Thanks

I truly believe that Jim was ready to sign his extension a couple weeks ago. But since then He’s had to accept the three game suspension which includes him missing the game and Michigan’s 1000th win and has now had to fire a coach for impeding an investigation. Now it’s being reported by Josh that the contract will be on hold until the notice of allegations is given. If you think that is going to be anytime soon you’re crazy, as the Chris Partridge situation opens up a whole new situation that has to be investigated.

I’m not saying that Harbaugh wants to leave Michigan. What I am saying is it will be well into the off-season before a contract extension is signed and as more and more information comes out it gets worse and worse for Michigan. By mid January a $12MM offer from the NFL and leaving all this behind would have to be pretty appealing to Jim. I really hope I’m wrong.

Anything exciting going on?

How lucky are we to have an analyst that has been a Power 5 DC at multiple stops as well as a college and NFL LB’s coach to fill in? For everything that’s went sideways this is one area where we are fortunate.

I have no idea, but my guess is that donations were incredibly high the last 10 days. Maybe a record. I was going to write a check until yesterday. After understanding why they settled, I am going to do so now. Michigan against the world is good business. We are strong when united. For the first time, we showed some spine. I will rally around that. Go Blue! Muck Connor Stallions. However, I still think we have a strong legal argument on the rules.

Just spoke with someone, and as expected, the players are in a good place.
The situation is "unfortunate," but they only see two choices, "overcome or fold."
"We aren't folding."

Players are focused on "what's at stake" and doing their jobs.
Captains have really led the way with this. Lots of great leadership in that building.

I found this tweet from Michael Barrett very telling. Barrett is at Michigan because of Partridge. I doubt anyone was more excited than him when he came back to Ann Arbor this spring.
He tweeted this minutes after the news broke.
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What's the uniform combo for tomorrow's Turtle A=S whipping?

but this sh*t is sad. Whatever happens, don't try and pretend like this season isn't tainted. Just seems so hypocritical of this program.
I doubt we will ever know the truth, and that's unfortunate because from an optics standpoint, we are trash right now.

Go Blue always (regardless!)

Lock of the week:
Lucas picks UGA -10.5
Dennis goes with Washington +1

M&BR's Lucas Reimink & Dennis Fithian handicap the upcoming weeks game always picking Michigan, Michigan State & the Detroit Lions game. Also, a trio of best bets, a parlay & prop and best bet of the week. It's time to Sharpen the Edge. #gambling
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Here you go.

It just got more challenging.

Wild day of an eventful week for the Michigan football team as they get set to take on Maryland tomorrow in their final road game of the regular season. Former Wolverine Jerry Diorio makes trys to make sense of the latest news and looks ahead to the game with the Terps.
Breakdown
Open 00:00-1:41
Latest news 1:42-16:55
Feedback 16:56-26:23
Maryland 26:24-30:35
PSU film 30:36-1:01:23
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Stalions did what he was accused of. That was fairly obvious from early on, but I also was somewhat informed on this.

Michigan fans tried to convince themselves that having someone else go into the stadiums meant it really wasn't against the rules, but that dog wouldn't hunt.

Thing is... it's not that big a deal, for reasons that have been correctly pointed out: it only streamlines the process of sign stealing, and it was deemed so little of a competitive advantage that the NCAA nearly scrapped the rule.

This should have been central to our defense, not feeding fans red meat by attacking Petitti.

And don't get me wrong, Petitti was Ryan Day's useful idiot. He was COO of Major League Baseball during the Astros scandal, so this was something he was highly attuned to. Once Day and the other coaches started feeding him their righteous indignation, that got Petitti all pumped up and he didn't know college football enough to know he was being snowed.

Rather than going to war with HIM, which fired up the message board crowd, what we needed to be doing was making sure, through our friends in the media (and we do have them) that sign-stealing is legal and commonplace and we only broke essentially a procedural rule - and fired the guy who did it. (And we needed to fire Stalions, not let him resign.) Don't let the contrived anger of all these other coaches mislead you; it's opportunistic bullshit.

Not only did we misfire on that, but this continued procession of Harbaugh staffers embarrassing the program and having to be let go has left us with no credibility with which to fight back.

Warde, Santa, and the regents mounted up and rode into battle for Harbaugh... and his own staff has turned out to be such a damn clown show that now we only have a knife in the public opinion gunfight.

Harbaugh probably deserves these three games not for some egregious flaunting of NCAA rules or mores of sportsmanship, but just for serially hiring staffers who embarrass the program and university and who make it harder for his superiors to fight for him.

Just speculation here, but I'd be surprised if Santa and Warde putting themselves out there and now being left with egg on their faces doesn't become a complication in getting Harbaugh's extension done. I'm not convinced he could sign it today if he wanted to.

cooperating with the NCAA investigation not anything to do with the sign stealing.

Sounds like he SEC'd everyone.

Essentially, from my understanding, the Big Ten is done with their investigation and will defer to the NCAA.

I’m working on finding out what happened on Michigan’s side. To be honest, this was not the outcome anyone I spoke with expected.

I’ll see what I can find out.

Michigan football gained its third member in its class of 2025 on Tuesday when four-star QB Carter Smith announced his verbal commitment to the Wolverines.

Breaking down Carter’s game, what it means for Michigan and weather it impacts the Wolverines’ pursuit of Bryce Underwood.

HOGWASH!

Jim is fighting to give the kids the best chance to beat the very program behind this bull hookey,
OSU.

When everyone comes to grips that OSU is, has, always been the problem in the B1G, then everything will begin to become very clear.

There were reports today that there were no expense reports filed by Connor Stalions throughout his tenure in Ann Arbor. Obviously, the hopes were to find a link between the university reimbursing Stalions for his scouting efforts.

