She can speak generally without breaking confidentiality. You can believe it or not, but my game plan wasn’t to be on the board for 15+ years to gain trust and then spill what I thought was a secret that we can all assume. She was there and we are very lucky she was a cardiologist.
We cannot assume it. It wasn't obvious that there was a heart condition. If you are saying that the cardiologist who treated him gave you wink wink head nod type confirmation, that is probably the closest we have to any credible information.
Just drop it already. He collapsed during a strenuous athletic event, was wheeled off the floor, spent 10 days in the hospital, and hasn’t been allowed to resume his intercollegiate basketball career in almost 2 years. It doesn’t matter if it was an ingrown toenail, he hasn’t chosen or been allowed to play.
UF would be sued also! It's best to keep him here as a coach and ambassador. If he goes and something happens to him, we will bear some of the culpability.
Why? We would have no reasonable way to keep him from his activities. Shouldn't the idea of liability include control over accepting risky behavior or blame for the vulnerability that makes the behavior potentially more harmful for him? Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
Maybe I’m reading your post incorrectly, but it’s not the school’s choice. UF can’t just keep him here as a coach because they want to. KJ is free to make his own decision. As far as bearing culpability for something happening to him after he leaves, I don’t see how that is possible even in our highly litigious society. Not unless UF did something to cause the injury, which seems a remote possibility from what little we know.
It is called the "deep pocket theory". Under the "deep pocket doctrine," an attorney has been taught to sue anyone and any entity that can even be remotely palpably implicated in some negligence resulting in injury. A lawyer could argue that even having him sit on the bench and enduring the misery that was Florida basketball all season, subjected him to untoward stress which indubitably complicated and worsened his condition over time. Would our lawyers be able to bypass that allegation without a full-blown trial, I doubt it very seriously. Would they want to go to trial and risk appearing like an institution that got basically free coaching from a young man when the average coach on the program was making at least a quarter-million a year? I doubt it! We'd settle! In the millions, I'd suspect. It is better to keep him in the program, pay him a salary of an assistant coach, and eliminate the potential claim if he goes elsewhere and something negative happens. Offer him 300K to become an assistant coach already!!!!!
We would have no reasonable way to stop him, but the medical advice we gave him could come into play as a motivating factor for his actions in returning to active play. Furthermore, using him in the capacity that we used him, as a non-paid assistant coach, traveling around the SEC without compensation or other benefits associated with Division 1 coaching, in and of itself is actionable in my opinion. But that's what happens when you have wannabe head coaches coaching your program. Instead of offering this man 300K to do a job that he was probably doing better than other coaches who were being compensated, they allowed him to go through the same stress and paid him nothing.
Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time seeing how the message delivered was anything other than "we don't think it's a good idea for you to play basketball." Go GATORS! ,WESGATORS
He was not a real coach, c’mon man. He was a player who helped out his team since he couldn’t play. I don’t think the University forced him into it or signed him as a coach. “Coach Key” was a nickname, not a title. If at any time, he said I don’t want to do this anymore, they would have said fine. It was his way of being a good teammate and leader. And if he had an injury somewhere else, I can’t imagine UF bearing any responsibility unless they caused the underlying condition. You are reaching hard.
Haven’t read the entire thread but wasn’t there some kind of accusation earlier this year? If so, that can be a big part of him entering the portal to get a fresh start. Just a thought.
I don’t think the university “used” him. They retained him on scholarship even though he couldn’t participate on the court.
It wouldn't make the legal side go away but if nothing else, it avoids having to participate in any title ix investigation by the school
First of all many grad assistants get paid pennies, others a little bit more. He also was receiving a full scholarship worth excess of probably 40-40K for an out of state student. Enough of this non-paid assistant crap. The kid almost died on the basketball court, there was probably never more than a 1% chance that UF docs clear him to play. Players have to hang it up all the time for career ending injuries, I see this as the same. He should take his insurance check and get into coaching.
Perhaps that was a harsh term, but the monetary value of a full scholarship and allowable benefits for a student-athlete pale in comparison to what the average assistant coach at UF gets paid. Perhaps when you are doing the same job as someone else but getting one-tenth the pay, you call it "retention". I call it being used.
So you are saying the other coaches making 10 times what he made couldn't quit if they wanted to simply because they were under contract? Yes, he was under no obligation, but the fact is he was an asset to the team that went beyond his full scholarship.
I denoted vacillation in the manner in which the door seemed always partially open for his possible return. I don't think there was ever any definitive position taken by the university. Would it be a stretch to find our school partially responsible? Probably, but there are a lot of clever layers out there who would make a case that the totality of the circumstances - no definitive declaration that his career at Florida was over, his extended use as an auxiliary coach in a tumultuous season for the Gators, and Lord knows what the emails and text messages will say about how they felt. Of course an attorney would get access to all of that through discovery.
