IMO, they “will be seeking other job opportunities” (or other similar euphemism) before the end of the month.
At that point in time they had the most talent compared to any other team in the Big 10. Their performance in the NCAA tournament seems to prove that out.
The loss to Northwestern was in the '93-'94 season. I believe that Webber had gone to the NBA but the rest of them were there. Don’t get me started on the Detroit newspapers. They have always been butt-boys for UM. Mitch Albom, who still writes columns for the Detroit press, wrote a book about the Fraud Five, glorified them, seemed to know everything about them and yet couldn’t make mention of the Ed Martin connection. Gimmee a break.
Look at the circumstances and the stats of the game. Michigan gave up 97 points, the most that NW scored in a game all season and they played a lot of cupcakes in their non-conference schedule. Doesn’t look like a lot of defense was being played that night. NW was a doormat team and UM was playing for the B10 championship.
See above. That game was tanked. You missed my point. It was not about point shaving that night, it was about paying off on the gamble before the season began of UM winning the B10 championship. Eddie probably gave great odds to the schlubs at the Rouge plant. At the beginning of the season that looked like a slam-dunk yet it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because they gave up 97 to a bottom tier team on a night that they had a chance to win the title. They obviously were in the NCAA tournament so it was time to give Fast Eddie his payoff.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck and swims like a duck then it must be . . .
. . . someone who bought into the total fiction of the Fraud Five.
The fairy tale lives on.
I just have to post this South Park clip here:
RP, I asked you if you could point me to a reliable third party source, such as a Detroit newspaper, for your allegations. While you disparaged the Detroit newspapers, you have yet to provide a reliable third party source. Please do so.
Emphasis Mine.
Probably? Thanks for admitting your conjecture.
Hilarious. very well done South Park.
Particularly at that time the Detroit papers were slappys for the UM athletic dept. Again, that twit Mitch Albom wrote a BOOK about the Fraud Five and pretended that everything was on the up-and-up. Reporters hang around the team and Ed Martin was hanging around the team. He was getting special consideration from the athletic dept. If they didn’t know that Martin was a bookmaker and numbers runner they could have easily found out. One visit to the Rouge plant would have let them know who he was. Great investigative reporting on their part.
You should have done more of those connect-the-dots puzzles when you were a kid. Of course, it is silly to think that a big bookmaker that is giving money to college basketball players would never ask for anything in return, would he?
I never said I had a stack of sworn affidavits. Interestingly, a couple of Northwestern players were indicted for trying to fix games the next season.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/college/news/1998/03/27/gambling_latest/
It wouldn’t surprise me if both teams were in on a fix. Now can we play connect-the-dots?
This all reminds of an interview I saw with Lou Duva, the boxing promoter. The interviewer alluded to something regarding corruption in boxing. Duva’s reply was, “yea, we’re almost as corrupt as college basketball.” It sounded funny at the time but I think there was more to the comment than there appeared.
That probably boils down the situation better than anything. Thanks.
IMO, Any book written about the Fab Five would be more “sellable” if they actually won a championship.
Of course, that doesn’t fit in with the conspiracy, so it is ignored.
It’s not silly, it’s just unsupported. Martin was a sleaze, but that doesn’t mean any allegation you can throw at him is true. Stupid as it may seem on the outside, some of these boosters are just in it because they’re fanatical about their programs or want to be big shots at the school. The guy who poisoned the Auburn trees (and gave his kids Alabama-themed names, and pushed them to do the same with their own kids) didn’t even go to Alabama. Some sports nuts are actually nuts. I think college sports is pretty crooked, but if all of the people who did this kind of thing were fixing games, it would be crazy.
Yes… interestingly, all three of those games were losses to better teams where they didn’t cover the spread. One of the games was a loss to Michigan. Call me crazy, but I think if there were evidence of point shaving in other games, that would have been included in the charges.
And while you’ve mentioned the allegedly shoddy NCAA investigation into Martin, you didn’t mention that the federal government also investigated the whole scenario and the charges didn’t include fixing games. Martin copped a plea before he died.
In connect the dots, you start with real dots and only draw in the lines. You’re asking everybody to make up the lines and the dots. See the problem?
OK Marley, you’ve got me totally convinced. A crap Northwestern team runs up 97 points (a season record) on one of the top teams in the country and costs them their conference championship. The next year guys on the team are fixing games. The guys that lost the game were taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from a guy that was running a numbers and bookmaking operation in one of the largest manufacturing factories in the world, had free access to the players and got favorable treatment from the athletic dept. Nothing ever got resolved because the bookmaker died at the worst possible time for anybody prosecuting the case. All pure coincidence and a fix under those circumstances never could have happened. How could a sane person even think that? I am soooooo bad.
You are right Marley, I’m just another stupid person bent on conspiracy theory. Have a good time in La-La Land. (Do I get another warning?)
