I was always concerned about the missing CARA forms.  In November, after the Detroit News reported no sheets had been turned into compliance since Rodriguez arrived I rambled out some thoughts on the matter, including this: But either Rodriguez and crew are complete and total a-holes and told Van Horn and crew to stick it, or someone at U-M was asleep at the whistle.  The football team had plenty to worry about after last season.  Isn’t much of this on the university for not cracking the whip?  After a few months went by formless, shouldn’t have someone reminded RR and crew of the policy.. Reader ‘Papa D’ reacted to that post with this: Where was the oversight from the athletic department CEO, namely Bill (Vladimir) Martin? Don’t you think Judy Van Horn reported the lack of compliance to the AD? This remains a great question.  Super Dave Brandon beautifully handled the situation Tuesday and even took responsibility for the whole mess.  But of course Dave was reformulating the Domino’s pizza recipe when all this went down and the real head of the athletic department was Bill Martin. Mgoblog provided an excellent rundown of the blatant stonewalling of Scott Draper and Brad Labadie with respect to the requests by Judy Van Horn and Ann Vollano to submit the practice forms and…

You just made my list Ashton Kutcher, via Twitter: Come on Kutcher, don’t be hating the Blue to four million followers.  Mini Me is on Twitter too and he’s going to crush you with the strength of his army of 10,000. (HT: Justin Rogers at MLive) Related: Dude meets Sweet.  You win.

 There weren’t many lighter moments during the presser; this was one. In business school I took an excellent course that included a segment on crisis management.  We did an exercise where each person in the class played a CEO addressing a crisis in front of a staged media who were firing difficult questions.  The whole thing was videotaped so you could watch how goofy you looked facing the pressure.  I was at Indiana at the time so during my turn at the podium I’m pretty sure I tossed a chair in frustration and maybe as a salute to Coach Knight. Anyway, I have to offer up a real salute to Dave Brandon for how this was handled today.  From the top down he’s a complete pro.  You know you’re witnessing pure gold when a guy who wasn’t around at the time takes full responsibility for the NCAA infractions and it doesn’t prompt a follow-up question.  After I chuckled I found myself kind of believing him. Another moment for me was when Mitch Albom offered up a couple questions via teleconference.   They were pretty bad questions and his first (asking if probation would be involved) demonstrated he hadn’t reviewed the materials or even read a tweet for that matter.  Brandon handled it like a champ.  He respectfully addressed his questions and…

The response to the NCAA is released and folks are poring through it right now in anticipation of the 11am EDT media teleconference.  Included are a few key emails, voicemail and conference call transcriptions relevant to the response.  Here’s an exchange from September of last year between the NCAA’s Jackie Thurnes and coach Rodriguez regarding the proper use of a makeshift summertime pigskin from Exhibit 2: I’m not sure who transcribed this but the “Mm-hmm”s and the “Uh-huh”s evoke scenes from Slingblade.  Elsewhere:  One of the exhibits included a piece from Dave Birkett in AnnArbor.com discussing quality control, and the portion that was submitted to the NCAA included a few of the reader comments.   Next thing you know, the tiresome snark of A2.com commenter ‘Theo212’ gets immortalized as part of the permanent record: Happy Responstivus!

Former Fab-Fiver and NBA analyst Jalen Rose joined Jim Rome Friday to talk NBA playoffs and more.   Two clips of note for you.  First, Rose is talking about about the emergence of the Celtics Rajon Rondo which prompts Rome to ask him about the leadership on the Fab 5.   In the second clip, Jalen talks a little bit about his future in basketball: [display_podcast] Related: Emotional night for Jalen Your favorite Fab 5 Story