Coaches bare the brunt of the responsibility for the athletes they recruit onto their respective college campuses. Fair or unfair that is the deal. In college basketball we are dealing with 13-18 players. It is much more difficult in the college football side of things where there is upwards of 80-100 bodies to manage.
"It's a tremendous challenge for everybody to stay in line, to keep track of what's going on and do the right thing," Carroll said.
Even the best of kids can get caught up in being part of the college student crowd. Fact is they have to understand that they are not regular college students. They are not entitled to anything a regular student is allowed to do. As high profile athletes and members of an exclusive team, they are choosing to be public figures and as public figures their target for criticism is also open to the public. I tell our guys the second you accept the privilege of being part of the program, you are choosing to live in a glass house. With camera phones and the youtube age, we're all living in a reality show. For example, Josh Howard disrespects the national anthem at a pickup football game and within 4 days 508,437 times just one of the posting of the video was viewed on youtube. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy's press conference tirade's two top postings on youtube combined for over 1.4 million views.
Rather than going out this weekend, junior running back Stafon Johnson said he would spend the off days playing video games at home or visiting with teammates at their residences to avoid public scrutiny.
"You can spit and that would be in the newspaper the next day," Johnson said. "So the best thing to do during the season, especially on break, is just to chill out. Just relax."
No truer words have been spoken.
