Two different FSU football players punched two different women in the face recently.
Now there are plans to educate players…
Okay, I know what you say to the media can be taken out of context, but these players need to understand “social media” and having “everything scrutinized,” not that hitting women is wrong? The problem is people know you did it not that you did it? Why would President Thrasher frame it that way?
That bugged me too.
One problem is that at least one of the players is a freshman, had just arrived at the school when the incident took place. How is the school supposed to teach these things immediately or even before the student arrives? Have the students arrive and immediately go to a socialization boot camp before interacting with the public? Set up a charm school before they are allowed on campus? NCAA rules might prevent that.
FSU says they may scrutinize recruits. Education has to start earlier than college.
Yes, and I have a bridge near Brooklyn that I’ll sell you for a steal!
FSU will not be scrutinizing recruits looking for just a few good men and passing up top prospects. FSU will not change until someone makes them.
There are some really good ‘30 for 30’ documentaries on ESPN on the programs at SMU, Miami, and about individual coaches and players (Maurice Clarret, Randy Moss) at other schools. They want to win and will do what it takes, and it often takes taking a chance on players who have issues.
FSU has a serious culture issue with their athletic department.
I think the school’s athletic department needs a complete change in attitude and culture. This needs to start from the top and work down to the coaches and players. There should be a fundamental change regarding the kids they are allowed to recruit, academic standards, getting rid of that sense of entitlement that players there seem to have, changing what is considered acceptable behavior by coaches etc. Winning is great, but helping young men to become educated and develop good morals seems a more worthy goal. I’m glad the school feels embarrassed by recent incidents, but IMO forcing kids to sit through one course is not enough.
Twoinanddone, Outside the Lines is a great series. I recently saw the show about Mike Rice the former Rutgers caoch. Mike Rice was fired for throwing basketballs balls at the athletes, hitting athletes, abusive language.
I watch them too (some on netflix). The ones on U Miami are a history lesson in civil rights, but everyone loved them when they were winning and the alum grumbled when they were mediocre. Alums didn’t really care if the players were criminals and flunking out, they want to win. Biggest games were Umiami against FSU.
The one on Coach Croom at Miss State is very good. Alabama wouldn’t hire him because he was black. When he straightened out the team at Miss State but they didn’t win, he was fired. Life in the ACC.
I’m shocked, just shocked that these players behaved that way. Wasn’t it their compelling admissions essays which showcased their personal character, the factor which got them admitted into FSU in the first place?
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There is something to be said for having a bible-thumping disciplinarian as a coach. Retired FSU coach Bobby Bowden certainly did everything possible to win, but he drew the line at improper personal conduct. Yeah, he apparently winked and nodded when his players cut a class or two (I am thinking of you, Dion Sanders), but he disciplined players for the slightest questionable moral conduct, particularly with female students. I am thinking of the All-American kicker he suspended. And Lord knows FSU needed a kicker in those classic 1-point and 2-point losses to Miami back in the day. “Wide right” became an FSU curse.
It all comes back to WHO you recruit. As long as teams you will be playing are willing to recruit a player with “baggage” so will you. Same goes for academics. The lower their academic skills are from the typical student, the more the school has to do to keep them eligible and working towards a degree. With the “sliding scale” used for NCAA eligibility, & the increased difficulty for students to cheat on the SAT, prep schools have capitalized by inflating HS players grades to the point that they can still qualify even with getting every question on the SAT incorrect (if they have a 3.5 HS GPA). More realistically, they are bumping their GPA to a point where they are qualifying kids with SAT scores in the 600-800 range. How in the world can those kids survive at schools such as UNC, or U of Florida, where the typical student has SAT scores 500-600 points higher than them? They end up doing things like UNC did, where they just make up courses for them.
Yeah, it is a massive shell game and as always, the adults are getting rich while the kids, at least those not lucky enough to land in the NFL or NBA, are getting shafted. Just look at the graduation rates at some of the big football and basketball schools for athletes in revenue sports. Schools in the SEC routinely graduate 30-40% of their football players (and many of those have degrees in less marketable majors). The numbers for basketball are worse. At the same time, Nick Saban made 7 million plus just in salary last year.
