You knew somebody was going to go there. It turned out to be Mr. Conventional Wisdom.
To some extent we’re all guilty for the fall of Tyrann Mathieu.
• When we offer a 14-year old kid a scholarship, we’re guilty.
• When we put four or five stars by a kid’s name and hang on his every word until he signs on the dotted line, we’re guilty.
• When we hold press conferences in high schools for kids to VERBALLY announce where they are going to school, we’re guilty.
• When we hold press conferences on national signing day where kids play with hats, signs, dogs and the media turns out in full force and gives the process legitimacy, we’re guilty.
• When college coaches tell teenage children anything and everything they (and their parents) want to hear in order to get them to sign because careers and millions of dollars hang in the balance, we’re guilty.
• When the sense of entitlement created in high school is allowed to continue in college because winning (and making money) is all that matters, we’re guilty.
• When we allow the primary (and sometimes only) goal of these kids to become holding up a jersey with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on a Thursday night in New York City, we’re guilty.
• When we in the media go along with the process because we’re trying to satisfy the public’s insatiable appetite for college football, we’re guilty.
Ugh.
I guess this would mean more if Barnhart had taken the occasion to announce from his soap box that he was no longer going to cover college football out of a sense of shame and responsibility. After all, if “at the end of the day each individual is responsible for his or her own actions” and the media is enabling the bad behavior of a few kids, every little bit helps, right?
That’s all well and good except it wasn’t the case with Mathieu. He was a 3 star out of New Orleans. Besides LSU, his other offers were Florida International, Miami (Ohio), Tulane, Southern Miss and SMU. No hat ceremony either.
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God, what an epic fail. Not only is he a hypocrite, he’s a shitty journalist to boot.
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Correct. Hypocrisy, not hackery.
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First thing that entered my mind as well
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I’m as depressed about the current greed-driven, ethically challenged state of college football as anyone, but . . . I’m not taking responsibility for this one, Tony. I’m not any more responsible for Tyrann Mathieu’s dismissal than I am for Isaiah Crowell having that piece under his car seat. I’m sad that both guys’ SEC careers ended the way they did, and nothing about their achievements or their character leads me to wish them anything but good fortune in their future endeavors, but there comes a point when you have to resist that sky-is-falling urge and place the responsibility for not fucking up on the people who fucked up.
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Don’t you know that no one is ever responsible for their own actions anymore. *sigh*
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I would opine that it is exactly this sort of dribble that makes students feel less responsible for their own behavior and less accountable for their actions. We don’t need to share responsibility with them. We need to demand accountability from them. That’s the only way this gets turned around. A few high profile incidents just may be a good place to start. Best wishes to Crowell, Reid and Mathieu. At the end of the day, perhaps they can all serve as a stern warning.
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+1. I wish more people would point that out.
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When we call ourselves dumbass names like “Mr. College Football” on National Television and Print Media, we’re guilty.
When we work as basically transcribers for the powers-that-be-in-major-college-football yet call ourselves journalists, we’re guilty.
When we use our unprecedented access to players and coaches to merely collect quotations and paste them together in thin narratives and package them as books like “Southern Fried Football” and “What it Means to be a Bulldog” and sell them for $24.95 a pop, we’re guilty.
When you write another self-righteous article bemoaning the “kids these days” yet reflect not once on your days in college, in Athens, in the 1970’s, we’re guilty.
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Damn. Nothing left to say after that.
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The BEST of many excellent posts here!
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College days, I might point out, when equally egregious bullshit was pulled by college football players and neither publicized by “journalists” nor dealt with in any way other than wearing the paint off the stadium steps…you, Tony, set the tone for this early in your career, and you my old friend may be more guilty than any of us.
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Plusadamnthousand.
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Word.
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When we write a book titled “Southern Fried Football” to earn our fair share of the aforesaid money, we’re guilty, and hypocritical to boot.
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Senator, Barnhart’s column reads like a Yom Kippur prayer. Hope he was fasting when he wrote it. Oh the guilt!
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Please, Barry, it is “oye the guilt”
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Are we therefore guilty of issuing the same kinds of disincentives for pundits to blather on rather than actually make insightful comments and suggestions.
Ahh, for the good old days of bloggers like S. Blutarsky – oh, wait a minute
These are the good old days !
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I was wondering when you would post this. I think we all feel the same. Mr.CFB is an ass.
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Mark Richt has lost control of Mr. CFB.
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And we have a winner.
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Can we also blame Mike Bobo?
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Sweet Mary, do we live in a universe of excuses these days. No one is responsible for Mathieu’s current predicament but the Honey Badger himself. Own your fuck ups, people, you’re not special.
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He was once a must read writer. Now he is merely a hack.
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If we are guilty when players go wrong, then we are to be praised when they go right … Jarvis Jones, St. Tebow, et all
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Ho. Lee. Shit.
Wow… and to think I used to enjoy reading his columns. I can’t remember the last time that was the case. This national gig has completely ruined him.
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I wonder if Tony reads the comments under his own blog post. I’d guess 95% reflects the same sentiment that we see here.
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Hey, there’s no better time to jump the shark than during Shark Week.
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I’m stunned that no one has posted this clip, especially given the handle of our esteemed host here at GTP:
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And for Tony Blowhard’s next blameshifting story… may I propose the exploits this young honeybadger out of Penn Hills, PA? http://www.wpxi.com/news/news/local/police-14-year-old-steals-car-leads-officers-chase/nQ9QH/ His mother is digging Tony’s style, I am sure.
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And we wonder how kids become so irresponsible……….Tony’s guilty!
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I blame that country singer that has all the Georgia gear. I don’t think he even went to UGA. That Mo Fo Guilty
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