Coacha Inconsolata!

It’s been a long time since this blog has featured that genre of sports journalism in which the university football coach is cast as a pietà, an icon of purity and innocence suddenly and shockingly beset by evil.

UD thinks this piece, written by a Bowling Green football fan, qualifies as Coacha Inconsolata writing.

You tend to get CI when a football team is so vile – a complete loser on the field, with a heavy emphasis on criminality – that the choice for booster/journalists becomes very stark: Either contempt or sympathy. Either you allow yourself to acknowledge – and even express – the disgust that the sickening reality of the local team makes you feel, or you cast about for some way to redeem an unredeemable spectacle. You rifle (riffle?) the mythic-familiar and conjure a fallen world whose gratuitous malignity brutalizes Our Mother of the Gridiron, the coach.

Title:

Heat Rising on Bowling Green’s [Coach] Jinks as Arrests Pile Up

Not that Jinks recruited the heat; the heat just satanically piled up from Hades.

The team, the writer notes, is at “the bottom of the standings,” but “No. 1 in the country in offseason arrests.”

Off-season, mind you; there are almost always far more crimes committed during the season.

The writer pithily sums things up:

Six wins in two years.

Five arrests in six months.

Can we say the obvious? Can we say that this is the result you get with a really really shitty coach and program?

No, no. The writer goes on to praise the coach for dismissing the naughty players (what a saint: most coaches would keep dangerous people on campus), and for spouting the most amazing stream of sports cliches in his own defense that UD has ever seen — more even than that scene in Bull Durham. The writer actually quotes the coach’s entire statement in the piece.

The coach, he concludes, is “a good guy,” tasked with the “inherent challenges of monitoring more than 100 college kids.” Problem is, his “inexperienced staff” (another cross he has to bear) “is recruiting too many marginal characters out of self-preservation.” They’re doing it out of self-preservation, after all! Nobody else wants these dudes, but Bowling Green has to take them because … no one else will …

Time to Dust Off ‘Coacha Inconsolata’

Longtime readers know that UD uses that term to designate the tendency of the local booster press to respond to violent university football players by focusing not on the scandal of American schools recruiting people who rape and/or beat up their students, but rather on the sainted martyred suffering university football coaches who only meant well when they pulled out all the stops to attract Richie Incognito and others like him to our campuses. Let’s not talk about the gross neglect demonstrated by admitting dangerous people precisely because they’re dangerous (you want to assemble groups of big nasty types for the team – results range from Baylor on down); let’s talk about the poignant disappointment of Father Coach as he watches his wonderful lads go astray…

So there’s a perfect current example of Coacha Inconsolata, written by a University of Oregon hack. Let’s scathe through it, starting with its headline.

Eddie Heard’s Arrest Another
Headache Mark Helfrich Doesn’t Need

Did he give himself the headache? Yes – he and his recruiting guys went after people they knew posed an off-field threat. The important thing now is for everyone in the community – led by the hack – to forget that and to express shock and despair on behalf of the coach who just knew this guy would make an exemplary gentleman scholar… a more than worthy addition to the Oregon campus community…

[Coach] Mark Helfrich might want to buy stock in Advil.

The 2016 Oregon football season has been one headache after another with a bad defense, changing quarterbacks and a five-game losing streak. His job security has been under fire and only let up some with last week’s win and will quickly heat back up if or when USC defeats the Ducks on Saturday.

God knows how he’ll weather a possible humongous buyout from his “a five-year, $17.5 million contract worth an average of $3.5 million per season.” If you have tears, prepare to shed them now...

Now news comes out that linebacker Eddie Heard has been arrested on Wednesday evening on misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree assault and harassment that was a result of an incident at an off-campus bar. Heard was immediately suspended for Oregon’s upcoming game, but more importantly, the incident is just another unwanted issue that Helfrich needs to explain to the media.

… To Helfrich’s credit, however, he seems to be on top of the situation. Chip Kelly didn’t have many weaknesses in his time at Oregon, but dealing with off-the-field problems wasn’t his strong suit. He was often slow to recognize those issues and tended to “get all of the information” before acting. Helfrich suspended Heard the very next day after Heard’s arrest.