And this may be the first time I have heard Bobby Bowden, formerly of “Free Shoes University” be called a disciplinarian. If I recollect correctly, he once refused to suspend a kid who had been arrested for soliciting prostitution from an undercover police officer.
I’ve heard that even in recruiting visits, these big football schools wink at and even encourage questionable behavior. If you recruit a player with alcohol and willing women, that only feeds his delusion that all women are willing to have sex with him.
Ohiodad, I can’t argue with you that Bowden was guilty of “selective indignation” from time to time. LOL.
Cardinal Fang, it was very discouraging to me to learn a few years ago that a fine university like U of Oregon was providing female “chaperones” to high school recruits during tours of the campus. These girls responsibilities included essentially dating the recruits and escorting them to parties where all kinds of nonsense of was going on. Shameful.
I’m not going to defend Nick Saban’s $7 million salary (although UA Chancellor Robert Witt, who earned an MBA at Dartmouth, does a pretty good job on that front), but he holds his players to some pretty high standards, across the board:
The New America Foundation actually rated Alabama as one of the better schools in their Academic Football Playoff Series in 2014: http://www.edcentral.org/afps2014/
Football in Alabama is big business and is a major economic driver, and for that reason, Saban is treated as a bit of a god by many in the state. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes in his football program. I personally wouldn’t equate it with FSU’s.
I would agree, I’ve always thought that he gets a higher grade of kid as far as character goes in comparison to LSU
Frankly, the fact that the athletic office maps out ‘every hour of the day’ of these kids is a huge problem. The amount of work put in by football players at a big school is immense. Far, far greater than the laughable 20 hour NCAA limit. That is what is happening when Saban maps out every hour of the day. Take a look at the documents filed in the Northwestern player’s request for authority to unionize. These kids are scheduled 10-12 hours a day. And that is at Northwestern which graduates 90 percent of its players. I guarantee you it is worse at Bama (or Ohio State, FSU, etc)
Academically, many kids go to Alabama (and Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, LSU, etc) and they are told what courses to take, what to major in, etc. For kids coming from literally nothing, they have no idea they can tell the academic adviser they want to major in something else, or they don’t want to take this or that gut course but would rather major in accounting, or education, or whatever. And then when you are a red shirt junior say if you are not performing as expected out the door you go and your scholarship is not renewed for one reason or another. Or you use up your fourth year of eligibility and realize you are still a dozen or more credits shy of a degree.
Alabama may not be the worst school in the world of big time football (talk about faint praise), but let’s not kid ourselves. The SEC as a whole is a disgrace, and Alabama is not the least of that group.
http://www.nola.com/lsu/index.ssf/2015/06/lsu_tied_for_first_in_sec_with.html
Also, the New America rating system isn’t really a ranking based solely on graduation rates. It is a metric that compares graduation rates to the general male student body and makes various calculations based on race in reaching a number, which is then put into a formula that compares that number to athletic success. It is probably a good way to look at really tip top football programs but it is really not intended to say Alabama is doing a great job educating its players, because they are not. Neither is anyone excepting possibly Stanford, Duke, ND, Northwestern and Vandy among Power 5 schools.
And @“Cardinal Fang” you have no idea. Tennessee’s hostess program was notorious when Lane Kiffen coached there. They even got in trouble once for sending some hostess out to a high school game to “recruit” a kid. Bear Bryant used to have “Bear’s Angels” even back in the 1960’s. It has been going on for a long time.
So, what are you proposing, @Ohiodad51? That they eliminate football in the SEC? Who exactly would that benefit?
I’m not arguing that Alabama is doing a “great job educating its players,” especially in comparison with Stanford, Duke, ND, NU, and Vandy, but you could make that same argument about the majority of colleges in this country with regard to how they educate ALL their students, not just athletes.
Still, I’m not sure that the bulk of these students are getting the raw deal some claim, unless they leave saddled with loads of debt. Any college is better than none, especially when you’ve attended on scholarship, unless of course you suffer a TBI, but that can happen in any football program, including the Ivies.