Just when I think we’ve plumbed the depths of Bobby Petrino’s character, he up and says something about signing Devonte Fields that literally makes my skin crawl:
“I think we have a really good understanding of what went wrong, what happened,” Petrino said. “Talking to the attorneys and really knowing that we felt comfortable that, No. 1, there’s absolutely no gun there, and it’s a misdemeanor charge.”
Well, that’s a relief. Petrino has standards.
At least you can say Fields is only getting a second chance. At Alabama, Nick Saban is giving Jonathan Taylor a third one.
“The guy was charged. There’s no question about that,” Saban said. “He was accused. I can’t discuss the circumstances of all that. I’ve said this before: When people are young and they make a mistake — and that is not a mistake that we condone in any way, shape or form, that it’s any disrespect to any person, let alone a female — that there isn’t some occasion to not condemn them for life, but to give them another chance. And it’s up to them to prove that they deserve that chance.”
“Disrespect” – in that Taylor allegedly struck his girlfriend with a closed fist and choked her, that’s one helluva euphemism. The thing with that approach is why stop at three? If Taylor screws up again and disrespects somebody else, why condemn him for life at that point, either?
Nick feels your pain, peeps. To an extent, anyway.
Saban said he understands the “sensitivity” about taking Taylor, who has unspecified behavioral stipulations imposed by Alabama. Taylor’s high school and junior college coaches spoke highly of him, Saban said.
Notice who Saban conveniently doesn’t mention? That’s because you never want to ask a witness a question to which you don’t want to hear the answer.
What I love with both of these situations is the coaches piously insist they can’t discuss the surrounding circumstances. That makes the tap dancing so much easier. Ugh.
