Richt owns this admin and knows how to play the game. A scrub kicker gets a DUI and they Maurice Smith his locker before the ink is dry on the police report. A underwhelming linebacker gets involved in free limos and he quietly disappears from the roster. No one but Richt is keeping one of his key players off that field, especially not some bullsh*t disciplinary committee. Reverend Richt understands the importance of optics as well as anyone, which is why we took the wait-and-see with Walton -- anyone who thought Walton was ever in danger of being dismissed or suspended for any significant games is nuts. Same goes with AQM and Grace.
Nah, the walkon kicker had a lengthy rap sheet.
He should have been kicked off the team last year.
Comparing his case to Walton and the names you mentioned is like comparing apples and oranges.
I hope you picked up on the intentional hyperbole to make a point -- and it wasn't to say that those situations were, in fact, identical. Point is, if they were, the outcomes would not have been identical. You think that all things (history) being equal, Mark is shown the door like that scrub? Of course not.
This is a coach who won a national championship with a
kicker who was: caught with 20 rolls at Late Night Library (which was covered up); implicated in a gambling ring (also covered up); involved in countless fights (never reported); charged with battery; and, arrested for trying to bribe a cop. Yet, Richt's mentor looked past it all and I think even openly kidded before the national championship game that he would have been crazy to kick the ****** off the team. Same team that suspended Coles but not Warrick (both coached by Richt) for making Dillards their own personal closet. (And Coles, despite being the biggest ******* on campus, actually had a much better behavioral history and attended class.)
No chance Richt takes this job without covering the disciplinary ground rules with our pothead President -- because he's here to win, not appease the admin. And I'm sure those ground rules, distilled down, consist of one principal agreement: with the exception of felonies or irrefutable NCAA violations, he will be the judge, jury and executioner.
And there is an art to that. You have to make examples in the gray area for optics, but you do so without hurting your team. We're talking about a coach groomed at FSU under Bowden who then went on to win in the SEC for a decade. That coach is not going to come here and allow some committee comprised of academics or students make a decision that could hurt his team unless the behavior in question is outside of that gray area (felonies or proven noncompliance with NCAA rules).
