Monday, October 11, 2010

Teaching The Hard Lesson

Well as usual the loyal haters, nay-sayers and pessimists made it a point to reach out to their Georgia friend today to let me know about the recent arrest of Caleb King (which I already knew). Of course one of them being a Georgia State Football blogger who truly eats up anything that comes out of Athens that is negative. The only thing more noticeable than his hatred for UGA sports is his love for GSU and FSU sports. This morning, I come back from a meeting to an IM that says "Caleb King got arrested" and the text message from my Auburn friend "I am out for Vandy. I saw Caleb King got arrested." Both of these were obviously before they knew what the situation was. But the point still the same....WE WANT TO SEE GEORGIA CONTINUE TO EMBARRASS THEMSELVES.

I don't really understand the point in it other than kicking a man when he's already down. That is the only angle I see in that behavior. Fine...GSU will ALWAYS have a squeaky clean program under Bill Curry it will never be explosive, dynamic, or even fun to watch (see Kentucky in 90-96). Auburn on the other hand is still mad at losing four straight. So that one is what it is.

On to my point.

Recently coach Richt (to my knowledge) has put a zero tolerance policy in place regarding players and the law. Because let's face it, our players have seen the inside of a jail cell more than T.I., Gucci Mane, Lil Wayne and Lindsay Lohan combined in the last twelve months. This policy is meant to keep players from getting into stupid situations, and because..well...everyone else in society has to follow the law. He has already acted on this once, when he kicked Demetre Baker off the team and we thought this was supposed to begin the revival  with our players. It was supposed to set the example that coach Richt was serious about this and that Georgia Football needed to be held to a higher standard.

Now insert Caleb King.

Caleb is a starting running back, and in this blogger's opinion the best one on the team. So does zero tolerance apply? Or do we go to the three strikes your out method? Personally, you have to send him packing. To steal a line from Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday "You make a ritual out of it; people are gonna respect you for it." If players know that you are not going to tolerate their immature "I a football player" attitude then they won't have one. They have be taught that they are not God's greatest gift to the world because they play football at Georgia. News flash: NO ONE CARES! The law is going to treat you no different than the rest of us.

How do you do that? You stick with being consistent. If you warned them that being kicked off the team and losing their scholarship was the punishment for breaking the law then you have to show them. Again, I love Caleb King. He's one of my favorite players on this roster, but unfortunately he didn't hold up his end of the bargain. Players today are not being required to act as higher citizens' like they once were, you're not being asked to wear your dress pants with your jersey to class on Fridays or to address everyone all the time with "Yes M'am" and "No Sir" heck...I bet they don't even have to look adults in the eyes when they are talking. They are only being asked to do the exact same thing the rest of us in society are not asked to do but EXPECTED to do. Why is that so hard?

Again, I love Caleb but you have to stick to your guns or lose the respect and control of your players, coaches, fans and anyone else that hears the story. If you said zero tolerance then stick to zero tolerance regardless of the crime. I know the ticket was paid, and I know it was only $300, but the point here is you knew you broke the law. You knew you had a ticket, and unless you handled it when the policy came down the treatment should be the same for everyone. As much as it hurts our chances of winning this year, it's better to be a disciplined team, than to be a winning to me. The goal is to help boys become men. NOT win football games, that should be secondary.

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