrupt mayor and has sent drug dealers, rapists and stone-cold killers to prison during his two decades in the Detroit media.

None of that meant anything – not to the Michigan loonies, those mindless acolytes who would disgrace their lineage and lie before doing or saying anything that would sully the football program’s reputation, a friend of mine who follows Michigan told me.

He pointed out that the pro-Michigan lobby accused Jim Schaefer and The Free Press of going “above and beyond” to publish negative stories about coach Rich Rodriguez and Michigan football.

Filling the blogosphere with foolishness, the pro-Michigan lobby has alleged that even Lloyd Carr, the former UM coach who was booted on his behind in favor of Rodriguez, has put his Michigan bona fides at risk to help undo the program.

But the Michigan lobby’s most outlandish allegation – if rumors of Carr’s contribution to the stories about Rodriguez’s alleged wrongdoings aren’t outrageous enough – is that Schaefer is investigating Michigan to keep the program from returning to its past glory.

Keep in mind that the journalists behind the initial stories on Rodriguez and the football program were Michigan alums, and what role Schaefer and anybody else at The Free Press have played is to complement what has developed into an intriguing piece of probing journalism.

It would be naïve for people to believe the problems at Michigan are unique to Michigan. I doubt any of the football powerhouses have athletic programs that couldn’t use a steamy bath in Clorex to cleanse things.

But it’s Michigan, not Ohio State or Oklahoma or Florida, that’s under NCAA scrutiny, and the sooner the Wolverine faithful set their program straight the sooner the stories will be about what happens inside the Big House on Saturdays and not on what happens off the football field the rest of the week.

Until that happens, Schaefer, Mike Rosenberg and other journalists will be pouring their investigative energies into stories that might make life a little uncomfortable in Maize and Blue country. They do what they do not because they dislike Michigan; they do it because it is their job: They right wrongs.

Hip, hip hooray to Michigan's blues

Pardon me if I need to put my journalistic instincts in mothballs for a four or five minutes. But hearing bad news about the University of Michigan is the reason. It makes me wanna holler: Hallelujah!

Now, I don’t go as far as Woody Hayes in voicing my abhorrence for all-things Michigan. For unlike the late Buckeyes coach, I have no problem saying the school’s name.

On occasion, I do refer to Michigan, as Woody did, as “that school up North,” but then I’ll grudgingly give the school its just due: Michigan is Michigan; fine, I’ll accept it. 

I don’t, however, root for the Wolverines unless they’re playing Notre Dame. I’d have to turn in my two Ohio State degrees if I confessed to wanting Michigan to beat anybody else.

Like the tempestuous Woody, if I had the chance to bury the Wolverines in points, I’d attempt a two-point conversion with a 37-10 lead in the final seconds. I’d go for two only because the rules wouldn’t let me go for three, which is how Woody once put it.

I dislike Michigan as much as anybody else who bleeds Scarlet and Gray, so no one in America could be happier than I am about the controversy that swirls around Michigan football.

Is it picayunish stuff? Perhaps, but any controversy that stains the school’s holier-than-thou reputation is all right in my mind.

Here’s what the controversy is: Coach Rich Rodriguez, the wrong man for Michigan in the first place, has run afoul of NCAA rules by keeping players at football practices longer than allowed, according to The Detroit Free Press. Current and former Michigan players told The Free Press of the abuses, which have put the program under NCAA scrutiny. Rodriguez is denying these allegations.

But I suspect many schools run afoul of arcane NCAA rules -- even my Buckeyes, as a good friend with Michigan ties took pains to point out. But they aren't under the NCAA microscope; the Wolverines are. 

I wish I could say I want the NCAA to find nothing. I wish I could say I want this issue, if it is true, to be much ado about nothing. I would be betraying Woody’s legacy and my own roots if I did.

I would be delighted to learn the integrity-challenged Rodriguez runs a renegade program, one that breaks NCAA rules. If he were to lose seven or eight scholarships, I’d say good. If he turned the Maize and Blue into one of the Big Ten’s bottom-feeders … hooray, even better.

Call my thinking petty or mean-spirited. Right, it is. But people who do don't understand the depth of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry.

The Yankees and the Reds Sox, the Giants and the Dodgers, the Cowboys and the Redskins, the Celtics and the Lakers or the Hatfields and the McCoys … well, the king-of-all college rivalries is that kind of blood feud. 

So as I wait for The Free Press to reveal more specifics in its Rodriguez-gone-wrong saga, I keep my fingers crossed that the situation in Ann Arbor is worse than it seems.