I agree with the guy. Even when it happens in professional sports, it sucks. I’ve been tempted some nights to get on the blog and tear Eric Gagne to pieces, but then I calm down and get over it. When atheletes make problems with their mouth or lack of discipline, I feel like it’s open season, but to screw up in a game is human. Not only that, but we fans are really full of shit if we think that somehow it hurts us more than it does the guy who screwed up and lost the game. At the college level I especially respect a guy who will stand up for his players like this guy just did. The vast majority of college atheletes don’t make a living off of sports once they’ve graduated, and they don’t make a penny while they’re going to school. That scholarship is something they earn tenfold when you consider the amount of revenue a successful program brings in to the school.
Coming from the Boston area, I’m used to a combative sporting press, especially on the radio, but even back there, they won’t get on a Boston College player’s case like often happens in the midwest at that level (and sometimes high school as well). I think some of these fans are nuts, but the fact that they’re nuts means there’s a market for the type of writing this coach is upset about. Not much going on in Oklahoma…can’t forget that. The articles on OU and OSU that come out after a game, are like Page 6 in the NY Post for them. Or, to equate it with something I look forward to reading, Barron’s weekly, on a Saturday night…damn, the sheer notion of that being an exciting way to spend a Saturday night, if the 23 year old me had known about this, I’d definitely be short a few thousand more brain cells. Check out this video: