We’ve all heard that “attitude is everything” since we were 8 years old playing rec league baseball. That phrase has been posted in every high school locker room in the nation at one time or another.
The latest University of Tennessee football debacle illustrates this more beautifully than any situation that I could think of. Although the story is still developing at the time of this blog, the condensed version goes something like this: several U.T. football players were in Bar Knoxville, the arm pit of the Cumberland Strip. Some sort of fight erupted inside the bar and spilled out onto the street. Involved were those same U.T. football players, and an off-duty police officer. Apparently one of the University’s finest cracked the cop’s melon and dropped him. But that didn’t seem to be enough for this particular scholar who proceeded to stomp and kick the officer until he had bleeding in his brain, and had a fractured occipital joint. (base of the skull) So we’ve got “multiple” college athletes, the smallest of which weighs 200 pounds, beating a 170-pound man, AFTER he was unconscious and on the ground. Very classy guys; way to represent the University. One player in particular, Da’Rick Rogers has only been on campus one month, and has already been arrested!
The real issue here, my dear readers, is not football players being in a bar at 2:40 a.m. on a Thursday night, because we all know that anything that happens after midnight is a good thing. No, the real issue here is the attitude of highly-recruited high school football players. These narcissistic punks have been told since they were 10 years old that they are the next coming of Jim Brown. (most of them couldn’t hold Mr. Brown’s jock on his worst day) The media, their parents, their middle school and high school coaches, scouts, and recruiting services are all at fault here. This specific sect of player does not fully grasp the fact that they have been GIVEN a scholarship to a world-class education for no other reason than they can play football. It completely escapes them. They feel entitled to the scholarship, due in no small part to the aforementioned enablers. These jack wads have never been told “no”, and have likely never been punished for behavior that is deemed unacceptable. So when they fly the nest and are out on their own, what does society think is going to happen? That much freedom, without any apparent support system, will reap benefits of incarceration, and a rap sheet a mile long.
When we, as a society, start treating these pubescent prima donnas like the thugs that SOME of them are, the University of Tennessee will be in much better shape. Speaking purely as a life-long U.T. fan, I would much rather have a few 3-star athletes that appreciate the incredible opportunity in front of them to play for U.T., rather than a 5-star punk that feels like the entire world owes him something because he’s fast!
I sicerely hope that Coach Dooley goes "Roger Goodell" on these morons, beacause they do not deserve to wear the Orange & White!
