How do you know they didn’t already speak to the coaches before going public?
Mario never implied they didn’t. He simply said if a parent wasn’t happy they could pull their player out.
Well listen Mario, you’re not Nick Saban. You’re not Bill Belichick.
You’re a .500 career coach who got fired from FIU and lost to Middle Tennessee this year.
You haven’t earned the right to strong arm or bully anyone.
The proper response would’ve been: “My door is always open for parents to discuss whatever issues or concerns they may have regarding their kids - football or non football. That’s something that gets handled privately + in house and I’m not going to comment on this specific instance. I’ll only repeat that my door is always open”.
Instead he tries to be a tough guy.
Baseless pablum from a psuedo macho man.
First thanks for teaching me a new word today.
Let me spin it from another perspective. The average parent, even those of highly talented D-1 athletes have a tendency to over value their sons abilities, because well, its their kid. I mean just listen in the stands any Friday night, anywhere across America - people can be delusional. Particularly those who have no frame of reference, or learned the game from Madden.
I told my late wife that what I would bring to the table as a parent for our three sons would be sports, for the discipline and lessons learned. She didn't understand it at first. The thing I made my boys understand as soon as they started competing in T-Ball and AAU Basketball, was never to ask me to talk to a coach about playing time; because that was up to them to take care of on the practice field.
I also didn't let the first two play Pop Warner for three reasons, 1) Picking up bad habits from largely unqualified coaches; 2) Getting a big head playing against inferior competition when they should be in a freshman program, and 3) Burn out. My 3rd was the exception because he was a basketball player and they recruited him as a WR for a run at a National Title. They asked me to come along as an O-line coach since I played in college - two of them spent some time playing college, so they were a notch above most PW Coaches. We went on and won a National Title that year, and the youngest eased right into freshman ball and played on teams with Mike Bellamy who was at Clemson for 15 minutes but had a 75 yd TD on his first college touch.
All three played at my old school, Charlotte High in Punta Gorda. All three were recruited to play at the next level, one did play, one returned home from playing at a service academy when his mom passed, and the other got on with his career as Firefighter/PM.
The best compliment I ever got was from their HOF Coach who after a conversation about how it can sometimes be hard coaching sons of guys he played with (he was 10 years younger than me), said about mine, "They were all worth a ****." He was kind of getting at my original premise.
