This past week has been just horrendous for Mullen, the Gators recruiting picture and what HAD been an extended run of positive, hopeful news and moves regarding our future.
The UGA trolls in particular are having a field day mocking us--just mainly reporting the string of negative news stories.
I'm trying to find out more about the Chris Steele story: Reported first as some failure on the coaches' part to "respond satisfactorily" to his request to change his roommate situation (ie. that he felt "uncomfortable" being matched with the sexual misconduct-accused Jalen Jones), on the heals of gleeful reporting from north of "the moron line" there now come reports that it may have "ALSO" had something to do with the highly-rated prospect's "scholastic difficulties in extremis". I can testify first hand that though you get turoring help as a scholarship athlete and every chance to master the material, unless things have changed drastically, UF is a high-standards, serious academic institution where no one is simply HANDED ANYTHING. I tutored a number of top athletes as part of certain scholarship opportunities awarded me when there, and I can assure you that though part of the athletes' scholarships assured them as much help as they needed, it was understood that this was all in service of effort to satisfy courses' and professors' standards...NOTHING was "handed" to anyone. Some guys found this shocking, to them unprecedented and "unfair"--but they either woke up, adapted and made the required effort, or fell by the wayside and soon left. Now they whine and have apologists who function as "spin doctors", I guess.
The seeming sudden plethora of, if not "similar" then at least parallel stories, including possibly losing another top get, Zipperer, is disturbing--part of a bad luck/bad news streak, to say the least.
Like I say, I'm trying to find out more--preferably FACTS, but at the very least "inside chatter" at what, if anything, may "REALLY" be going on: An isolated case would be one thing, but when there is a temporal flurry like this, you begin to wonder, "WTF--???"...Meanwhile, though, anyone out there with insights, news from the scene or WHATEVER is welcome to chime in. Hell, even a well-founded "theory" would be something we could consider, chew on...I'm a bit baffled so far.
What about you, E--? Any ideas? Just "situational bad luck streak" (even "statistical anomaly"), or deeper problem showing itself? And is it even something our people had any kind of direct control over (as, for eg, the first reports of our staff's supposed failure to react quickly or sensitively enough to Steele's "concerns" claimed, or maybe some general "look the other way" regarding endemic grade problems), or perhaps just something that all higher-standard public institutions who happen to also proudly field highly successful athletic teams will face periodically? In a world more and more of false promises and shallow wallowing in early entitlement, ribbon-for-participating, PC, "fastest on my block so I'm goin' to the pros" foolishness, this could be more and more the norm... But if so, I wouldn't be so quick to gloat if I were from Georgia. Fortunately, I am NOT.