Earlier, M4B interviewed the awesome Lake The Posts on their prospects for the 2009 season.

Sometimes, we here at the WLA cannot just let it go. We try, but randomly capitalized words will start creeping into our prose, and indefinite articles will slowly start dying in our needs to write a joke. We’ve been admonished by better bloggers than ourselves that perhaps we should direct our IRE at other WORTHY SOURCES. And we know this, really. But sometimes we just can’t let well enough alone. So, Comrades, here we are again, with a quadruple-action shotgun-burst of GBMW inanity, that only really reveals the sheer depth of it’s stupidity when looking at the context of the four pieces combined. Again, if you’re familiar with GBMW, you know that all grammatical pratfalls and missing verbiage is [sic].

The first piece can be found in this “tidbit” piece. In it, GMBW writes:

There are a couple other players who will be on the team next year, but depending on how season goes may decide to take their chances elsewhere. This happens every year, but the difference this year is those players are already known.

That is why not overly concerned with the numbers in terms of scholarships available. Think we will take another big class next year (2010 class).

They quickly follow this with:

One thing is clear Coach Rod is not the most patient guy in the world. And his impatience may lead down the road to some disagreement with the AD. Coach Rod wants to look at the way Michigan schedules (including night games), but mainly looking at there out of conference schedule. He likes what teams like Alabama is doing where they are playing a top team yearly at a neutral site.

Now, this is classic GBMW. Both are 100% unsupported rumor-mongering that is completely unverifiable. Look at the “out” they’ve given themselves in both pieces. Some players may leave! Or they may not! This is inside information! Rodriguez may get mad at Martin! But he might not! We’re MAKING up as we GO ALONG! Again – this is a website that crows about it’s “access” and “inside information” and goes to extremely great pains to never actually say anything that could possibly be proven as false. That’s not the dissemination of information – it’s ambiguity and guess-work posing as knowledge. Given the lofty esteem with which GBMW’s writers are held at Scout combined with the boredom of the off-season, and you get mass speculation about to whom GBMW refers. Comrades: they refer to no one. They have no insider information. They are predicting an outcome that every single person knows (a player will leave the team after the year without using all their eligibility) so that when a player leaves (and they have no idea who) they can claim grand omniscience. Don’t listen to them, please.

The piece about Rodriguez is more classic GBMW – alluding to conflict inside the AD that may or may not exist, claim that Rodriguez and Martin don’t get along, and quickly withdraw into a “Hey, but we support Rich Rod!” defensive pose. At least they’re not sugar-coating, right?

Let’s take the next three posts at once, shall we? Here is a write-up on Kelvin Grady’s potential future with the football team. In this piece, GBMW writes:

The only real problem we see is he has been out of football for several years along with “family issues” towards the football program or the university in general. If anybody was in earshot of this family member during the spring scrimmage will know what we are talking about.

Here is a post of rumors that Justin Turner hasn’t qualified for his scholarship, and here is their defense of “criticizing players”, in which they write (quoted in it’s entirety):

In our opinion, the effect of message boards have is greatly overstated for several reasons.

Players get criticized and analyzed all the time and it starts as soon as they start playing.

Does negative press, or being booed effect pros and where they sign as free agents?

Trust us on this one, anything they read on message boards will be mild compared to what they get from their position coach and head coach wherever they end up.

Sometimes I think message boards just give players another excuse for not picking particular school and then people can complain those people for the kid not coming to that school.

As stated on the message board we both understand the “sensitivity” of these type of boards and recruits with family and friends looking at them … yep … but should not make it so people cannot say what they believe or think about the coaching staff, players, recruits, etc… if not then why even bother having a message board unless you just want one “company line” all the time and everything is great?

In addition, can it go the other way as well if posters of a message board “pump up” a kid so much that he thinks he is better than he really is and thinks he can always do better than that school he is looking at?

Sorry, but if a recruit cannot handle a few comments on a message board than how in the hell will he handle playing in front of 105,000 people that hate his guts in the snake pit (Ohio State)?

or

How will he handle when Coach Rod or his position coach goes off on the kid for doing something wrong?

If parents, friends, and recruits themselves cannot take a little criticism than they should not get on team message boards and introduce themselves especially when they are doing it on several sites and getting those fans hyped up about this recruit.

OK, so let’s look at this. First, we agree with their basic point on how recruits should take “criticism”: if a player decides not come to Michigan because an illiterate blogger with a bankrupt sense of graphic design criticizes their pad-level, perhaps they are too sensitive for major college football.

The problem, of course, is that this defense they’ve mounted has nothing to do with what they’ve written.The complaints on the Scout boards, and in the e-mail, are not upset because Eroc or CoachBT thought a player to be a poor tackler. Such criticism is definitely valid, and I would never claim otherwise. However, look what he’s written. They’ve claimed that Kelvin Grady has a poor sense of “family values” (an expression they KNOW to be a buzzword in Michigan circles) with no substantiation, as if his relation to his brother bestows some of his behavioral issues on Kelvin genetically. If that’s not the rationale at work, we can’t say, because GBMW gives NONE of their rationale, other than undisclosed comments that they overheard. All they’ve done is besmirch a college kid to their audience with absolutely no backup.

Secondly, in the course of Turner, they are talking about something (test scores) which are confidential, as in, out of the public domain. If their sources are accurate (as you can guess, we have our skepticism on this), they’re communicating ill-gotten, privileged information about a high school kid, as there is no way for them to be in possession of this information legitimately. This isn’t a “criticism” – they are divulging private information to which they have absolutely no legal claim. This isn’t analogous to the case of Jeremy Gallon, who told reporters he that he hadn’t yet qualified. Nobody in Turner’s camp has made any public statement regarding Turner’s standing. A student’s scholastic records are not in the public domain. When we apply to schools, we need to sign a waiver allowing our current school to release our record, and the receiving institution is contractually obligated not to make said information public. What GBMW has taken part in isn’t “criticism”, it’s a breach of both trust and contract. Or it’s a lie. Neither would surprise us – no sugar-coating.