Coach Rod is the head coach and is in charge of football program:
However, Coach Rod was forced to defend Coach Barwis who Coach Rod gives complete authority to in terms of workouts and scheduling in off-season and summer.
Barwis (like previously mentioned) is taking this very personally.
Instead of criticizing Barwis, lets look at the following
Barwis:
1) He has completely changed Michigan 's approach to strength and conditioning. This is not a knock on anything that went on previously, but what Barwis has done is the #1 positive to the program.
2) Coach Rod invites any athlete to participate, kids from other sports, pro athletes, former players who just want to work out, and note, he does not charge these highly paid players, nothing, zilch. And speaking of extra time, Coach Barwis leads the way.
3) Barwis, during his clinics, specifically talks about how much the strength and conditioning program can accomplish for a player, but any player who truly does want to excel must find the time on his own to advance. The implication: of course he understands the rules, but makes the facilities available for anyone who wants to work and practice the age-old art of self-improvement.
4) Now we find out that he has started a church group. And guess what position group has the highest percentage of attendees? You guessed it, the offensive line, followed by the defensive line; the two positions Barwis is hardest on.
It is beyond me why people want to bring good people down and Barwis is just that, "good people". We have talked to him at clinics, at football practices, and even at workouts and he will freely give you his time and discuss matters that you want to discuss.
Side Note: Funny how readers can disagree on certain parts of Michigan football, but when someone attacks the program the wagons are circled, both inside the team and within the fan base.
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Written by MaizeMan and ErocWolverine
7 comments:
Coach Barwis deserves a raise.
I don't understand arguments like this one. Yes, he does good things. Like everyone, there is good and bad. How should we handle the bad? Hide it? If it's mentioned, you argue that we 'shouldn't bring a good man down'. OK, so how would you handle it?
How is Barwis having voluntary workouts bad? Next they are going to tell Barwis that he can't open up the gym and that they are going to have to use normal student facilities.
Then the Freep will come out and say that MSC is supporting the over-work of our football team.
This whole situation is ridiculous
Anonymous:
How about getting all the information before putting something out there?
Why not talk to past employers and see if this is a pattern? Why not talk to all the players currently on the team along with parents? The kids might not come forward, but I bet the parents would if they felt their kids were mistreated!
Why pick on a few freshman (one that just got there) just a few weeks ago. Why take his comments about working hard means that he was putting in time that the coaches were making him too?
Why talk to former players that might have an agenda? Also did any of those players say they had to be there? That it was mandatory? Were coaches watching when they were not suppose too?
A guy like Taylor who never "bought in" .. he was lazy! I remember getting hammered when I was saying last year that do not believe everything you hear about Taylor like when the mic, camera was on him and him saying how he was going to get this team to gel together and that comments from Boren were way off.
Taylor was part of the problem especially early on!
Regarding Clemons comments ... does he know what the mandatory hours were? Does he know that even if you put in a full day (10am - 8pm) that lunch, breaks, treatment, etc... do not count as mandatory time? Also of the coaches are not in the room and your with your teammates looking at film does not count as mandatory time or time that goes against the 20 hour work week.
bouje:
Agree ... At places like Florida and Alabama they are laughing about this issue right now.
Urban Meyer has put it in print earlier this spring about how much harder he watned the S&C coach to make it for the kids this off-season.
If this happened at Alabama -- you would not be hearing about the reporter going on every local radio station, tv station and any national program that wants to pick him up because he would not be around or they would not help him "get famous" and help his resume for a better job!
All the area stations are doing is feeding him and making this story bigger. They all want ratings and think that if they have him on the ratings will go up because the people that do not like Michigan will watch or listen and then the people that do like Michigan will watch or listen and talk about it.
The Free Press sucks - there is clearly an agenda. Just look at the Front Pages of Detroit News and the Free Press for Monday 8/31. The News is simple and truthful that UM will investigate the claims. The Free Press drags out an old photo of CWebb walking out the courthouse and states that once again UM is in trouble.
ErocWolverine:
My understanding of your response is that the reporter didn't obtain enough corroborating information before publishing. There are other potential flaws in the story, but I don't think that is one of them. You will find few stories in any newspaper backed by 3 on-the-record interviews, 7 more off-the-record, and later corroborated by other journalists (Det News, ESPN) doing several more on-the-record interviews.
Here, I think, is some potentially valid criticism of the report, by the prominent political magazine The New Republic's, Senior Editor Jonathan Chait (what is his connection to UM football?)
http://michigan.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=982287
But everything has flaws that people can find and use to bring down something that is valuable, and ironically I think that fact is working against both sides of this story:
* The Free Press found flaws in UM's program, leading many to indict the Rodriguez and Barwis, ignoring all their positive aspects.
* In response, UM supporters find flaws in the Free Press' reporting, and use that to condemn the whole report, the reporter, the newspaper, and anyone who publicly supports them (e.g., Toney Clemons).
If we reject everything for its imperfections, we might as well shut down every football program and newspaper. If we want to deal with this situation well, we need to accept the flaws and still make a judgment.
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