Re: UGA yanking kids scholarships for better players

quozzel

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Dec 25, 2017, 7:33 PM

People think they get away with this kind of stuff.

They really don't.

This is slow poison, not a shot to the temple. But it kills you just the same. How it works is thus: if you're the guy in charge, if your word isn't good, people under that see it. Doesn't matter if you're the president of a bank or a mob boss...if you can't be trusted, trustworthy people see what you are and back away from you before you can burn them. Sooner or later what ends up happening is the only people you have remaining around you are manipulators, liars, people seeking advantage. The only thing that holds them back is fear of you.

And the difference between fear and love, from a practical point of view, is that people still love you even when they think you're not watching.

Say what you want about Mark Richt, but he coached for 15 seasons at UGA and his word was always good. His kids weren't always angels but he tried to keep them under control. Even Spurrier always joked that the best time to play UGA was early in the season, when guys were still suspended for whatever they'd done over the summer. Richt left with his name and honor intact, and when he left he was instantly re-hireable at Miami. People still regard him as a decent human being. And he'll coach until he's 70 if he wants to because that's how he's conducted himself.

Anybody who thinks it's going to go that way for Kirby Smart hasn't been paying much attention.

Every time you do something like this and pull a kid's offer, you're no longer welcome at his home school. It doesn't take long for you to burn up your recruiting base. It doesn't take long for your locker room to be ruled by suspicion, mistrust, fear of losing one's place, fear of reprisal. And when that's all there is, that's the exact moment you've lost the team because fear, mistrust, and suspicion are anathema to team spirit. The whole idea of a team is that you're part of something bigger than yourself.

It doesn't take a lot of betrayals to burn up belief in a leader, a team, a culture. But it's amazing how coaches desperate to win succumb to the pressure...and take these shortcuts. You only have to take a look at FSU or Tennessee or Ole Miss or Texas A&M (or South Carolina) to see how that story ends. There isn't going to be an easy quick fix any of those places.

Still is kind of amazing - and tiring, some ways - to watch the same hubris in college football, year in, year out. The faces and programs change, but the ending never seems to. You'd almost feel bad for them...but it's kids' futures these idiots are burning up in their blind quest for wins.

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