The dust of the Big Ten realignment news had barely settled when a familiar face on Michigan Twitter broke his silence on the subject. Jordan Acker, regent of the University of Michigan, tweeted a thread on realignment and offered his various critiques thereof. The two-time Michigan alumnus has long been a Michigan sports diehard, and (to his credit, I suppose) sees the seedy business underbelly of the sports he otherwise loves.
Read it all in full or scroll through, I don’t really care. His arguments, which I don’t find objectionable on paper, aren’t the point.
This isn’t Acker’s first foray into offering his opinions online; in fact, one could call him a regular. You’ll learn lots about him with a glance at his timeline. Maybe you’ll like what you see.
As most university officials do, he’ll do “official” stuff, like retweet university PR posts, but he’s a curiously open book about most things, from silly to serious. The staunch Democrat will congratulate Gretchen Whitmer on some new, good thing in the state, in between one of his (many) thoughts on college sports. He’ll also blend fandom with his more serious role as a regent. After Donovan Edwards retweeted anti-semitic conspiracy theories last fall, he publicly ensured the team would go to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. as a teaching moment for all. Hell, he wished everyone a happy Taylor Swift day for the Detroit Eras Tour.
It serves a purpose. Jordan Acker wants you to know he’s with you. Even if the topic is bleak, as it is re: realignment, he wants you to know he understands how you feel. He gets you, and he’s aware. A man seemingly perched in the ivory tower wants you to know that if he could be, he’d be in the trenches with you. Just know, deep down, he’s doing his best from where he is.
That’s part of his problem.
Acker’s tweet thread broke contain as national college football media noticed the university leader’s sorrowful soliloquy. Then, Sports Illustrated / Split Zone Duo’s Richard Johnson interviewed Acker after the thread grew popular, as part of a larger piece on realignment.
In Johnson’s piece, Acker speaks with the same tone he has on Twitter. You can hear his heavy heart. He takes umbrage with the NCAA and institutions of higher learning pretending their decisions are innocent. Like it did in the thread, it all seems to trouble him.
But it’s not troubling enough. When asked how he would have voted on realignment if he were president:
“I would have voted for it,” Acker says. “And I know that’s gonna sound enormously hypocritical to say, but the job of the president of the University of Michigan is to protect the University of Michigan, and I have no doubt that Santa Ono when he voted for it was doing that. The problem isn’t with one particular here-and-there, the problem is with the system as a whole. You could say yes, this is good for Michigan, but I can take a step back and say this is bad for college sports.”
Acker had the ball on a tee to take a hypothetical stand after all of his grandstanding and critique of other institutions. He sided with greed anyway. The issue, though, isn’t his decision itself — it’s the way he wants you to feel bad for him as he makes it.
The “everyman regent” schtick loses its luster. Surely you must know that this is hard for him and anyone in upper administration. After all, this could spark new change within an already-changing NCAA, especially if he lays their problems bare! It’s so disappointing, yes, but you must know how terribly this all weighs on him and the university, right?
…right?
These aren’t the lamentations of the cool, likable, “with-it” guy Acker wants to be in public. Matt Brown said it best: it’s all crocodile tears.
Earlier, I said this isn’t Acker’s first rodeo being opinionated online. It’s also not his first rodeo in playing woe-is-me as he lets Rome burn.
Amid increased tension between university administration and the Graduate Employees’ Organization, which represents graduate student instructors/workers at U-M, Acker’s online presence is a particular thorn. As he waxes poetic about the labor of the college athlete, the university continues to squabble over what constitutes a living wage for a graduate student, as if graduate students are putting the university out of house and home.
Though his commentary on the GEO strike is scarce, he still feels a need to explain his side if the situation arises. That “side” is insidious, seen here as he answers a question from graduate student Andrea Valedón:
Acker’s response:
His response is wholly misleading, but that’s for another article I’m not equipped to write. Suffice it to say: the “everyman” regent is trying to explain why graduate students are, in his mind, acting out of greed (they’re not).
The same man who wants everyone to like him online for his cool athlete/labor opinions seems to balk at the labor actually required to be a U-M graduate student. He rests on “degree completion” or “research” to exploit grad students much like the NCAA (an institution he critiques regularly, including in his realignment thread) claims that student-athletes are technically getting paid in an education. He’s doing the nickel-and-diming and nitpicking he accused the NCAA of! I hope he simply lacks self-awareness, because otherwise, the hypocrisy must keep him up at night.
Of course, don’t forget, he’s dealing with sooooo much.
Acker has apparently received death threats and “threatening DMs” over the course of the summer, as he posted a few days before he tweeted that reply pinching pennies over grad student livelihoods. Tweeting anyone death threats is a horrible idea. Duh. That’s only one layer of the issue, though. It’s not about what has been done, it’s about how he weaponizes it.
From Acker’s perspective, he’s a mere volunteer. Existential labor disputes — in which the university seeks to exploit graduate students for their work while leeching its name onto their research — are just unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner politics that should stay civil. Please understand, he’s trying so, so hard to represent the place we love, but people are being mean to him! How is that fair to him? He’s just a little guy!
He isn’t, though. Michigan is one of three state schools that elects trustees politically and not via appointment. Acker was elected in 2018, and will serve unless he steps down or is not re-elected for another eight-year term. Sure, he’s a “volunteer,” but he’s also a politician. When you frame him that way, his words feel less and less genuine.
Threats aren’t warranted, but his tweeted concerns obfuscate the fact that he is in a far better position to seek safety than most, including any online troll. He’s not asking for civility because he’s a hero speaking great, radical truths; he’s in this position because he represents a university trying its damnedest to dehumanize and exploit its workers. He can’t ask for grace and then calmly explain to grad students that their labor isn’t labor at all. There’s an imbalance of power, and it’s not on the side of radicalized grad students or their rogue supporters.
In other words? You don’t have to have sympathy for the devil.
I don’t know what Jordan Acker’s goal is. I’ve never met him to tell you. Is it a foray into government? Advancement into another board of whatever where he’ll pretend to push for change? Simply trying to atone? It’s beyond me.
I have a beloved former colleague, though, who would tell you his schtick of privately asking for sympathy while publicly supporting the institution’s reprehensible decisions is his pathological pattern. Acker will ingratiate himself with you so you’ll understand why all these horrific business decisions pain him so. He oh-so desperately wants you to forgive him as he throws you into the wood chipper.
Two days after Jordan Acker wrote the tweet thread that finally gave him national validation, the University’s Public Affairs office threatened to replace any grad employees who participate in a strike this fall as GEO negotiations remain tense.
The university seems to be getting far better press on Acker’s brave stand than they are for threatening potentially illegal strike-breaking measures. Funny how that works.
It’s almost as if he knows what he’s doing.