This good and great man! Now comes news that one of the bruisers he recruited beat up a student! How much can one person bear? But listen – here’s the good news. Unlike the last coach, with all his bruiser arrests, this one dumps the guy right away.

While everything wasn’t rosy on campus, things were beginning to take a turn and a win over USC on the road might complete that turn with the thoughts of the Ducks might be contenders once again next season.

That still may be the narrative around 8 pm Saturday night. Oregon is a double-digit underdog and an upset would be huge.

Heard’s arrest, however, puts a temporary halt to the good feelings that were just starting to become apparent at Oregon.

This is straight out of the Monty Python restaurant sketch.

Manager: It gets me here. I can’t give you any excuses for it – there are no excuses. I’ve been meaning to spend more time in the restaurant recently, but I haven’t been too well. Things aren’t going very well back there. The poor cook’s son has been put away again, and poor old Mrs Dalrymple who does the washing up can hardly move her poor fingers, and then there’s Gilberto’s war wound – but they’re good people, and they’re kind people, and together we were beginning to get over this dark patch. There was light at the end of the tunnel… now this… now this!!

*************

Hey ladies! Duck!

Details on the latest player assaults… against women.

MAJOR Coacha Inconsolata Initiative Begun!

It started with Coach Pitino himself, who said that in the aftermath of charges that his University of Louisville assistant basketball coach hired prostitutes over a number of years for some of his players (festivities took place in the athletes’ dorm), he felt

… heart broken… My heart is just taken out of my body and broken.

It continues with this remarkable essay, which argues that Pitino himself a few years ago had sex on a restaurant table (some reports say it happened on the restaurant floor, or in its bathroom) because of 9/11 (RICK PITINO AND THE SHADOWS THAT NEVER LEAVE):

[Pitino’s] descent into a dark place [so maybe it was the bathroom] happened no more than two years after 9-11. The idea that tragedy and loss [a close relative of Pitino’s died] did not have anything to do with a flawed man’s attempt to fill those voids with something adventurous (and highly inappropriate) seems unconvincing.

Plus even the Pope, man…

In keeping with the Golden Rule Pope Francis invoked when he spoke to Congress, none of us would ever want the past — something 12 years ago — to be held against us.

The whole essay’s really weird because few people so far have anything to say at all about whether Pitino knew his lads were double teaming (or so the exposé claims) in the dorm … It’s as if the writer – given Pitino’s own sex scandal background – assumes we’re going to go there and we’re going to assume Pitino must have known all about the McNasty…

I mean, he might have. Who knows? We’ll find out. But that’s not what most people are thinking about right now. Right now we’re thinking about whether the claims are true, what exactly happened… It’s early days. Yet here you’ve got this guy anticipating a general belief that the slimy Pitino (as the essay goes on to note, he’s paid an outrageous fortune, is a really unpleasant human being, is a hypocrite – all those motivational books about how you can be as great as he is – and is an inveterate breaker of rules, athletic and otherwise) must have known about the sex. So right there I’m not sure the writer is accomplishing his Coacha Inconsolata (put the term in my search engine if at this late date you need a definition) goals by going out of his way to remind us that Pitino’s a shit.

After a long detailed recounting of Pitino’s grubby past, the essay ends in this way:

[We need to] recognize the fragility of life behind (and beyond) the public persona of someone who has won multiple championships and earned a boatload of money.

You know, there’s one thing Scathing Online Schoolmarm will say for Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn’t say I’m a shitty person because of 9/11. He doesn’t say under all my greed and cruelty I’m fragile and you have to be nice to me. Nor does he have admirers who say these things for him.

