Bobref

If it were easy, everyone would do it.😂 I can’t decide if NIL/Transfer Portal makes it easier to stay on top because it makes it easier to “reload,” or harder to stay on top once you get there, because it’s now a lot more common for teams to go quickly from bad to good.

They clearly are really, really good the last couple of years. As to whether it’s sustainable, whether they can become another OSU, Michigan, Oregon, or Penn State, with perennial success like those programs, remains to be seen. It’s very hard to do.

Where’s the Christmas spirit? Too much hate out there already. In the spirit of the season, I’m going to root for Michigan in their bowl game. I hope Santa Claus is still watching. @temptation, will you match me in something that would otherwise be distasteful to you? Like rooting for the Buckeyes in their playoff matchup?

Don’t they make charts for that sort of thing? Saw this happen to a very well known Indiana high school coach in a sectional championship once. Didn’t do the math correctly and had to punt the ball at the end, with the result that the opponent scored a TD as time expired, got the 2 pt. try to tie it, and then won it in OT.

That’s a foul for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Interesting fact for 2026: 26 of ND’s 27 NIL signees are early enrollment. This means they’ll be here for the off season program and Spring ball.

Good advice. However, just to clear up any possible understanding, the high school rules do not call for an automatic unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for removing the helmet while on the field, as is the case at some other levels.

My guess is that this is a hill the IHSAA is willing to die on.

Really like this. I would suggest augmenting it with a dramatic event where the 80 P4 schools are randomly assigned to divisions. Each school’s name is on a ping pong ball, and placed in a hopper. Pull them out to assign the divisions. In fact, you could reshuffle the divisions every year. Make an annual show of it.

This is something that deserves more analysis than I can give it. The issue is, while the IHSAA is a membership organization for purposes of its relationship with the schools, a number of court decisions determined it to be a quasi-governmental entity when it comes to dealing with individual student athletes over eligibility matters. That muddies the waters quite a bit. Courts have determined that college student athletes have a constitutional right to be compensated for the commercial use of their name, image and likeness, even though the NCAA is a “member organization.” Not sure that it would be any different for a high school student athlete.

Afraid I can’t shed any light on that. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Me, for one.

So, you hate Michigan, too? Do you root for anyone? Or are you just a perpetual “anti?”

The IHSAA’s curriculum for local association meetings includes a “coaches panel” meeting, where 3-4 coaches attend a meeting and there’s discussion back and forth. There is also the mandatory new rules meeting conducted by the IHSAA for head football coaches. That meeting goes over rules changes and points of emphasis.

He is, indeed. Unashamedly so. Does that mean he’s wrong?

What an impressive young man!

