It's gonna be wild if this guy really was workin' like 3 jobs so he could afford to cheat for Michigan and for the privilege to be the first in front of the firing squad.
Damn, I loved me some Arena Football back in the 90s when the Predators played in the old Orlando Arena.
I went to a game like 5-1 years ago after the decline. They were playing in the UCF arena and their dance team were clearly the B-Team from some local strip club.
It was so sad.
Edit: I see that the Preds are back under new ownership and will be joining this AFL 3.0.
1992 and Bama came out OK on the scheduling deal because at the time, the SEC went with a 5-2-1 format where everyone had 2 cross division permanent opponents and only one rotating game each year (took 8 years to play everyone at least twice). Bama was given the weakest SEC program as their other permanent rival.
Of the Big 6:
Alabama - Tennessee and Vanderbilt
Auburn - Georgia and Florida
LSU - Florida and Kentucky
Florida - LSU and Auburn
Georgia - Auburn and Ole Miss
Tennessee - Alabama and Arkansas
It wasn't until 2003 that the SEC shifted to a 5-1-2 (played everyone at least twice every 5 years) and everyone dropped to just one cross rival opponent (removing the second team listed above).
He's always had an adversarial role with regards to the media.
Back at Florida, he verbally attacked an Orlando Sentinel reporter for quoting a Florida player comparing Tebow to Brantley and threatened to ban the paper from practice for 5 years.
It has to be intentional obfuscation at this point.
Can't tell you how many people I've seen on various boards defend Michigan using this technique.
"Look I've got experience with football and this <proceeds to describe normal sign stealing> is done all the time. <Other comments about it that carefully ignores all of the actual rule breaking> I don't think this is a big deal. It's just being blown out of proportion by people who don't know football like me."
Honestly it depends on the contract.
The smartest thing for Michigan to do would be to push the extension as a PR move as a "sign of faith" but strengthen the clauses for what defines "for-cause."
They may not have known about the sign thing, but his recruiting violations were certainly a known factor when they started this extension process.
I went to a watch party for our BCS title game against them. One of the guests was an Ohio State fan. This wasn't the kind of group that did any sort of trash talking or ribbing. Just a generally friendly group. They scored on the opening kickoff and he pulled out his keys and was telling everyone to go home. I don't think he made it to the end of the game.
Their fans were also a bit surprised after the fact when they took the "academic high road" to find out that Florida is a much better school than Ohio State. It just wasn't something they could comprehend.
I'm entertained by the audacity of the two schools.
THE Ohio State and if anyone else wants to use THE, they're gonna sue you.
"The Game" - there are no other rivalry games. It doesn't matter that the rest of the country considers it just another rivalry week matchup.
Michigan for years bragged about how they were better than everyone else because they didn't have stadium lights, because they were too good for night games.
Ohio State's president writing a letter about how OSU is a better school than Florida and that explains the curb stomping in '06.