SUPER Coacha Inconsolata at Rutgers

Like Yeshiva University’s Richard Joel, Robert Barchi of mega-scandal school Rutgers is essentially a rich guy who wants to be left alone to attend corporate board meetings with people like himself. He doesn’t wanna know from his school’s massively catastrophic overspending on athletics, and he certainly doesn’t wanna threaten his classiness (doctor, university president, corporate seat holder) by grubbing around with lowlifes like sadist coach Mike Rice and recruiter-of-criminals coach Kyle Flood. (The governor of the state has expressed a close variant of this approach: “I certainly have a lot more important things than worry about what wide receiver is suspend[ed] for a few games recently. Being governor of New Jersey and running for president is a little more important than that.”)

So as per usual, as the fact of his football coach having recruited a bevy of armed home invaders becomes national news, Barchi’s remaining above the fray.

In this he represents – as you know if you read this blog – one of the, er, dominant typologies among jock school presidents.

Some JSP‘s are totally happily down and dirty with their having to devote their entire tenure to football and basketball scandals (these include not only … problematic players and coaches, but also regular gigantic buyout payments and litigation costs when coaches are fired or leave or whatever, plus other pesky matters like the new stadium that fucked the institution’s budget but good and sits empty because no one attends games, post-game student riots, drunk and disorderly tailgates, that teensy academic scandal over in communication studies, etc., etc.). But some JSP‘s, like Barchi, come to the job with a sense of themselves incompatible with, say, spending days desperately lobbying the state legislature for alcohol sales in the stadium. They just don’t see themselves as liquor shills, and you’re not going to get them to do this sort of thing, however much money the empty stadium is hemorrhaging. He’s a high-ranking academic officer, dammit, and there are certain duties he will not perform.

But if, on your presidential daily rounds, you refuse to visit your school’s field of dreams, its denizens are going to feel offended. Like this guy. He’s really pissed with the president, and he’ll tell you why.

First, though, he wants to share a photograph with you. Granddad Flood cradles an awed baby in his arms right after a win on the field!

Okay, now that we’re in the Coacha Inconsolata mood, let’s roll.

The writer begins by quoting another local scribe shocked at Barchi’s refusal to help Coach Flood out of this latest mess:

Ask President Robert Barchi to step in and help? He can’t even pretend he likes the big-time athletics part of his job…

How can he not like the big-time athletics part of his job? What’s not to like?

And now the writer, noting the fact of Barchi having left Flood to twist slowly slowly in the wind, expresses his incredulity:

The president of the university – the president of a school embroiled in all sorts of negative publicity, with a coach who is the most visible face of said university – hasn’t spoken with the coach about the latest issue? Really?

Football’s the front porch, which means coach is the front face, and if you’d just rather not deal with that, if you prefer a sense of yourself as resident in a cloister rather than a flophouse with a wraparound porch, you’re going to avoid the coach.

Now the writer quotes another outraged Rutgers fan.

[T]o leave Coach Flood facing the media alone for the crimes by students and student athletes announced this week just isn’t right… Rutgers is the size of a small city and will have its bad elements who should be disciplined and prosecuted as appropriate.

The pertinent crime committed was the recruitment of criminals. That crime was committed by Flood alone – he being the ultimate decision-maker (you don’t actually think there are admissions committees that look at these guys, do you?). As for the bad elements, when these turn out to be not just players but coaches like (base salary close to $700,000) Mike Rice, you’re not just talking elements. You’re talking about entire enchiladas (which is why no one’s surprised that Flood also turns out to be fucking with the academic staff).

Okay, so get out your hankies – time for the Coacha Inconsolata final appeal:

Flood has been standing alone. Facing the media….alone. And representing himself, his team, his university – and mine – with dignity and forthrightness. Alone. And that is shameful and wrong.

BWAH!

More EXQUISITE coacha inconsolata.

[W]hat (the NCAA) did to Jim Boeheim, I think has really been sad, and I think you’re going to see an appeal process by him. What about the millions he’s raised for cancer? I don’t want to hear it. I happen to be a big fan of Jim Boeheim as a human being and as a person.

Another “coacha inconsolata” moment for poor Jim!

Many N.C. State fans stopped their “Wolf! Pack!” chant during Syracuse’s starting lineups long enough to strongly boo Boeheim when he was introduced. Others sang the chorus from the Village People’s song “YMCA” during Syracuse’s early possessions as a reference to some of the violations outlined in the NCAA’s report that were connected to a local YMCA.

Another fan held up a sign: “Jim, will play for grades.”

Total Ultimate Coacha Inconsolata!

(For earlier posts on what UD calls coacha inconsolata, just put the phrase in my search engine.)

“Shouldn’t we start holding presidents, chancellors and the heads of departments accountable? …. They lay it all on the coach.

ULTIMATE Coacha Inconsolata.

It doesn’t get any better than this. (For background on coacha inconsolata, go here and scroll down.)

A somber coach “Boom” rested on the pulpit. [University of Florida football coach Will] Muschamp had a cross to bear that wasn’t his own but instead a player’s. The weight grew heavy.

“[S]orry to inconvenience you guys, but with the situation Monday and the seriousness of it, I felt like it was a little insensitive to have a football press conference. I think it is today, too,” Muschamp said from the crease of his mouth.

His head drooped, his voice lowered.

“But we’ve got to move forward.”

Coacha Inconsolata at Oklahoma State University

Veteran University Diaries readers know about what Scathing Online Schoolmarm calls coacha inconsolata – that form of local booster journalism that involves portraying football coaches who knowingly recruit dangerous criminals to our universities as suffering saintlike beings whose only motivation in these recruitments is a deep belief in The Ultimate Goodness of Man. When the dangerous recruits start doing what dangerous recruits tend to do – break the law and put everyone in danger – the local booster press doesn’t say the obvious, which is Why do we pay the highest-paid person on campus to cynically, with arrant disregard for the safety of our community, go to a lot of trouble to bring a very dangerous man into our midst? No, no. It always goes something like this:

Coaches like to believe … that they can rescue troubled kids, even save them. It’s a noble premise.

Far from being assholes who don’t care that they are exposing young and vulnerable people to hardened criminals (not to mention admitting people unlikely to take even one course with any academic legitimacy – but that’s a trifle here), these coaches are noblemen, pure of heart, so sure of the glorious transformative power of university football that they are willing to take risks other people won’t – they are willing to say Under the rap sheet of this running back beats the heart of a true gentleman, and though it won’t be easy I’m going to dedicate myself to finding that heart. Because that’s what Oklahoma State’s football team is all about – turning young men around.

And when the entire divinely-kissed scheme fails to work out, what then?

Why, coacha inconsolata, of course. His heart is absolutely broken. He is suffering.

“[T]he betting line in Vegas is now shifting back toward Urban Meyer surviving somehow, whether it’s a two-game or four-game suspension; whether it’s a fine; whether it’s Urban Meyer sitting down with Rece (Davis) or Tom Rinaldi and crying on camera while [his wife] looks at him and talks about how he’s the greatest man she’s ever known.”

Yes! Ohio State might go for the Ultimate Coacha Inconsolata move, and bliss it will be in that dawn to be alive to see it!

UD says GO FOR IT, OSU. GO FOR IT.

“If you have an athletic department that is pimping out women to recruits, of course [recruits are] going to get that idea.”

It’s one thing when this or that fraternity pimps out women for itself (as when Indiana University’s already way-notorious Alpha Tau Omega hired women for one of its forcible-group-bonding sessions), or when this or that university sports team orders up prostitutes for itself, as the Duke lacrosse guys did (you remember how things got out of hand there). It’s another thing when the university pimps out women to recruits, as – allegedly – the University of Louisville athletic department did. With official approval and indeed organized by campus officials, the practice would tend, as the woman quoted in my headline suggests, to give teenage male athletes, uh, ideas about women.

***********************

These 17 and 18-year-old kids are making one of the most important decisions of their entire lives, and an adult is purposefully using sex to affect their decision making. These are not the actions of a shrewd negotiator attempting to gain an advantage over the competition, but a predator, manipulating a young mind into making a decision that would benefit himself.

*************************

If Louisville is guilty, the school has created a dangerous environment for women, and it has opened itself to lawsuits from all angles.

Yes, at a time when all American universities are pledging to act on sexual violence, you’ve got a school like Louisville – a school already as notorious as Indiana’s ATO for all sorts of officially sanctioned scummy behavior (put Louisville in my search engine) – acting, it seems, with a disregard for on-campus sexual behavior reminiscent of Sandusky’s Penn State.

Showers and dorm rooms and frat lounges oh my!

We’ll probably discover, pretty soon, whether Rick Pitino knew how his program recruited players. For the record, UD is quite certain he did.

[Pitino] did an interview today … that was really bizarre and ended up with him rambling about a lot of things and taking a subtle shot at the school president.

Yes now it’s every man for himself as the rancor’s wheeled out and the bloody civil war begins. Talk about an athletics arms race! The weaponry’s been redirected – from rival schools to your own evil meddling institution, which found your recruitment tactics perfectly okay until the evil media began paying attention and then it’s oh no we’re not pimps here we’re scholars and gentlemen and we have no idea who hired rascals like Rick Pitino and Bobby Petrino but we have nothing to do with them either…

As an extra bonus, watch for Pitino to go mad in public (rambling, bizarre) as his dictatorship begins to crumble…

*****************
Pitino’s buddy does a full Coacha Inconsolata on him.

*****************

Rancor, and sniping. This comes from a local comment thread:

I think if this was an institutionally sponsored recruiting tool we could have found a more upmarket supplier, maybe?

“[T]here was a lot of real quality dialog that took place in that weekend.”

A few years ago, when he was football coach at the University of Washington, Steve Sarkisian went on a couple of those all-important coach retreats – at taxpayer expense, of course – so that real quality dialog, as he puts it up there, could take place. This article shows you two receipts for two such events, representing major hundreds of dollars in state-reimbursed booze for between ten and fifteen people.

UD would love to have been at those dialogs. Like this, only with guys.

Now that Sarkisian has behaved, uh, strangely at his latest job (the upshot of those expensive dialogs is that Sarkisian dumped his UW job right after UW paid for them), the gloriously scandal-free University of Southern California, people are… I dunno… beginning to ask whether Coach might have a wee problem. Which has brought on one of the peppiest Coacha Inconsolata pieces UD has ever read. (Put Coacha Inconsolata in my search engine for clarification of that term.)

TIME TO GET OFF SARK’S BACK, orders the campus paper’s sports editor. Coach’s public apology was

as down as I’ve seen Sarkisian, or any college football coach for that matter, during his tenure at USC — even worse than the team’s last-second loss last year to Arizona State.

Pure Coacha Inconsolata. After all, there he was, “manning up and opening up about his issues in front of reporters — not an easy thing to do.” Courage, indeed, to hold a press conference when your public behavior is so obscene that you don’t have any choice.

The writer ends on his strongest argument.

[I]f this year’s team wants any chance at playing in the Pac-12 championship game or even the 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship Game, they’re going to need Sarkisian — not in rehab, not at home, but on the sidelines with his headset on and ready to go.

Shambling wreck or not, we need this guy!

***********************

Two other quick points:

1.) Keep in mind Norwood Teague’s recent alcohol-fueled demise at Minnesota. USC’s president is surely thinking about the damage ol’ Norwood did to that school as he ponders Sarkisian’s fate.

2.) What’s with the need for weekend retreats on top of all the country club memberships coaches get? Can’t these guys meet anytime at one of the clubs USC is paying for?

Scathing Online Schoolmarm Scathes Through…

… that classic mode of American letters, the apologia for the depraved university football program.

Local Minnesota booster/journalist Chip Scoggins shows you how it’s done for that state’s benighted school. Let us do a close reading.

