By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
September 10, 2016
I was minding my own business the other day and completely ignoring the fact that college football was to commence this past weekend when news broke that Penn State University was planning to honor Joe Paterno before the Nittany Lions’ home game versus Temple on September 17th.
Now, I don’t need to go into a 2,500-word soliloquy on how offensive it is for PSU — a school that has paid out approximately $100 million in lawsuits related to former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s “fetish” for little boys — to commemorate a man who — at best –turned a blind eye to child rape over a period of three decades.
In fact, I summed up my disgust with the situation in fewer than 140 characters …
301 ReTweets. 322 Hearts. For a Tweet that wasn’t that original or particularly creative. In fact, it wasn’t even the first time that I made the PSU/Temple/Bill Cosby comparison …..
Nor was I the only person who made the fairly easy connection last Wednesday.
But this was a very popular message on social media nonetheless, especially among fans of the University of Michigan after MGoBlog.com founder Brian Cook ReTweeted it himself.
Unfortunately, many of the same people who ReTweeted that dig at Paterno and Penn State didn’t appreciate my follow up posts where I compared the denial of Happy Valley inhabitants regarding their beloved “Joe Pa” to the burgeoning deification of their own head coach in Ann Arbor.
(For the Walmarts, that’s deification. As in turning a human being into a god-like figure. Not pooping on someone.)
Of course, the cultish college football psychopaths who worship at the altar of Jim Harbaugh couldn’t detect the subtlety of my Tweets, basically added 1 and 1 to get 3,and then thought I was trying to say that Harbaugh was protecting a pedophile.
And no, it’s not a coincidence that I just quoted a line from Living Colour’s song “Cult of Personality.” Because that is exactly what Harbaugh is becoming at U of M.
Not that this is any different than many programs across the nation. Like at Penn State where lunatics are still honoring a man who could have saved children from a predator. At Florida State where the people of Tallahassee most likely collaborated to protect a rapist with Jimbo Fisher pulling the strings. Or at Ohio State where they celebrated that pile of shit hypocrite Jim Tressel — during the season they were on probation for violations that had occurred during his tenure.
This is a disease that has contaminated college sports for as long as I can remember. I am not telling you anything new. At this point my anger isn’t even directed at the coaches with seven-figure salaries who perpetuate this behavior (carrying on the tradition of Tom Osborne and Barry Switzer being more powerful on campus than their respective sheriffs), but at the dopey fans who should know better.
And no, Harbaugh hasn’t presided over any rape scandals yet, but that’s obviously not the focus of this article. The point is how a fanbase such as Penn State’s deluded itself into believing Paterno had no culpability in the Sandusky scandal.
The blueprint is right there in front of you for anyone to see.
A perfect storm is brewing in Ann Arbor that may cause people to turn a blind eye to any Harbaugh wrongdoing. First, you had a program in disarray due to the tenures of Rich Rodriguez, Brady Hoke and David Brandon and all of the in-fighting that went along with the end of Lloyd Carr‘s career.
And then you have the humiliating record Michigan has compiled against their two biggest rivals over the last decade. I probably don’t have to remind anyone that Michigan State has won 7 of the last 8 contests versus the Wolverines or that Ohio State has bitchslapped U of M in 11 of their last 12 meetings.
If the situation wasn’t combustible enough, Michigan (rightfully) hired a former star quarterback who played for another beloved figure (Michigan fans’ reverence for Bo Schembechler is only rivaled by Republicans’ undying love for Ronald Reagan.)
You want a recipe for disaster? There you have it. And a portion of that fanbase is so utterly desperate to return to past glory that I doubt Harbaugh shooting a man on State Street™ (Donald J. Trump) would stop them from supporting the man.
I have been managing this website for almost 14 years and have probably posted around 2,000 articles and nothing I have written has received more vitriolic emails and demented social media posts than my story on Harbaugh utilizing “PeruBall” at the Athletic U. camp last summer.
You would have thought I accused Harbaugh of high treason. In actuality, the article was basically just a vehicle for high school coaches (loyal to the Michigan football program) who participated in the camp to voice their concern about a drill they felt was violent and unnecessary.
Of course, I ended up being vindicated when PeruBall seemingly disappeared this summer but that still didn’t stop the cultish loons from bashing me again when I revisited the subject.
So I knew that I was going to cause more waves when I started mentioning on Twitter that I was hearing disturbing things from my source(s) out of Ann Arbor.
You know, the same exact people who alerted me to the fact that Harbaugh was coming back here in the first place. Before anyone else in the media except maybe Gregg Henson. While the national and local media mocked my reporting.
The same sources who alerted me to the fact that David Brandon was going to be fired on Halloween a couple of years ago. Before anyone else had that information.
Or when the same exact source told me that some dude named Rashan Gary was definitely joining the Wolverines …
Michigan fans didn’t seem to think the DSR was a bullshit, clickbait website when we had all of those stories first (and others) and they came to fruition … Because they were all positive turn of events for Wolverine fans.
