All fixed. For anyone who has this problem in the future: don't save anything in the Football Manager 2012 file that is accessed by <username>/library/application support..../footballmanager 2012. Those are the installation files and shouldn't be saved.
Something was also wrong with the skin...
Had a great day installing Premier league logos, kits, and some other things. everything loaded and went without a hitch. after messing with the game for about 10 minutes i noticed that country flags, team logos, and player faces were missing. it seems pretty much every that wasn't downloaded...