Kinda like the Florida Gators from a few years ago. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/alabam...ed-marijuana-possession-202217750--ncaaf.html
It's what happens when you recruit players for their athletic ability without considering their character. It happened to Barry Switzer...
It's going to be interesting to see how things play out over the next few years at Bama. Saban is a great coach, but teams/programs do become complacent. I've noticed that recruits that would have jumped all over a Bama offer in the past aren't jumping as quickly, if at all. They're still getting the top players, they just don't seem to be "the" team in recruiting right now. Of course another run at a title would quickly dispell all of that, but it's not easy to stay on top. This incident (with the player being dismissed) isn't shocking, or anything new, but the fact that Bama took him, given his past before arriving at Bama, could be a little telling. They also had a defensive back arrested for his second DUI charge right around the same time. He was not kicked off of the team.
And yet... http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/...0/saban-unapologetic-signing-taylor/70704152/ "TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama coach Nick Saban steadfastly defended his signing of defensive lineman Jonathan Taylor, who has now been kicked off his second Southeastern Conference team for domestic violence arrests."
Funny thought: Losing in the national championship race near the end of the season fuels bad off field juju afterward. After Tim Tebow cried on national TV as Bammer beat them in the SEC title game, it was all downhill for Corch Irvin Meyers go gata. Bammer won the SEC last year, which should have automatically put it in the national title game... except it didn't. So now they're gonna go all crazy in the offseason waiting for redemption from that late season shocking loss... and it never came for Florida. The power of positive thinking: If Alabama sucks, maybe we'll never hear either Stoops mention the Sugar Bowl win ever again
Yo, Cherokeebrewer, were you on campus when Switz went down? I was. He wasn't recruiting criminals. The team was not rampaging across campus. He got a very bad set of circumstances and was forced to pay the price by a very hostile admin. And that's the way things really were. He's been slandered ever since.
Whatever ill will there might have been between OU and Switzer when he was forced to resign, it appears to be all gone now. Barry lives in Norman, appears in OU promotions, and does not shy away from discussions involving his time at OU nor his OU players. Barry broke my Packer fan elementary school heart in the 90s as (what I perceived as) his dirty, undisciplined Dallas Cowboys sent everyone including our aging defensive coordinator off on a stretcher. Forgive and forget
I was a grad student at the time. Perhaps your son was competing with the Boz for a young lady's attention? That would have soured almost anyone's outlook. :worked_till_5am:
He never had a problem getting a girl. As a matter of fact, they were almost his downfall, but he got it together and graduated and later got his MBA at TCU. Now he has more money than me. I do remember these names... Jerry Parks, Bernard Hall, Zarak Peters, Nigel Clay
Ah! to be young again. The mid-80's were an interesting time to be sure. There was far more personal liberty and responsibility, in my opinion, back then. Some people handled it better than others. Switzer was famous for treating his players like grown-ups. Most of them appreciated the vote of confidence and did not embarrass him. He is, unfairly in my view, painted with the acts of a very small minority. Not that it seems to have slowed him down too much. I hope to enjoy his vitality and humor when I'm his age.
My comment was not meant to berate Barry. I love the guy and agree that he was/is unfairly painted. The point of my comment was a player's character matters in addition to his athletic ability. Yes, those players were responsible for their own actions, but it was a gunslingin' time and got out of control...
And I am probably too quick to jump on what I feel are people criticizing him. I confess to a certain degree of nostalgia for the days before the present degree of political correctness and helicopter parenting and the rest of it. Obviously character matters and Stoops does a pretty great job of recruiting for it.
Bob Stoops does do a great job but not all coaches do. No matter the diligence you'll miss on some because you can't see in their hearts, plus kids get away from home for the first time and it's hard to predict what they'll do sometimes. I'm not enamored with all the political correctness either...
I knew about that incident a week before it went nationwide. Let's just say there was some "bad judgment" committed by both sides in that incident. She was well known around the Bud House. Ultimately all the "crap" that went on at the end of that season was centered around 7-8 guys that got into trouble out of more than 100 person team. The media makes it sound like the whole team is running amok all over campus. Reality is usually much different than media perception, it has been proven time and time again. The only given is people of that age group are usually going to make some bad decisions, some grow out of it and some continue to make them the rest of their life. A friend of mine worked for channel 5 and was the courtroom artist and sat through the entire trials doing the drawings for the news. She said it should never have gone to trial and the only reason that it did was how sensationalized it had become after the national media picked up the story. She was also born and raised an Arkansas alum (grew up in NWA) and was an OSU-Okmulgee alum so it wasn't like she was looking at it through crimson colored glasses. You also had a relatively new Cleveland County DA trying to make a splash and an interim president trying to gain favor with the academic side in trying to be named president. Swank misjudged how much some of the regents liked Switzer and their football. When he didn't get to replace Banowsky he went to the NCAA.
The SEC might be rolling in money and an ESPN-sponsored network... but so are the whorns. Get out the popcorn guy sit back and watch as they self implode. op:op:op:
Keith Traylor also got caught up in some of the things that went down at the end of Switzer's time. I think he was rooming with Bernard Hall when everything went down, and he had some pretty interesting stories. The biggest black eye was the Charles Thompson deal. Thompson wasn't a criminal when he got to Norman, but for whatever reason, he was when he left. I truly believe Switzer addressed the things he knew about, but I don't think he was as vigilant in those final years as he probably should have been, and I think he would agree with that. The public was sold the whole "team out of control" story in which everyone on the team was grouped together as hooligans. The reality was much different, but there were some pretty bad things that went down at the end.
This year is going to be very interesting. I really don't see them doing anything other than what they did last year, and that's going to turn the heat up, big time, on Strong's seat. If it goes the way I think it will, whorn fans will be calling for his head before the season ends...and that will absolutely be fun to watch.
