At this point in time, we're well beyond the Manti Te'o saturation zone. While many fans of Ohio's professional franchises probably want nothing to do with the Notre Dame middle linebacker for the paltry performance he put up against college football's best, others just kindly want him to go away forever due to the round the clock media bombardment we've been saturated with for the better part of the last three weeks. Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon doesn't exactly fall into either of these camps, however.
In a somewhat surprising admission, the not exactly beloved at his own school (and certainly not in central Ohio) athletic director owned up to having deceived his own players in order to teach them a lesson while taking questions from the media at the KeyBank Global Leaders Forum in Toledo, Ohio on Friday. Effectively it sounds as though they had individual actors portraying attractive women on social media reach out to the players, then had a meeting with the players in which the actual contacts walked in. Rather than actually respect the young men as individuals capable of adhering to best practices by explaining the potential dangers of online deception, Brandon and co. admitted to effectively not thinking anything of them as human beings and wanting to reinforce a potentially tough lesson in a literal and rather patronizing exercise.
But we're not here to pass judgement on Brandon and life lessons. While he'll certainly command a good deal of the pre-Super Bowl news cycle (probably mostly from a negative context), we decided to dive deeper, and explore what other deceptions Michigan's athletic director has pulled over the eyes of the Michigan football team (and their public at large):
- Persuaded people who'd eaten pizza before to order Domino's.
- Convinced Michigan fans to invest in upwards of four figures to travel all the way to north Texas go to Cowboys Stadium in order to watch Michigan upset preseason #2 Alabama.
- Inexplicably had multiple columns about Denard Robinson potentially winning the Heisman trophy scribed over a three year span.
- Sold bowl officials that 2011 Virginia Tech was a football team worthy of a BCS invite.
- Had the final level of "Avoid the Noid" open a roof instead to an endless loop of a Chiptune version of Hail to the Victors while an 8-bit catfish danced to the fight song.
- Sold an entire fan base on believing that Michigan could beat Ohio State in football in a scenario that didn't involve a true freshman quarterback and the most single tumultuous calendar year in the OSU football program's 122 year history.
Your methods are certainly unorthodox Mr. Brandon, but we salute the effort either way. May your many deceptions be...deceptive.