It’s interesting to compare these quotes about Crowell’s departure with Vince Dooley’s.
“It sucks that he made a mistake, but it happens,” guard Dallas Lee said. “I wish him all the best of luck at Alabama State and moving on with his life, but I wish he was here.”
Lee said he expects the other tailbacks to “pick up the slack” after Crowell’s departure.
“I feel like sometimes that’s part of the game,” senior linebacker Mike Gilliard said. “You lose guys and when adversity hits, what are you going to do? That situation we handled it well and we’re going to keep moving forward. We’ve got some legit guys who can play this year — Keith Marshall, Ken Malcome, I’m just excited about those guys. I know those guys can get the job done as well.”
Matt Stinchcomb, a studio analyst for ESPNU and Southeastern Conference games, said Crowell being booted from the team may be a distraction, but doesn’t think it has to keep Georgia from being a force still this season.
“Guys get suspended, guys get kicked off, if it’s not a distraction to some extent, if guys don’t notice that one of their teammates isn’t around anymore, you’ve got a chemistry problem and an awareness problem,” he said. “These guys know they lost a tailback, they lost a guy that probably could have contributed this fall. At the same time, this is a team, and if you can’t adhere to the rules, policies, regulations and laws of this country and this program, then you have to recognize that you can’t be a part of it any more. I think that’s what we’ve seen transpire here. If this team is going to go on to great things, they should be more than capable of seeing past what’s happened with the tailback position.”
I don’t hear any relief there about being rid of a bad apple (or however else Dooley referred to Crowell). Just recognition that a player being counted on didn’t follow the rules and others will have to step up to replace his production.
Get The Picture 
I think the players with decent judgment are going to be delicate about this. Coupla reasons: there but for the grace of the Lord and Coach go I, and it’s bad form to speak ill, even of someone kicked off the team. Teammates might wonder what you’re thinking of them if you say such things.
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If you’re lookin for quotes of relief, I think you should ask the coaches, not the players
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They are football players, what is said in the locker room stays in the locker room. The continual questions about IC and Bradley’s “new” Richt on the hotseat blurb in the AJC show why it’s called a news cycle. Just rinse and repeat.
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I would not be shocked to find that Vince Dooley is out of touch with the average 20 year old UGA player.
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May be. Probably is. But some things don’t change. Dooley is right, as usual.
~~~
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from reading between the lines the impression i get is that IC wanted to change his ways, his teammates took notice, then he did something colossally stupid. But I have no access to the players so it’s a hunch at best. I’m just hoping this year is similar to 2003 where despite a new young oline and a bunch of suspensions we still find a way to kick some ass.
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I’ll miss IC. Miss those great runs against Carolina and Florida. Should have kept him on the team. A good lawyer could have beat the rap. I’ll miss Athens law enforcement tracking his every move. I’ll miss the AJC having a story to write about every other week about an IC injury, team rules violation, or University violation. He is just a kid. Give him a break, and let him come back.
Probably 50% of guys in Georgia have a weapon in their vehicle. Where were his friends, his coaches, his friends, or even sports writers to let him know it was not smart to put a weapon under the driver’s seat.
Murrays needs a very good running back. Not only helps Murray from having to feel like he has to carry the team and to win the game but it helps his overall game. Murray would not go through those long periods in a game when he could not complete a pass due to his accuracy.
But who will be next running back to be dogged every move on or off the field and every injury on or off the field? There has to be one otherwise there is no football news in Athens.
Can not wait to hear the stories out of Hoover about IC. How far is it from the Alabam State campus to Hoover? How many SEC sportswriters will make a visit to interview IC? Maybe one of them will ask IC if he thinks CMR is on the hotseat. Will IC’s new number be #1? Cab he carry a weapon in the State of Alabama? Will he go to Auburn or Mississippe State next year? We wait patiently for ESPN and the AJC to let us know.
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78.45% of stats in blog responses are made up on the spot.
How many of those guys with guns in their car have guns with altered serial numbers?
The only two things that bother me about it is 1) that I think IC was really trying in other ways to do right and either didn’t think about the guns or really didn’t know about them, and 2) the police would have never asked to search my car, so there’s a possibility this is a driving while black with dreads offense. The libertarian in me is bothered by that.