Tone-wise, the big sustained thing, the ground tone, is a variant of Coacha Inconsolata (put the phrase in my search engine if you’re not yet familiar with it), in which shock, heartbreak, and an indomitable will to be shocked and heartbroken again rule. Have at me! says the bankrupt befouled and humiliated campus…

Oh my men I love them so
They’ll never know
All my life is just despair
But I don’t care
When they take me in their arms
The world is bright – all right!
What’s the difference if I say
I’ll go away
When I know I’ll come back on my knees someday…

Texas Tech is the nation’s sluttiest pain slut, hands down. Penn State assumes the crown if for any reason the current titleholder cannot fulfill her reign. The University of Minnesota is one of the five semi-finalists.

Why, just four days ago, before UM’s Athletic Director, via text, volunteered his muffdiving services to some random woman, Chip was burbling about how the program had finally begun to regain its respectability (church groups were mentioned). Now it’s back to the post-oral-sex-offer, pre-alcohol-rehab-stint status quo, and Chip’s got some familiar heavy lifting to do.

Headline: Teague Scandal Rocks Gophers Athletics Amid Recent Gains

Always give them some shred to hold onto – allude to vaguely defined gains.

Opinion piece summary: The accumulation of disappointment over the years — NCAA violations, misdeeds, awful hires, heartbreaking defeats — has created this perception that the U can’t get out of its own way.

A couple of points here. Note how the random expected fact of lost games gets included in this list of self-inflicted misfortunes. All teams lose games, but at masochistic schools it’s always one heartbreaking loss after another, and what’s a girl to do?

Note further: The “U can’t get out of its own way.” What does this particular formulation mean? It means that the stupid stubborn fact of a university, of all things, having to run a football program is once again the stumbling block. Where the hell does a university get off running a football program? You want to run a football program, be like Alabama and Clemson and get rid of the university!

The Gophers athletic department suffered another black eye that brought the kind of negative, unwanted attention that has become all too familiar.

No one felt surprised. That’s the sad part.

Again, always keep it more in sorrow than in anger. Sad. Sad.

Oh, we’re all shocked by the lewd details, the fact that a person in Norwood Teague’s position would act like such a Neanderthal. But not shocked that something like this happened to the Gophers, another deep dive into a pile of dung.

… Within hours of Teague’s resignation as athletic director, three people sent me text messages. A former university employee, a die-hard fan and a booster. All shared a similar theme in their words.

Here we go again.

It’s fair to guess that employees inside the department shared that same deflation of morale, which is too bad because a lot of earnest, hardworking, passionate folks work in the Bierman complex. They deserve better.

Shocked? Really? But as SOS points out above, it’s crucial for schools like Minnesota to keep an ever-refreshed stock of shock alongside heartbreak. A man coming on like that to a woman? What a shockingly lewd Neanderthal! In Minnesota, stuff like this is just so unfunny and shocking…

University President Eric Kaler tried hard to create a clear divide between Teague’s conduct and his school’s image, saying one man’s deplorable actions shouldn’t define an entire operation.

Please. UM doesn’t belong to its president any more than Joe Paterno’s Penn State belonged to whoever that dude was who made the public service announcements.

Instability at key positions in college sports — AD, football and basketball coaches — stunts momentum and forces athletic departments to continually hit the reset button. The Gophers know that too well. They need normalcy for once.

But constant administrative turnover, hugely expensive buyouts and lawsuits, relentlessly criminalized teams, and of course indifferent students who fail to fill up the brand new hugely expensive stadium is normalcy at jockshops like Minnesota. There are no earnest prudes in Bierman; there are only suckers. Everybody else is studying or whatever.

Teague ultimately proved to be a bad hire by Kaler, and the president can’t swing and miss on such an important position again. The Gophers carry a $105 million athletic budget. This is not a mom-and-pop operation.

See SOS‘s point above. You hire some goddamn academic to run a football program and this is the kind of dumbass hiring decision that gets made. Lose the president. Get Jim Tressel on the phone!

Those who cling to the idyllic perception of college athletics probably resent the fact that football and basketball are placed on a pedestal above every other sport, but that’s the reality now.

Sing it sister. But take it a teeny step further and tell the whole truth.

Those who cling to the idyllic perception of college athletics probably resent the fact that football and basketball are placed on a pedestal above every other activity on the UM campus, but that’s the reality now.

