WTKA Roundtable 2/1/2024: It's Not Pay for Play It's Play for Work

Things Discussed:

• Lost Herbert: Recruiting against Jim is tough.
• DC: Zach Orr has a couple of NFL opportunities now so figuring that out will be the most important thing.
• Concerned that this administration is going to Bennie Oosterbaan Sherrone Moore's program. Needs to not just support but lead the transition to a new version of the college football landscape.
• Beefing up recruiting department: can criticize Jim Harbaugh here because he spent recruiting jobs on hires like Stalions and Shemy.
• Sherrone going hard for ND's Chad Bowden. Fended off Harbaugh for Grant Newsome, fighting for Elston.
• Warde: His "transformational not transactional" interview was the end for us; he's not the guy for the future. Transactional means fair; when you say you don't want that you're saying you don't want the players getting a fair deal.
• Michigan's culture doesn't have to be these 1930s ideas. Hunter Dickinson would be here if we had this working right.
• There's more in the tank: Michigan's Athletics department doesn't need to be taking money for naming buildings.
• NCAA dysfunction has to be part of this. We should be leading the way towards fixing the system, not pretending the old system still works. Players don't benefit from everyone being a free agent because it makes them all replaceable. That system sucks for everybody because there's no investment in the players, there's less time to get to know your system, and nobody's getting an education.
• Right now we're hanging onto a system that's already dead, falling into a terrible oligarchic system. System should be one that forces the universities to be stuck with the players they get, because it makes them responsible for the player's education and development. Right now the NCAA is antithetical to the higher ideal the NCAA was set up.
• Seth: communist economies—that's what the NCAA model is—require a black market. The cheating is part of the system.
• What we're seeing is the fall of that system, and what Michigan should be doing is leading the way to a new system.
• How? Pay our players to be in a Super Bowl commercial advocating for a player's union, which we start here.
• Seth & Brian argue whether the history of Oosterbaan/1950s is relevant today.