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47294863/michigan-begins-investigation-athletic-department Michigan begins query into athletic department The University of Michigan has commissioned a full investigation into the practices and culture of its athletic department, centering on how numerous scandals have both occurred and been handled in recent years, a source told ESPN. The firing of football coach Sherrone Moore this week will be a particular focus. The investigation will be handled by Jenner & Block, a Chicago-based law firm that has done business with the school in recent years, including conducting the investigation into whether Moore had an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. The Detroit News first reported the authorization of the investigation. The firm opened an inquiry earlier this fall about the conduct of Moore and a staff member after the university received an anonymous tip, multiple sources told ESPN. Both Moore and the staff member denied the relationship and not enough evidence emerged to confirm it. That changed Wednesday when, according to prosecutors in Washtenaw County, Michigan, the staff member told investigators it did occur and presented corroborating evidence. The staff member had, on Monday, broken off the multiyear relationship, according to prosecutors, but became concerned when Moore sent a flurry of texts and calls that were unreturned. The university promptly fired Moore on Wednesday for the relationship. Soon after, Moore went to the staff member's apartment just outside Ann Arbor and, according to prosecutors, barged in, grabbed kitchen scissors and some butter knives. He then threatened to kill himself. "I'm going to kill myself," Moore said, according to first assistant prosecutor Kati Rezmierski. "I'm going to make you watch. My blood is on your hands. You ruined my life." Moore, a married father of three, was charged Friday on three counts, including felony home invasion and misdemeanor charges of stalking in a domestic relationship and breaking and entering. Moore pleaded not guilty, and a probable cause hearing was set for Jan. 22, 2026. Friday evening, after spending two nights in jail, Moore was released on a $25,000 bond with a GPS monitoring system and an order to receive counseling. This is the latest in a series of scandals that have hit both the athletic department and the university as a whole. It includes a federal indictment in March of former offensive coordinator Matt Weiss, who is facing 24 charges of unauthorized access to computers and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of Michigan allege that Weiss ran a vast, multiyear effort to access the personal accounts of thousands of NCAA student-athletes across the country. He is charged with targeting specific female athletes to access personal and intimate photographs and videos. Some of the alleged crimes, the feds say, occurred while Weiss was working inside the school's football facility, Schembechler Hall from 2021 to 2022, and during a previous stint with the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. There have been additional run-ins with the NCAA rules, including the high-profile 2023 advanced scouting operation centered around former football staffer Connor Stalions. The NCAA hit the program with four years of probation and a fine that could reach over $30 million. Former football coach Jim Harbaugh was sanctioned with numerous suspensions in his final years at the school for both the advanced scouting situation and recruiting violation. Harbaugh left to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Chargers in January 2024. Moore, who was promoted from offensive coordinator to succeed Harbaugh, has also twice been suspended by the NCAA. He still owes a one-game penalty, which was to be served in 2026, for deleting a thread of text messages sent to Stalions. The series of scandals have put a spotlight on athletic department as a whole, including on director Warde Manuel, an alum and former player for the Bo Schembechler-led Wolverines of the late 1980s. Manuel has been on the job since 2016. A high-level meeting of university officials was held Thursday evening, sources told ESPN, leading to intense speculation about Manuel's future, but he remains on the job. The university would owe Manuel, 57, who signed a new five-year contract in December 2024, about $6.75 million if it dismissed him without cause. On Thursday, interim university president Domenico Grasso, in a letter to the campus community, asked anyone with knowledge of the Moore situation to provide it via a confidential reporting system. "Together, we will move forward with integrity and excellence, and reaffirm our dedication to serving the public good," Grasso wrote. Despite all of the tumult, the Wolverines' athletic department is mostly thriving in competition, including the football program winning the 2023 national title. Currently both the men's and women's basketball teams are ranked in the top six nationally. Hockey is No. 1. Meanwhile, the university has consistently set institutional records for the undergraduate application numbers in recent years, hitting 98,310 for the incoming freshman class this year, per federal filings from the university. That is up from 79,743 for 2022, an 18.9% jump in just three years. Jenner & Block has a long-standing relationship with the university, including, in 2022, investigating an inappropriate relationship between then school president Mark Schlissel and a university employee that led to Schlissel's removal from office

I guess “relevancy” is in the eye of the beholder. If you say Notre Dame is irrelevant in the college football world over and over, maybe it will come true. But certainly not in our lifetime. The program has been valued at $1.85 billion, 4th among FBS schools in the last 11 seasons, the Irish rank 5th in games won, trailing only Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson & Georgia Depending on the methodology, ND ranks as high as #2 or as low as #4 in football specific revenue annually. Notre Dame has been in the top 3 nationally in Graduation Success Rate for more than two decades, most recently tying for first with Northwestern, graduating 99% of its players. You can count on the fingers of one hand the football programs more relevant - by any reasonable metric - than Notre Dame, and have a finger or two left over.

Proving that there is no program or situation that is immune from crazy conspiracy theories. The latest I heard was that Paige Shiver was hired specifically to bring down Coach Moore, so they could fire him with clean hands, “for cause.”

No. Hire an AD and let him hire the new coach. Just like in the NFL, you hire a GM first, and then he hires the coach.

That seems sort of bass ackward, don’t you think? If you’re getting a new AD anyway, hire him and then have him hire the coach. i can’t see Michigan going for very long with a HFC named “Biff.”

How hot is Warde Manuel’s seat? It looks like there has been a lot of stuff going on in his department over the last few years that he was clueless about.

What a cluster*$#@. I hate it when real world stuff spills over into the make believe world that is our sports passions.

Only sometimes when they are on the road.

This is the other half of what’s going on at Michigan these days. Her name is Paige Shiver, and people are asking why hasn’t she been fired as well as Moore? Apparently, she got a salary bump from $55,000 to $90,000 from Coach Moore. But here’s the thing. The reason employers put these rules in place is because of the power dynamic involved. This isn’t two people on the same level. It’s an employee and her boss. If you fire the employee, you’ve set yourself up for litigation. The claim of the person in the inferior position is that his or her employer coerced sex by threatening negative consequences on the job if refused. So, you end up tiptoeing very carefully around this employee rather than firing him or her like you did their boss. It’s a very delicate situation for an employer. This sort of thing happens in the workplace from time to time. But the interesting (and disappointing) part of it for me is the timing, as pointed out by @temptation. Apparently, this was not a very well kept secret in the building. But they waited until after NLI signing day to drop the bomb, figuring disclosure before that might start a run of decommitments. That’s not a good look. I root against Michigan football, but I have great respect for the institution that is U of M. Just not as much as I had before.