P.S. How you can begin to equate Ed Martin to the guy that killed the Auburn trees is really pretty lame. You can do better than that.
I would be glad to entertain your conspiracy theories if you had actual evidence.
It sounds like you might have money wagered on UM and lost. And looking for reasons why.
I am not a native but I do live in Missouri and so far, you have failed to Show Me anything but coincidences, innuendos, and faulty conclusions. Sorry. The fact is Big 10 is a big region and I can assure you the journalists from Ohio (sympathetic to Scarlett and Gray) would have loved to expose the Fab Five.
Journalists from Chicago, Minneapolis, Indianapolis Madison would also have no problem busting Michigan’s chops.
I didn’t say that, but OK. I did say that game was investigated from two sides - the federal government investigated Ed Martin and Michigan, and they also investigated Northwestern. And nobody was accused of fixing that game. It’s almost like there wasn’t any evidence that game was fixed.
I keep getting an error* when I click this. Ideas, anyone?
*“TypeError: Cannot convert ‘document.getElementById(target)’ to object”
Except the score, the fact that the result didn’t fit any statistical model, because of several factors there was a lot of money to be made by a bookmaker if the result was very abnormal and the known fact that players on both sides were crooks and associated with gamblers.
Prosecutors don’t prosecute every crime they suspect. They prosecute the crimes where they want to nail the perp and have the strongest case. The rest slides. Prosecutors want convictions, not trials.
There are smarts and there are street smarts. Marly, I’m sure you are a smart person but you don’t come across as being very street smart.
Guys that are running big time bookmaking operations aren’t rooting for the home team. They do everything for the money. They invest and they expect to profit as a result. Again, and again, Martin paid these guys hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do you really want to believe that he gave a rat’s ass about the UM basketball program? If he did he wouldn’t have created a situation with such jeopardy. This was big time money, not chump change.
If we listened to your line of thinking we might believe that Don King was doing the best he could for his fighters even though he ruined almost every one of them. So we need to “prove” that he ruined fighters in a court of law for you to believe it? Step back and look at the results.
Geez, connect the effen dots.
You should try upgrading your Flash or maybe Java. If that doesn’t work, here’s the same clip, except lower quality and the end where Cartman says “Screw you sir, I’m going home” gets cut off.
But you should do the upgrades regardless, not just to see the video, but for security reasons.
Not to distract from the Fab Five, but there are some real gems in the sports mailbag section of the Columbus Dispatch today (first chance to vent in this forum after the Tressel “resignation”). Some excerpts:
*"I hope all of you sanctimonious, judgmental, self-righteous, Monday morning, fair-weather Buckeye fans are satisfied.
My goodness, what bandwagon will you find to ride next? Who shall dare question such perfect people? You have ruined a good man’s career because he made one or two bad calls…Are any of you perfect people really so naive as to think that this is anything but a minor infraction? Hypocrisy is thy name."
“…The mendacious mob and its stellar leaders - exemplary student-athlete Ray Small, legendary football coach Chris Spielman and the deliberate, careful “journalists” at ESPN - can now safely put away their pitchforks as they finally got their man…”
“…Let’s get to the real reason why Tressel was forced to resign. Five players are the root of the problem. They have been disloyal to their teammates, Ohio State, Buckeye Nation and, most of all, to their coach…”
"…Congratulations, Dispatch, ESPN and SI - your witch hunt was successful. You pulled out credible sources like Ray Small, Ray Isaac and a tattoo guy who was in prison to bring down Jim Tressel…
Tressel was not forthcoming with a pinhead bureaucrat from the NCAA and you all acted like he was having orgies with hookers…"*
There were critical letters too, but these were the most fun.
I read some Buckeye Message Boards last week and those messages pretty much matched up with your selected quotes…
Blaming the messenger. Denial. Deflection.
Their arrogance is incredible.
And a book blowing the lid on the conspiracy would have made a fortune and won its author a pulitzer and a life of renown.
Cite please.
“Associated with gamblers” means Michigan took money from a guy who was involved in gambling (but no evidence has ever surfaced that they fixed games or shaved points for him) and Northwestern’s players added a couple of points to some losses. You can’t connect the dots by changing the facts.
No, they prosecuted the ones they have enough evidence to prosecute. Two different prosecutions did not charge anyone with crimes related to this game. They didn’t charge Martin and Michigan, and they didn’t charge the Northwestern players. And if the prosecutors had evidence, they would have filed charges. The more things you can throw at a suspect, the more likely something will stick or you will get a guilty plea.
We might believe you don’t have any evidence Michigan fixed games, because you don’t. You have supposition, you have guesses, and you have a lot of “come on, connect the dots!” If you had facts, you wouldn’t need to ask people to connect the dots and overlook the missing facts.
Don’t you see, that is part of the conspiracy! Conspiracies can’t be too obvious or else they will be found out!