Let's see. In the 23 months he took over, football academics are worse than they previously were...that says something.
For one I dont know if they are worse, but lets assume they are. Why wouldn't they be considering all that has gone on and the shape he found the program? Are you ignoring that?
Lets call a spade a spade here. If he had gone 10-2 the past 2 years would you even be arguing this point?
Yes and no. I'm not going to lie. Despite the fact I want UT athletes to be students first, it's not going to happen on a consistent basis. So yes, it's an issue because it is depressing to see that. But no, it would be on the backburner and it wouldn't be that big of an issue. However, I think it does hurt the VFL program, which is used as the biggest recruiting tool here, and has an impact.
Is it that crazy to think though that around 30 players had 60-70% range on their grades and 20 of them failed their finals?
The support staff is paid to monitor exactly where these kids are in EVERY class. If there was issues with potential classes being failed then DD knew about it. If he didn't the support staff should have already been fired.
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There is so many variables in this that we don't know. Dooley may have known, the players may have studied hard, but still failed. We really don't know.
I am sure a few of the kids at issue have given their best effort. I understand a 2.0 is a real achievement for a small number of kids. But again too many kids are at issue!
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We aren't going to agree on this. I believe at some point responsibility has to be put on the players. Effort on and off the field is on their shoulders IMO.
I don't completely disagree with you. For a kid like Hughes I agree its up to the kid to change. I just don't believe we have 24 kids like him we are discussing here.
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Im not saying we do either, but players like Bray and Rogers party a lot. With how the season went, and the emotional trainwreck that they went through, Im sure it was hard on a lot of players so they probably weren't as focused as they needed to be. The locker room was disfunctional, its not hard to imagine that the players weren't exactly completely buying in to the coaches. If they don't get this fixed in this semester, which I heard is already good, or the summer then I will consider it a problem.
This is probably not going to be well received, but I look at it as it is the coaches job to keep people eligible but not anything beyond that. He is getting paid to win football games not have 4.0 students. As long as they are eligible come fall, I don't really care how many are on probation right now. If the students themselves want to be above the NCAA minimum then that is their responsibility to put in that work.
There's a guy being paid two million dollars a year to keep these things from happening.