Those links, of course, cannot be made.

However, we can confirm with documents obtained by sources and a search of public records that Stalions had a house in California that he would Air BnB the extra rooms out of.

He also sold said house in California in May 2022 for a big profit, which also helped aided the scouting efforts.

This was 100% funded on his own, not through any back channels. Proof of house selling is attached.

We are not including address for privacy reasons.



This makes sense as Michigan hired Stalions full-time in May 2022, which is when he sold the house.

Also, to further prove legitimacy, Stalions was stationed in Camp Pendleton in California during his time in the service.

Look, TAKE AWAY all of the ‘James Bond’😎
lump on minutia in this (yes, lump on), and this is a situation of “hybrid sign stealing.”

Virtually every person experienced in higher level football understands and recognizes (Pete Finebaum and Banty rooster 🐔 Stephen A. are excluded)… people with 🧠’brain-in-head’ understand that sign stealing is a (sadly??) regular thing. Not unusual, but usual.
So this is 2023, and we can go around the fence on the details of who lied, who knew….but it comes back to hybrid sign stealing.
Righteous indignation and “If we can’t beat them on the field, let’s try alternatives” is in full play here.
Folks, really, it’s hybrid sign stealing.

Captain Obvious….out.

I have been on the phone non-stop this evening with people I have leaned on in the past, some colleagues I trust and those involved with the football program to try and get a sense of where things are, what happened and how things could be moving forward.

I want to preface this by saying that many aren't talking right now, it's gone very quiet, so I have been trying to get as much as I can.

Let's get started.

Seeking an opinion of a lawyer
I have been in contact with a local lawyer I respect (who is also very aware of the happenings with the football program right now) to get a sense of why Michigan went the way it did on Thursday. I didn't want to paraphrase anything so I will include his professional opinion in full:

"In order to prevail on a request for a TRO, the moving party must show not only irreparable harm but also a reasonable likelihood that the moving party would prevail on the merits. The latter element was Michigan’s weakness. In Michigan’s petition (which I have carefully reviewed) and in the Big Ten’s reply to Michigan’s letter (which I have carefully reviewed) both entities argued the legal merits relative to which conference rule or NCAA rule was controlling in this situation. While both positions had legal merit, Michigan’s position did not rise to the level of showing a reasonable likelihood that Michigan would prevail on the legal merits. Judge Connors is not a legal scholar, and given his very specific interests in the law, I believe that this was not a legal issue that he cared to roll up his sleeves to try to understand. When Judge Connors’ term expires, he cannot run for re-election. In contrast, Michigan’s attorney, Keefe Brooks, is regarded by most attorneys as the best lawyer in the state. I know him very well, and while he is a brilliant advocate and strategist, he is not a cowboy. He knows when to fight to the bitter end on an issue, and he knows when to counsel his clients to cut their losses. The optics of losing a TRO motion would have been horrendous for Michigan. Losing a TRO motion has nothing to do with the ultimate outcome of the case, but anyone who is unfamiliar with the law would likely not appreciate the difference. Thus, the narrative would have incorrectly been that losing the TRO motion meant that Michigan lost the case and is therefore guilty. My best guess is that Keefe anticipated that Judge Connors would either rule against Michigan, or Judge Connors would string this out for a few weeks to the point where the outcome of the TRO motion would be irrelevant. I have not spoken to Keefe about this, and therefore this is my best professional assessment; it is not inside information."

While many here have hypothesized, it's highly likely that the university would've likely lost the case or saw it pushed back to where the results wouldn't matter. So taking your losses like this would've been the right outcome here.

To be sure, this is not an admission of guilt by U-M by any means.

On the team's response

We have been told that the team initially had some level of shock to learn that Harbaugh would remain suspended for the rest of the regular season. However, that shock quickly turned to business as usual as the team conducted a very good practice on Thursday evening.

Harbaugh addressed the team before practice and said that he was disappointed in the situation but the team continues on as one.

U-M players have openly told people that Harbaugh took a bullet for the team willingly to protect the players and to end the distraction and outside noise looming overhead. Now, they can focus on the final two games. There is nothing to suggest that Harbaugh begrudgingly conceded to the Big Ten or did this without his blessing.

On what's next and what we don't know

Our sources haven't offered much in terms of inside information coming out of the suspension news. No one seems to be talking and hasn't offered much of a reaction.

Here's the big question we still need to answer:

Is an assistant being wrapped up into this? If so, who?

That's what we have yet to connect. We have NOT heard anything of significance to suggest that anyone is aware of evidence connecting a staffer or assistant to Stalions' scouting efforts. We have been told numerous times from those close to Stalions that there is no evidence that exists to link anyone to his efforts.

Now, just because we haven't heard anything doesn't mean it's true or false, just that we have yet to hear anything of significance just yet. If it does indeed turn out to be true, we'll continue to dig as needed and I will gladly say I failed to get that information.

Of course, we will continue to dig and see what we can come up with. That's the big question I am looking to answer.

If it's true that all we have here is a rogue staffer scouting team's signs, all I can say is WOW to how everything has been handled. We managed to negotiate for an increase in games suspended (which brought OSU into play), and get the absolute maximum negative media impact on how the legal situation was handled, all while getting absolutely zero effect for anything that we may or may not have on other teams.

I mean the handling of legal/PR will be a case study in how not to do things.

And the worst of it all, is that the coaches and players should expect the opposite from these areas, and there's nothing they can do about it. They're all doing their jobs at an insanely elite level, and the University has given them Sparty-level support. And now we have to listen to Penis head Finebaum and his little groupy Heather Dinish calling this an absolute Ass-kicking to Michigan, and there's more coming.

What a shame to such a potentially amazing season.