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Putting a weapon under the seat gets you a concealed weapons charge. Buying a Luger with an altered serial number gets you a stupid charge. Most people in jail are there because they are stupid. I was pulled for rolling through a stop sign a few years ago. The Lee Co. Deputy asked if he could search my car. I said yes but I told him there was a Combat Commander between the driver’s seat and the console and that said weapon was condition 2. He thanked me and picked up the weapon and cleared it and placed the weapon on the top. Since the weapon was in plain sight and the officer had been told about it and I was clean I was released with a ticket for running a stop sign. I served as a Deputy for several years so my advice would be 1. Don’t try to be a lawyer and inform the officer about your rights. He knows more about your rights than you do. 2. Don’t lie. Cops talk to liars many times a day. 3. Don’t ride dirty. If you want to be a bad ass use your fists, not a weapon. 4. Bad asses go to jail.
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We’ve had a run of low character RB’s the last 4 or 5 years, no doubt about it. But we knew that when we signed them, or should have. That we didn’t have contingency plans for RB is our thick-headed fault.
But I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with Gurley and Marshall. They are high-character guys, the kind we should have gone after all along. And I doubt you’ll be disappointed with their performance on the field. Quite the contrary.
With Boo now walking the straight and narrow, we should have a nice trio of TB’s. I don’t think we miss Crowell at all.
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All solid posts from you on this thread Ivy, we will be pretty good at RB. I am much more worried about OL and suspensions have nothing to do with that. My greater fear would be if we ever forgave every transgression like some of our fans propose, some would talk about giving Hitler another chance because he grew up poor. I am proud we have standards and yes, I wish we could recruit around some of the immature HS players we have selected. Maybe the Ga high schools never disciplined them in the four years they had them, just gave them the “boys will be boys wink”. Shame that at 18 and 19 many are still children.
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As a high school teacher, I can tell you that the “boys will be boys” attitude for athletes with discipline problems is still very much a problem.
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Richt had to let him go cause of the other boys on the team’s mommas…
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I appreciate Stinchcomb’s remarks, especially as he is a former player and knows what team chemistry means and looks like. If you’ve ever played organized sports, you know that each team has some gifted athletes with maturity issues. You see the benefit of building something with them on the field or the court and you hope they are able to grow wiser through it. You value them, even if you don’t necessarily enjoy time with away from competition. I think Stinchcomb speaks to that and the loss you feel as a team member when they are gone. I have experienced that loss, and it does change the team chemistry and even team performance at times. You hope the overall change is for the better for your team going forward, but you still feel some loss. And if you don’t, as Stinchcomb says, then your team is not very united to begin with. We shall see how this team responds.
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Good post.
And I think it’s important to understand that Stinchcomb’s comments and Dooley’s comments are not antithetical. They are both right, and both true.
Of course there be some temporary upset in the team chemistry. Otherwise, there WAS no chemistry, as Stinchcomb pointed out, and we would hope that was not the case. It’s also true that Crowell was a bad apple and the team is better off without him.
So everything is good. We could have used another good runner (yes, Marshall and Gurley are in Crowell’s class, as runners) but we can easily do without the rest of it, and be better off for it.
~~~
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That’s not what Stinchcomb said. Read it again.
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Correction: My misread on your comment.
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Well, I appreciate you getting it right. Thanks for that.
Since you and Brody Bruce think I’m an arsehole, I wonder if you’ve considered that if I’m an arsehole, then so is Vince Dooley. We didn’t know about Dooley’s comments those days ago, but it’s the exact same paradigm and place I was coming from. I was expressing the exact same position Dooley felt strongly enough about to put in the media, something he’s rarely ever done over the years.
So Vince Dooley is an arsehole, too. Mighty fine company, if you ask me, and company I’m proud to keep.
~~~
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We’ll really begin to think you’re doppelgangers when he claims to have invented the internet or something similarly outrageous.
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As much as I’d like IC to have behaved, this time last year all the fans were worried about King and Ealy. Once the season starts all will be forgotten
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Who knew?
AJC 11/2/’11
“Crowell’s attitude
Richt said he doesn’t think the suspension of Isaiah Crowell is a sign of troubling times to come. In fact, he believes it may actually improve Crowell’s future prospects.”
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