I love my influence around here! I have seen obfuscation and conflation used correctly around here!
But here is what gets me now; hypocrisy. As many shades as possible.
Everyone has their own agenda with this situation, pro-football, anti-football, anti-admin, pro-mid-west-Ivy, anti-Kelly, it all has helped to spin this thing out of control. And only within the last few (relatively) posts have I seen someone even claim that their only interest is in the kids. This is very interesting, when looking at the furor of this thread before the Michigan jail-sex, beat-down, versus after. (Oh, I guess we are going to be just fine, depends on who is "we!")
And my last two favorite groups are the "pro-process admin apologists" (does anyone really need it) versus the "due process - that's what makes America great" group. We seem to have a number of people wanting to get into a fight about how great the process at Notre Dame is (right!?!?!), and those that consider it a slap in the face abridgement of our basic fundamental rights.
You know who the winners appear to be to me? Kelly, the team, and the staff? They have been business as usual and even keeled about this, logging the greatest victory since the end of the Holtz era! And the losers besides these kids are anyone with an ND degree. Regardless of how the process is going, the fact that the investigation was leaked by someone at ND with knowledge of it (confirmed), and someone from the NCAA to sports reporters (confirmed), with all the pissing in the public forum about it, diminishes that which is special about the mystique, just a little bit.
Sure people would have figured something was up when five players missed practice for a protracted period, but it wouldn't have been the same ugly thing. Although it may not have pointed out so clearly the length of time it took to adjudicate versus investigate.