Shooting The Messenger: Nick Saban Edition

Lets say there's a person you don't like. They have done things you find reprehensible. They seem to have a pompous way about them. And they seem to get breaks you don't think they really deserve.

And then they go and say and or do something that you actually agree with.

What do you do?

I mean its easy to ignore them and act as if you don't agree with their point. Even easier still to point and laugh at them and bring up all their previous transgressions as a way to devalue their point. And even further still you can try to confuse the point all together so that nobody really understands whats going on which will serve to undermine them completely.

Yeah it would be easy, but would it be right?

There are reports that Nick Saban has banned NFL scouts from his practices. He has done so in response to one of his players in addition to several other top notch players on several other college teams, having their eligibility put in peril by an unscrupulous agent. Its a pretty courageous move when you think about it.

But you wouldn't know that to hear the chatter arising from the story.

See Nick Saban is an asshole.

Yes, I said asshole.

Oh I don't know the man personally, but I have heard enough personal accounts from people who do know him to take it as a fact.

But even if I never heard it from these people I would strongly suspect it anyway. You see he has done some things very publicly that also speak to his being an asshole. Like for instance the fact that when he left Michigan State to go to LSU, a job most folks would consider an upgrade, almost none of his staff went with him.

Now whether that's because they didn't want to go or because he didn't offer then the chance to come, you would have to think either way it points to him being an asshole. If the assistants didn't want to go to a better program (which ended up winning the National Title by the way) why do you think that was? And if he didn't offer the guys who helped him get the job at LSU in the first place the chance to go with him what does that make him?

Then there was that one time when he was coaching the Miami Dolphins and looked right in the camera and said he was NOT a candidate for the University of Alabama job.....days before announcing he was leaving to become the head coach for the University of Alabama.

I think you get my point.
But the question is, if an asshole stands up and does something right should we all just ignore it?

Let me get one argument out of the way. Its the "the players should be paid" argument. First off I agree, players should be paid to play football in college, especially those at big time Universities that bring in millions and millions of dollars each year from their programs. The problem is how to do it? I have yet to hear anybody come up with viable way to pay players AND be fair AND be Title IX compliant. So I'm sorry but let's have that conversation another time ok?

Also let me say this, college players do get something. As much as I agree with folks who say players should get paid, I vehemently disagree with the ones who go on to say that scholarships aren't really worth anything.

I think they say that because they don't know that some players actually DO take getting a degree seriously. I think they say that because they believe that every player goes to college with only getting to the NFL in mind. I think they say that because they don't realize that to at least some of those kids a college scholarship is literally a life save that pulls them out of bad situations in bad neighborhoods and at least gives them the opportunity to go out into the business world with a degree and having met other people who may be able t help them along their way.

Or maybe they just say it to try to make their point about paying players look better.

Either way, no matter what you think about a particular head coach or the NCAA system, the truth is most players who get a college scholarship actually get something out of it. Definitely isn't a fair exchange and the school definitely usually gets the better end of it, but the player gets something.

Tell me this, what exactly will Marcell Dareus, Weslye Saunders, and Marvin Austin going to get from a shady agent?

Oh yeah they will get some money or maybe invited to some glitzy parties, but what they don't realize and I guess most folks don't understand is that they are really partying with their own money. See agents and runners never GIVE a player money. Its ALWAYS a loan whether they know it or not. Those guys are just trying to get their hooks into the players so they will have leverage when its time for them to choose an agent or a "marketing" person. But understand that they will be asking for it back.

Even when you have a good agent here's the transaction. They negotiate for you based on YOUR talent and YOUR efforts and then they get you a fair market value deal and in turn you pay them a percent. But for those players the truth is 99% of what they were going to get in their first contract as a rookie was going to be slotted anyway if they were drafted. So there wasn't going to be a lot of value added in that situation.

On the other hand the risk is that those players lose their eligibility and in turn the millions if not tens of millions of dollars they stood to make with another great season.

