Clarion Content

Amazing, once again the more things change the more they stay the same, at least in college athletics.

At the same time we were following the retirement from the NBA story of Michigan alum, Chris Webber, last week, the Clarion was alerted to a new scandal that broke two weeks or so ago at the University of Michigan. Michigan, a program with a decrepit, cheating filled history, was caught out by its local paper, the Ann Arbor News, setting it up for its athletes to take special independent study classes to raise their grades. Another era, but it is the same old Michigan.

Many commentators inveighed on the end of Webber's career, lamenting the what ifs and might of beens of near title runs, college and pro. Some saw the near misses of the Fab Five at Michigan and later his Sacramento teams as Webber's primary legacy. Despite the hype, Webber never won a title in college or professionally. Others wrote that he was a tragic, fatally flawed, hero for his most infamous mental lapse, "Timeout" in the NCAA title game. Clarion fave, Bill Simmons, noted that Webber shied from the big shot at crunch time throughout his career. But nobody talked about what the Clarion sees his primary legacy, cheating. He was front and center while at Michigan.

He was from a middle class background, but he still took $280Gs from booster Ed Martin. This Abscam style, money in a bag kind of cheating means no matter what one's memories of the Fab Five at Michigan the records say 0-32, by forfeit for 1992 and 1993.

When some one takes money in a bag, they surely know they're cheating, Chris Webber. This wasn't one of those, "Oh, I wasn't allowed to work there over the summer?" Or "They just lent me the Escalade." This was cash, $280,000, 280 grand, in cash. We are quite sure the members of the Michigan Fab Five who didn't go on to star in the NBA and make millions like Webber and Rose, were less than thrilled with the manner in which Webber demolished their legacy. (Jimmy King and Ray Jackson thank you Chris.) Ironically in the pros, Webber had a bumpy ride, that saw him wear out his welcome in more than one city, and his exits, sans title, led to the decline of multiple franchises.

For Michigan, though, it is bigger than Webber, it is institutional. Here they are again, and this time it is inside rather than outside the institution, no blaming the boosters. The professor in question not only taught an inordinate amount of independent study classes, primarily to varsity athletes, but gave them grades a full point higher than their GPA in their other classes. In many cases this was the key to their retaining eligibility. You might recall, Auburn University was tarnished by just this kind of scandal a couple of years back, and everyone kind of shook their collective head, and opined along the lines of, "Well it's Auburn, you know they're a football factory."

Michigan is following the Auburn playbook, deny and obfuscate, deny and obfuscate, knowing eventually, the outsiders will go away and the boosters and alumni will remain. Never mind that some athletes got their A's with as little as 15 minutes of class time every two weeks, or less than half of Michigan's African-American scholarship football players finish school with a degree. Or that many of the athletes interviewed also took the same language classes, four semester worth of Ojibwe, but when asked couldn't remember a single word of the dialect, despite their A and B grades.

The University Michigan, it likes to think of itself squeaky clean, and in an academic class with the great public university's, UNC, UVA, and Cal. Sorry, Michigan you're kidding yourself. You belong with the likes of Auburn, Ohio State, and Oklahoma State, the "Who cares if the kids can read, so long as we win the game," crowd. It is a proud legacy.

Where are the Michigan alums, can and do they accept this kind of academic shenanigans? They are the only constituency that can force institutional change.

Labels: college basketball, college football, sports