The right stuff

Young adults frequently do dumb stuff. They're young, after all. 

But they also more than occasionally redeem the dumber stuff fully-grown adults do.

For today's case in point we go to Ann Arbor, Mich., where the University of Michigan football program is in a heap o' trouble because of the dumb stuff its alleged leadership is being investigated for doing. Under head coach Jim Harbaugh, they've won a lot of games lately. But they've also become an outlaw program that's apparently overly fond of shenanigans.

A staffer investigated by the FBI for computer fraud. Another staffer carrying out a spying operation apparently bankrolled by a wealthy FOP (Friend of the Program). Yet another staffer fired for telling players to lie to investigators, and for trying to destroy evidence of said spying operation.

A head coach suspended by the school at the front of this season for lying to investigators himself, and suspended at the back of the season by the Big Ten for said spying operation, about which he's denied all knowledge and has been backed by the university and a lot of irrational Michigan diehards.

It's a hell of a mess, and it's going to get messier when the NCAA eventually rules on all this. But you know something?

Once again it's the young adults who do the right thing when the fully-grown adults don't.

The young adult in this case is Michigan running back Blake Corum, whose name you may have heard because he's one of the best in the land at what he does. The other day, in the midst of all the turmoil in the Big House, Corum did something of which his university should make a much bigger deal than how many games Jim Harbaugh wins.

He used his Name, Likeness and Image money to buy 600 turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Then he delivered them personally to people in Ypsilanti who might not have had a Thanksgiving turkey otherwise.

It's the third straight year Corum has done this. No one asked him to do it; his university, certainly, was too busy propping up a corrupt football coach to do so. 

What you call that, boys and girls, is character. It's the right stuff, as they say. And it's yet another demonstration that sometimes the young see far more clearly than their elders.

Good on ya, Blake Corum. And Michigan, take some damn notes.