Believe what and who you want because, in truth, this is a typical, though high-stakes game of “my word against yours.” Players can say all they want about The Product ignoring the rules and The Product can reiterate behind however many tears he chooses to let flow he is innocent. For now, it just goes around and around until someone, either Michigan or the NCAA, reaches a conclusion.

It’s all just very hard to prove unless there is some tangible evidence of wrongdoing that wasn’t, ahem, shredded in an unsupervised office or boxed and carried away without permission.

I think what’s lost in all this is the presence of a basic and critical procedure: teams have to submit regular reviews of the work they’ve done. The coaches prepare them, the players sign them and the compliance office receives and files them. That all happened at UM and, apparently, there was never a complaint. And now there’s this happening at the school, which makes one side look suspect, to say the least. What side, we don’t yet know.

Obviously, there’s a “What about WVU?” question to be asked here. And it was. Again, choose to believe who and what you want, but WVU and former players say it never happened here.

“Based upon our looking back over the weekend, we don’t feel we have any concerns,” WVU’s Assistant Athletic Director for Communications Michael Fragale said Monday. “We have checked it out and there has been nothing flagged and nothing out of the ordinary.

“There were no student-athlete complaints during the time (Rodriguez) was here.”

Former players who agreed to speak to the Daily Mail anonymously after learning of the allegations first raised Saturday night said they knew of nothing similar happening at WVU during at their time with the team.

Rodriguez was 60-26 in seven seasons in charge of his alma mater’s program.

“Compliance was always around,” one player said. “You couldn’t do it even if you wanted to. There wasn’t any rule-breaking going on because you couldn’t do any of that with compliance around like they were.”

None of the response I got within that story were very surprising — except the suggestion UM recruits are used to being babied. Even that made some sense, in context, because Rich recruited a different type of player to WVU. By and large, he and his staff made players over time and gave kids chances to become stars. There’s a loyalty there, a willingness to follow any and all orders, a desire to protect the image.

In truth, another reporter could call the same number of players I did and get completely different answers. It’s a big pool we’re fishing from, which is one reason these anonymous quotes are kind of meaningless. No one who went without a name at UM is going to spill it for the UM/NCAA investigation.

As for WVU’s hands-washing, it’s what you’d expect. I’m not saying they’re lying or they can’t be trusted. In fact, quite the opposite, which leads to the big point here. There is a system in place to count and track the number of hours teams work.

WVU and, presumably, UM are no different. P-Rod was watched so closely at WVU, especially early on, that it had to have bothered him. I can remember times he took the field, saw someone there for practice and seemed miffed. I’ve been told the attention was never as intense as it was during the second year. You’ll remember WVU was 3-8 in the first season … and UM was 3-9 last season.

It’s a lot to ask me to believe Michigan’s 10 or so compliance people missed this unless they just didn’t keep an eye on it — or didn’t report it. If either happened, that’s a lack of oversight, which is a big (potential) problem. For its part, WVU is clear of any trouble.