Over the weekend, news of Michigan’s alleged NCAA violations, stemming from their usually-storied football program, emerged.  The NCAA says that mandatory workouts during the offseason should be no more than eight hours a week…but these kids were putting in full days.  Off days after games should have no more than a small number of hours of football-related activities…yet guys were putting in 11.5 hour days, showing up at 10:00 AM to watch film and not leaving until 9:30 PM.

Worst part? These allegations were brought by current players, who admitted to signing NCAA compliance forms, saying they were told they would get in trouble if they did not.  As near as we can tell, it’s at least three or four current players, and try as they might, no news outlet has found any current or former players who will deny the allegations.

We went and looked up the rules about practice and workout time in and out of season, and they’re relatively straightforward, although some types of workouts fall into a gray area, as they count as individual, non-mandated workouts but can still be supervised by team staff and personnel for “safety reasons.”  Still, even fudging the definitions of various workouts, we’re unsure exactly how the team could let this happen, especially in a new coach’s first year when procedures are being put into place for the first time.

We hope Michigan gets treated more harshly than Memphis for many reasons, honestly.  First off, this wasn’t an eligibility issue, even a hugely egregious one like Memphis.  This is an issue of taking a whole team’s worth of student athletes and making them into full-time athletes…without paying them and without respect for their educational goals.

Now, we’re not saying that every athlete at every powerhouse program is an academic all-star, or even writes his or her own papers, though we’d love to believe that the vast majority do so.  But this sort of violation goes against the entire idea of a student-athlete, and the NCAA has a responsibility to its programs and its own mission to come down hard.

We’ll update as we get more.