And I know, I know, the players bear responsibility too. They know better than to take money from an agent or anybody else for that matter. But lets be real for a moment, how many people would have the strength to turn the money down if it was offered? Oh I'm sure some of us would, but many of these kids weren't raised like you, don't have the same background as you and most of them never think they will get caught. These are college students after all. How many college students you know that are angels?

The truth is some guys are always going to say yes, it is what it is. So the question becomes how do you keep agents from offering in the first place?

And that's really where Saban comes in. For years and years people have complained that bad agents don't really get punished harshly enough for their actions. This has led some states to enact their own legislation with criminal penalties for agents that engage in shady practices. But ultimately the NFL and NFLPA should be doing more to put the fear of God in agents that even consider jeopardizing these guys' careers.

So Saban took it upon himself to send a message, pretty much the only way he could send a message to the NFL and the NFLPA. He banned NFL scouts and encouraged other head coaches to do the same in hopes of compelling the NFL and NFLPA to act. It is, no doubt, a move filled with risk. Recruiting is a no holds barred situation. There will without question be some rival head coaches using this move as a way to steer kids away from Alabama on the pretense that it will hurt their chances at getting to the pros. And some in the media have and will continue to excoriate him for the move without really fully explaining why he's doing it.

But the truth is this, NFL scouts can get film on anybody they want. Going to practices is what they have always done and so they keep doing it but I doubt they actually NEED to do it. And this is a good time to remind everyone that many scouting departments are perfectly willing to throw out a player's film based on how they perform at the combine or private workouts. So in some ways the move is more symbolic probably than anything else, but again there wasn't much more Saban could do.

But at least he's doing something.

Here is a guy coming off a National Championship season and picked by quite a few people to repeat standing up and making a stand that he had to know wouldn't be all that popular. Or rather he had to know since it was him doing it the media wouldn't cover it all that favorably.  Do you think he wants or needs this kind of a distraction leading into the season?

And still he did it. Not only that he tried to influence other coaches like Urban Meyer to join with him in banning NFL scouts from practice. And there are already signs that he has at least gotten his point across since the NFL and NFLPA agreed to do a conference call with him earlier this week to discuss the issue.  No doubt its self serving because Dareus is one of his best players and no coach wants to lose a guy to this kind of foolishness.  But in the end the people who benefit most are the players.

That's usually something people would admire, but not when its Nick Saban.

Imagine for a moment that it was Joe Paterno banning NFL scouts to get the NFL to act? Or maybe Mack Brown?

If they had come out and done this I can almost guarantee you that members of the media would have hoisted them on their shoulders and proclaimed that they should have streets named after them. Fans would be marching in the streets with signs showing their support. And the NFL and NFLPA would have infinitely more pressure put on them to actually do something about policing shady agents.

But good ideas don't always come from only the people we like. Nick Saban may be an asshole but he's on the right side of the issue on this one. And whether you like him or not people should support this move. The more head coaches there are that agree to ban scouts from their practice until harsher rules are put into place, the more likely something will get done sooner rather than later. And in that situation everybody wins.

Or we can all keep making the issue Nick Saban.

But then who's the asshole?

Context Matters: Deonte Thompson Edition

Its funny how a story can turn.

On Monday evening Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler posted a blog post entitled "Florida Gators WR Deonte Thompson sounds happy to usher in post-Tebow era" the premise of which came from this quote:

“You never know with Tim,” Thompson said. “You can bolt, you think he’s running but he’ll come up and pass it to you. You just have to be ready at all times. With Brantley, everything’s with rhythm, time. You know what I mean, a real quarterback.”

Almost immediately the national media picked up on the quote and it became fodder for sports talk radio. Then yesterday Urban Meyer confronted Fowler at the Gators' spring practice and had this to say.

“You’re a bad guy, man. You’re a bad guy,” Meyer told Sentinel reporter Jeremy Fowler. “If that was my son we’d be going at it right now.”

snip

“I told you this five years ago – don’t mess with our players. Don’t do it – you did it,” Meyer said. “You do it one more time and the Orlando Sentinel’s not welcome here ever again. Is that clear? It’s yes or no.”