See? That was easy. That didn’t hurt.

Lordy, lordy. Sometimes, kiddies, I just have to laugh.

University football players getting arrested happens all the time. UD really doesn’t know how these lads get their schoolwork done! What with practice sessions and game schedules and drugs and alcohol and guns and smashing people’s faces in… Once you get arrested for some of that, you’re looking at yet more study hall interruption.

But franchement UD has covered SOOOO many of these stories that she now ignores most of them. I mean, she scans the latest articles, in case there’s a new twist on the old tale…

And she’s not sure why, but the Antonio Allen thing at Indiana University has her laughing her ass off. She’s definitely paying attention to that one.

I guess it’s, first, because this dude seems to be one serious professional criminal. He sells a wide variety of serious drugs on the street. He has a serious gun. Because he’s obviously been at this for some time, Coacha Inconsolata (put the term in my search engine if you’re not familiar with it it) has a big problem. He can’t do the whole shocked shocked he was like a son to me I’m inconsolable this must be an aberration he’s young we all make mistakes thing because the player seems to be a veteran dealer. He’s been taped doing his thing.

So the coach makes two moves. One, he calls it an isolated incident. But

This is the third off-field incident involving an IU football player in the past three months. Defensive tackle Ralph Green III was arrested in April on charges of battery, public intoxication and disorderly conduct. Wide receiver Isaac Griffith was arrested last month on charges of driving while intoxicated.

Two: He uses the thing for a kumbaya moment. He’s gathered the lads together to use the arrest as a teaching and bonding moment. After one of coach’s post-arrest inspirational talks, the team’s quarterback says

I think that’s helped us grow. Just kind of, ‘Hey, we’re in this together. We’ve got to link arms.’

There’s a little of this motivational sludge in the aftermath of all bashing and dealing on all university football teams, but IU is laying it on hilariously thick.

Finally, the player himself is majorly into God. The only thing he said to reporters on leaving the courtroom the other day was “God is good,” which, given what’s just happened to him, seems in his case counterintuitive. And there’s this:

Earlier Tuesday, before his arrest, Allen posted a photo on Instagram of him being featured on the cover of a Big Ten 2015 preview magazine. The accompanying caption reads:

“If you knew (where) I came from and all the trouble I was in when I was younger you can see I did a 360 and I am BLESSED thank you GOD.”

God talk is the default move for all of these guys when the shit hits the fan, but UD has never before encountered one of them who broadcasts thanks to God for turning him totally around when he’s still cuddling his Colt and hawking coke.

All of the elements really came together and got crazy on this one. I had to laugh.

“Cook”ing Up More Fun at Florida State!

First it was Jameis Winston. Then it was De’Andre Johnson. And now Dalvin Cook! Poor Coacha Inconsolata (put that phrase in my search engine for background on this poignant human type) Jimbo is in full more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mode. How could he have known that yet another of his football players was, um, problematic?

Well, how about he could have known because…

Wait. Lemme start that sentence again. Jimbo Fisher (2015 salary: $5 million) did know, because Cook already had a hell of a record for someone of his tender years.

Cook was suspended by FSU on Friday after the state attorney in Tallahassee issued a warrant for the player’s arrest after a 21-year-old woman accused him of punching her in the face several times during an argument outside a bar last month.

… Cook was arrested as a juvenile and charged with robbery in 2009. Prosecutors later opted to drop the case. Cook was also arrested and charged with firing a weapon and possessing a weapon at an event on school property in 2010, according to FDLE records. The third-degree felony charge was later dropped or abandoned.

… Since arriving on campus, Cook has been charged with criminal mischief following an incident in June 2014 when he was one of several players (see Jameis Winston) involved in a BB-gun shooting incident that caused minor property damage.

Bottom line: The political hack running FSU, and the coach running the political hack, do not care if their students are placed in direct danger by the bullies they put on the team. They. Do. Not. Care.

***********************

FSU: Proudly scummy for decades.

If you’re keeping score.

But let’s be fair and look at the larger picture.

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