So when my SAME FUCKING SOURCE who gave me all of that wonderful information sent me this text message a couple of weeks ago, I took it seriously …
I have always been upfront and transparent with you people regarding this website. I have absolutely no reason not to. This isn’t my vocation. I run the site like a non-profit charity. And if it WERE my primary source of income, I would run it the same way while living out of a cardboard box near a Starbucks and bumming their free WiFi.
My source is a Michigan fan and he has not divulged all of the information related to this story. Mainly because he doesn’t want Harbaugh in any trouble. Because, like most of the fanbase, he is also desirous of wins versus MSU and OSU and a National Championship.
(He did promise me the ENTIRE sordid saga if U of M wins the title this season. So I will be rooting extremely hard for Harbaugh’s second team to go undefeated.)
What this person has told me is the story revolves around four-star wide receiver recruit Ahmir Mitchell — who ended up transferring to Rutgers — and that there were multiple violations relating to the kid from New Jersey.
When I first hinted that the story involved Mitchell, this is the response I received from Brian Cook of MGoBlog …
This is hilarious on numerous levels. First, Cook has no clue what my source knows about the Mitchell mess. So I sent this Tweet to my guy and received the following response …
Umm, okay. So if Cook knew about this “secondary violation” regarding Harbaugh, WHY DIDN’T HE POST ABOUT IT ON MGOBLOG?!!?!!!!?
Was it not newsworthy? Or is it due to the fact he doesn’t want to write ANYTHING negative about the messiah? Just like how he attacked me over the PeruBall story by calling me “naive” because heaven forbid ANYONE criticize the second coming.
Like, Cook posts videos of the Muppets when U of M wins a basketball game, so I am guessing Jim Harbaugh getting caught by one recruit talking to another recruit during a “dead period” would be worthy of 400 words.
(Or maybe he did and he thinks I am stupid enough to think these violations were what I was referencing when it came to Mitchell.)
Posting negative stories about Harbaugh wouldn’t be good for generating income among the cultists and, since Cook’s income is tied to his website, he is obviously making BUSINESS decisions over journalistic ones.
And this is nothing new. The Brendan Gibbons/Taylor Lewan story occurred right under Cook’s nose and where was he when that was going down? If I actually did this for a living, had a U of M athletics blog and generated an income from it, I would have been on that issue like white on rice and would not have relented until I got to the bottom of it.
And if you don’t believe me, ask Anthony Fenech, Bill Simonson, Tim Winkler ….
The only Tweet I found from Cook regarding the Gibbons story BEFORE his expulsion seems to be a joke relating to the ex-kicker’s comment that he thought of brunette girls when kicking field goals.
And all of this is fine, but don’t start coming after me because you don’t like the information I am disseminating. I am leaving you alone to run your website in any fashion you see fit, but you need to realize that all you are is George Malik or the guys from DetroitSportsNation with an additional 60 or 70 IQ points.
Yes, I am being called weak by a dude who deletes his own Tweets when Michigan State fans “ReTweet” and “Like” old @MGoBlog messages that end up biting Brian in the ass. I am weak? At least I am not terrified to write articles that will alienate my readers.
Look, I love the Tigers as much as Cook loves University of Michigan athletics but that didn’t stop me from breaking the news about Miguel Cabrera’s bender with the Chicago White Sox at the Townsend a few years ago. Or a myriad of other stories the team didn’t want me to write.
It’s easy to post articles calling for Brandon’s or Hoke’s head when that’s the popular thing to do; it’s much more difficult to serve your audience something they aren’t going to like.
George Orwell famously stated that “journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
At this point, Brian Cook is nothing more than a shill for Harbaugh and a PR spokesman for the football program.
What my source HAS divulged is Harbaugh has surrounded himself with a bunch of “Yes Men” in the athletic department; there are very few, if any, checks and balances; the Mitchell violations are dead serious; and Harbaugh is putting the reputation of Michigan — a program coming off recent probation — in serious jeopardy.
And I am guessing I will get bombed by Wolverine loyalists and I will be questioned as to why I am not investigating allegations of widespread PED abuse at Michigan State.
Well, if one day that story falls in my lap, I will be sure to follow up on it as well since I know that Graham Couch or Chris Solari sure as shit aren’t staying up nights chasing that potential scandal.
In the meantime, I will attempt to pry more information out of my source because lord knows none of this will be uncovered by any of the mainstream media (MAYBE Nick Baumgarner, if anyone) or blogs run by Harbaugh disciples.
And if you still don’t think Joe Paterno can happen anywhere in America — including Washtenaw County — take a good look in the mirror.
And then send me a nasty email telling me that I am just doing this for attention and clicks.
Because that Google Ads revenue and the paltry funds raised through GoFundMe are really going to send me into an early retirement.
(You can follow the writer of this piece on Twitter @JeffMossDSR. Also, you can join in on the discussion of this article on Facebook by clicking here.)