And now Urban Meyer has become fodder for the national media and sports talk radio as well. So what gives? Whose right and whose wrong here and why is it such a big story?

Well in my opinion everybody was somewhat wrong and everybody was somewhat right but the problem really is nobody is focusing on the real issue here and that's context.

When I read Thompson's quotes on Monday I didn't really think it was a big deal because I understood immediately what he meant. When he said "real" quarterback he of course meant a traditional drop back quarterback and we all know that Tim Tebow was anything but that. I did however have a feeling that the media and sports radio wouldn't see it that way and low and behold I was right.

All week I have read article after article and heard sports radio host after sports radio host using Deonte Thompson's quote to either "confirm" the notion that Tim Tebow is not going to be a viable quarterback in the NFL, a hot topic these days leading into the draft, or alternately to bash Thompson as an underachiever who hasn't produced and seems to be blaming Tebow for his lack of production. Neither use of the quote was fair in my opinion but sports media isn't always about fairness these days.

Make no mistake about it, that initial blog post by Fowler definitely colored the comments as a knock or a shot against Tebow and this is where it starts to get dicey. On twitter last night another journalist, Benjamin Volin, who was there when Thompson gave the quote confirmed Urban Meyer's assertion that in the same interview referred to Tim Tebow as a "living legend". If that quote is included in the blog post by Foley then it would be hard to make the case that Thompson was "happy to usher in post Tebow era" as the title of the blog post asserted, no? Volin further had this to say:

All I will say about this is that 8 people were in on that Deonte Thompson interview and only one person ran right home to post that quote

And in another tweet he used the word "innocuous" to describe Thompson's quote about Tebow. That gives me the distinct impression that Fowler did in fact make a mountain after a molehill and that but for Fowler this wouldn't be a story. But I have to say this in Fowler's defense. I follow him on twitter and have been following him since the college football season started last year. If anything I've found his coverage of the Gators to almost be TOO glowing at times so its hard for me to imagine that he was trying to stir the pot with his blog post. This is a situation where in my mind maybe he thought he really did have a story even if it was based on shaky grounds at best.

Which brings us to Urban Meyer. Now make no mistake about it, Meyer was wrong in the way he confronted Fowler on the practice field. There is no doubt that he meant to embarrass Fowler in front of his peers and threatening to block the Orlando Sentinel from covering the Gators because of what he perceived as being bad press was way out of bounds.

But let me tell you something as an ex player. Urban Meyer probably couldn't have done anything better from a recruiting standpoint than to stand up for Thompson like he did. I can tell you from experience that if there is a star football player in high school following this story right now he has to come away feeling good about the fact that Meyer was willing to go nose to nose with a journalist in defense of one of his guys. That's the kind of trait you admire in a coach as a player even if it seems to be over the top to the average observer. So while Meyer was wrong, it probably will help him rather than hurt him when it comes to recruiting.

But the problem I have is this, people have already turned this story into one about Urban Meyer and his support for Tim Tebow rather than a story about his support for Deonte Thompson. I won't assume the motives behind that leap in logic and its true that sticking up for Thompson may in some small way help Tebow, but it overlooks what this young man has probably been going through the last few days.

Imagine for a moment that you are Deonte Thompson and you are trying to get ready for a breakout season as it appears it is finally your chance to be the man. You give what you think is a regular interview and you use one word, the word "real" instead of "traditional", to describe your former teammate and all of a sudden you are at the center of a controversy. You google Thompson's name and you come up with articles bashing Tebow as not being an NFL quarterback and you come up with articles bashing Thompson for daring speak ill of Tebow in any way shape or form. And remember, this kid actually gave Tebow a huge compliment in the same interview by calling him a "living legend". You turn on ESPN and people were throwing around his quote as if it would be the deciding factor in whether a team picked Tebow in the first round. You look around at message boards and you see people viciously attacking this young man because they are such big Tebow fans that they won't tolerate ANY criticism or perceived criticism of him.

