I'll accept that as acknowledgement that your high powered law firm wasn't successful in scaring the conference into doing nothing to Harbs this season.
And you've somehow made it so everyone will be buckeye fans shortly. That's quite an achievement. Hell even
@HammerDown might have to swing that way for one brief day.
I'll accept that the commissioner was stupid enough to challenge them. And his pathetic tactics, knowing he has a losing argument, got Harbaugh out of 1 saturday. But ultimately he's going to lose both the short game on Friday and the long game in terms of his relationship with one of the conference's top earning (and most influential but most importantly, most WATCHED) schools.
I'm not entirely sure of what that looks like, will he be gone within 5 years?, get pushback on anything he wants accomplished?, contracts signed?, I don't know. Hell, Michigan had talks at the regent level of moving out of the B10; and the B10 probably doesn't survive that as 1/4 of the members came reluctantly anyway. People rushed to judgement on these allegations because the media whipped up a frenzy and the rival schools jumped on board. We don't know if this is an actual NCAA violation. We don't know what level violation these would actually be. We don't know what kind of punishment the NCAA would determine. And the B10 chose to make this a "player safety" issue, and issue an unprecedented, and unsupported, punishment. This is going to be a losing play for them and every school would feel this way if put in this position.
By every piece of evidence that has come out, Michigan had a rogue (crazy) employee operating at best in a grey area, or at worst in an area of the NCAA rulebook that they thought about doing away with a year ago. By their own admission there's no evidence linking this to Harbaugh, and based on the crazy nature of the person involved it's a safe bet he was doing this to try and make a name for himself. The B10 stepping in here is ridiculous, and their argument to scoot their own rules is just as absurd. This didn't impact player safety. This didn't impact games. The practice is regular enough that Michigan immediately had just as much information on other schools doing it as they had on us. Oddsmakers made no adjustments when he (stallions) was booted off the team. In the end, Michigan is being piled on for the actions of 1 low level staffer.
Fine, root for Ohio State (you'll regret that soon enough). The precedent set here is going to bite a lot of schools in the ass; especially the ones with a long history of actual cheating, like Ohio State.
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