OGT-Florida at Georgia 2/28/2023 7:00 pm SECN

When the Gators abandon ethics, I abandon the Gators.

 

Right.
Agree or not, leadership of UF has put ethics as a top priority.
This was the case after the black eyes of the mid and then late 80s- when (I believe) every UF sport was under NCAA investigation.
I was told even our track program was looked at. (And we were fine.)

It seemed leadership said we will never be in that boat again, and we have not.
It seems we will not touch anyone with a hint of scandal.
So if a fan wants a team that skirts ethical boundaries and is always on the edge, he/she may want to find another team.

I don't think UF will go down that road, though things can always change I guess.

 

I've never been a proponent of selling out for winning programs but honestly, has anyone with success really suffered any for doing so? Fsu and Miami had some PR speedbumps along the way. Same for Nebraska Ohio state, lsu etc. Georgia is getting an almost complete pass for intervening in a crash that resulted in deaths.

I'm sure I'm feeling a bit of a victim complex as a Gator fan but what other team has a worse national perception for the character makeup of their championship team than the 08 Gators? What other team has had conference titles stripped as recent as the Gators? We took more hear for recruiting a girlfriend of a football recruit than anything these other teams have done.

Edit: sorry for the football examples. Forgot I was in NBN but we can find many examples in basketball too as we all know.

No real point of my comments, just observations. I don't think we are choir boys either. You cannot be and still be competitive but there is a difference in how UF approaches these issues as an institution compared to many others.

 

Maybe it's just your choice of words, but I find it ironic that you argue that abandoning your ethics to bring back respectability is needed. Giving up your ethics to hire a guy that will play a known rapist or a guy who's program threw sex parties for recruits (just a couple of examples) in order to win won't cut it for me. If UF were to go that route, it would be the end of my support for them. To each their own, I guess.

 

I find it tremendously puerile on your part to reason that those who have not been exposed for flaws and shortcomings don’t have them.

We live in a world of flawed people. Guess what? You are flawed, and if your secrets came to light, I can only imagine what impact that would have on your career and other aspects of your life. You are in a word a hypocrite. And just as our athletic administration is prone to take cCHANCES on unproven commodities who have largely brought down the brand of our school resulting in the same iill repute that a disgraced but proven commodity “could” bring, I believe that we are better off giving people second chances to do what they do best as opposed to first chances to people to do what they now seem incapable of doing just because their secrets haven’t come to light.

We are living in the age of redemption. Only those who deceive themselves into believing that they have no need for it will suffer the the consequences of the lack of it.

 

Hiring a great coach who made mistakes and giving him a second chance is no more unethical than hiring a coach who is WAY over his head and then pretending that you are being heralded for winning the national championship of ethics.

I’d rather win with a person who knows thst this is his last shot to prove they he has been redeemed than lose with s person who brags about how clean he is but attracts only 2 and 3 star talent to the program. In the latter, you have a person who manages to shroud his secrets and cash in on being able to hide them more than his skills as a head coach.

 

That might be true which is all the more reason why you have to hire a high profile coach who can bring in top twenty HS talent.

Riley Kugel has proved to be the real deal. But to rebuild a program when top talent expected or unexpected is one and done or two and loose, you have to bring in 3 stars a year until the program becomes stabilized.

Of the seven teams that finished ahead of us in the conference THIS YEAR- six of them combined have fewer National championships COMBINED in the past thirty years than we do, and some how they have leap frogged us. Vanderbilt’s academic program exceeds ours in many departments and is about as Ivy League as you can get so let’s stop with the academic reason for our woes.

it is in a word inexcusable. And the ONLY explanation for it beyond priorities as you suggest is poor decisions by the administration that will only continue if not enough of the alumni does not speak up about it. Many programs replace great coaches and continue to thrive and be relevant after the great coach.

The stigma of coaching after Donovan is a cop out. Find someone who will recruit and coach just as good or better based upon his track record not the mistakes he has made.

I hope Golden can figure it out. But this recruiting class is like buying a Powerball ticket. You hope for the best but 3 star and no star talent are long shots for competitive basketball. Relying on hodgepodge transfers EVERY YEAR is not a solution for long term stability and success.

 

Wow. I cannot argue against much you have said except that we only have what we know to go on. If you think Coach Spurrier or Coach Donovan are comparable to Coach Pitino and Coach Fisher, then there's nothing I can say in response. Like I said in the last sentence, to each their own. I like that my university at least tries...or at least they did before the new regime took over. I expect we'll be more like the ones we detest in the near future. Of course we're all flawed. The difference is that some try to do the right thing and some don't care.

 

That's why we have lawyers and contracts. We could easily put into place an escrow clause which would operate as liquidated damages if any kind of program impairing infraction occurs. Of course, under such unlikely incidents, there would be forfeiture of the buyout and even recoupment from what has been escrowed or some bond that the coach would have to procure as a form of insurance against misdeeds. Perhaps a Pitino would not go for such stringent restrictions on compensation, but the real question is, whether anyone approached him on it? Whether or not Pitino could turn a program around faster than Mike White or Todd Golden is not subject to debate.

I don't see Pearl getting Auburn into hot water, and he has elevated the program leaps and bounds above ours in the short time that he has been there. I am sure there are provisions in his contract that keep him on the straight and narrow.

 

You chose to use Bruce Pearl as your example of a shining beacon of integrity once he got his second chance. Unfortunately, he went right back to cheating as soon as Auburn gave him his second chance. Look it up.

 

Pearl is in his ninth year I think at auburn, and didn’t do much for the first five or so.
And Pearl already got auburn into a mess with the Nike scandal. He literally refused to talk to his bosses about what he knew, and they did nothing. Because, Auburn.

 

In his fourth year at Auburn, he tied for 1st in the SEC. White finished 2nd in his second year and 3rd in his 3rd year. He never got us past the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament with his own players (not Donovans). Pearl finished 4th in his 5, 2nd in his 6th, and 1st in his 8th. At Tennessee, he finished 1st in the East 3 times. Now both programs are more prominent than ours, and no one is calling him a sleaze or cheater. Why so many of you are in complete denial as to what has happened is beyond me.

 

He's a sleaze and a cheater.

 

Like I said, BP literally was asked to come explain himself to his bosses and refused.
Sources: Job at stake if Pearl doesn't cooperate

he was also suspended by the NCAA for failure to monitor, which was the most they could pin on him. Wonder how those two things might be connected?

and auburn being auburn, did nothing about it, because…winning.

 

When did I make an excuse for anything? Stop arguing that cheating is okay as long as you win.

 

Sleaze and cheating vs. palpably unqualified and lazy. Pay your money take your choice. One is winning or has proven that he can, and the others are simply collecting checks.

 

It is unethical to retain the services of "professionals" that are UNQUALIFIED for the position.

 

Okay, you're blocked.

 

Pearl’s history.
Everywhere he goes something shady happens.
Bruce Pearl’s complicated history with NCAA rules, explained - SBNation.com

 

I was on the record in favor of Pitino, Sr. I knew it would never happen though.

There are things I like about Golden, but I believe the odds are against him in a big way. I think Kugel is a risk to be lured away by NIL and the prospect of playing for a UK, Kansas, UNC, Duke. Our recruiting is abysmal to date.

A coach like Pitino super charges your recruiting and tells everyone that you are serious. Hiring mid major coaches over and over again tells everyone that you are not.