So today as you watch the story of Meyer's confrontation with Fowler, check to see if you hear anyone correct the story about what Thompson said. Check to see if anybody, in the midst of criticizing Meyer for getting after Fowler, admit that he actually had a point about Fowler taking Thompson out of context. Check to see if some of the same sports talk radio hosts who were either bashing Tebow or bashing Thompson the last few days will admit that they made more out of Thompson's quote than they should have.

Some how I doubt if you will hear or see anything of the sort. And that is THE problem in my opinion. Its funny because this morning I heard several local sports radio hosts who had in fact helped push this story actually have the stones to say that Meyer himself made it a story yesterday by confronting Fowler. Talk about a total lack of self awareness and a total lack of accountability.

In the end no matter whose side you are on in all of this, Urban Meyer's or Jeremy Fowler's, just remember that there is a college kid who has had his world turned upside down over the course of this week over a quote that was made up to mean something other than what he seemed to mean. And maybe, just maybe, some of these same folks owe that guy an apology.

Just saying.

Update: As if on cue here is what ESPN's Skip Bayless had to say about Deonte Thompson just a short while ago on First and 10:

Deonte Thompsom was a highly publicized recruit out of Belle Glade Florida who was making an excuse as to why in his first two years he didn't contribute very much. 'Its kinda Tim Tebow's fault that he didn't throw me enough balls. He wasn't on time. He wasn't a "real" quarterback'"

And from where does Skip glean this assertion? Hell even he probably doesn't know.

Let's look at the original blog post again.

I’ve received plenty of feedback Tuesday from Thompson supporters vouching for the guy. I’ve interviewed Thompson numerous times in the past and he never said anything inflammatory.

Either way, Thompson’s ready to be the top receiver for Florida.

“I’ve been ready,” Thompson said. “Somebody’s got to. Why not me, right?…It feels like a fresh start.”

The only way to capitalize on a fresh start is through grunt work, and new wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni likes what he sees of Thompson so far.

“He knows he hasn’t lived up to the billing,” Azzanni said. “That’s what’s great about him. He’s humbled. He’s let his guard down. Coach, coach me. I want to catch all the balls I might not have caught in the fall. I want to run better routes. What do I need to do?”

Does that sound like the guy Skip was describing?

Better yet here's Volin's write up of the incident before Urban Meyer had even confronted anyone.

Poor choice of words? Sure. But was his intent to rip Tebow? Not at all, and that’s coming from someone who has interviewed Thompson dozens of times since his days at Glades Central High.

Thompson, 21 years old, is guilty only of not being a polished public speaker. If Thompson had used the word “traditional” — what he was implying — instead of “real,” this would never have been a national news story.

But Tebow is such a lightning rod that any comment made against him is blown way out of proportion.

But do you think Skip Bayless will ever apologize to Deonte Thompson?

I wouldn't hold my breath...

Urban Meyer Stepping Down At Florida. Who Will Replace Him?

University of Florida head coach Urban Meyer will be resigning after the bowl game. He referenced his health in his comments released to the media and now I have seen from several different sources that he had chest pains, nausea and sickness that hospitalized him recently. The question I have is who should and or will be the next coach at Florida. I want my commenters to give their choice of who they want to see at UF or who they think will be at UF next season.

I am an official Gator Hater as yall know so I won't act like this is exciting for me or anything. But I will say that if I were in charge of the search I would definitely at least interview the head coach at Boise State. Their offense is explosive and somewhat similar to what Florida ran with Meyer and the Chris Pederson has worked miracles with lesser facilities and some would say lesser talent. And you could bet that he would come in hungry and with a chip on his shoulder after all those years of being snubbed out of the BCS bowl games and the BCS championship.

But I want to know who you guys have high on your lists. So have at it!