As a rule, I’m not a fan of “zero tolerance” policies. I don’t think its’ the ex-lawyer in me, I’ve never been a big supporter of them. Too many overreactions, and no shades of gray. Everyone wants the bright-line rule, but life isn’t that neat and tidy. And all too often they are reactionary not to actual problems but to the glaring spotlight of attention and scare reports.
/climbs down from soapbox
Pitt made no such announcement yesterday when Coach Todd Graham and AD Steve Pederson met with the media in light of the SI.com story that featured Pitt as the #1 team in terms of arrests in college football. The implications are there, but then they were already in place when Graham (and Haywood for that matter) was hired.
There was acknowledgement of the article and the past season, but the talk was mainly about trying to move past it.
Graham, hired in January, said he can’t change the past, but he can make sure this trend does not continue.
“The events of the article is unacceptable for us,” Graham said. “But from day one, my first meeting, I was very, very aware of the situation, and it is not something we just started talking about today. We started talking about it the first meeting.”
Pederson said one change already implemented as a result of the arrests is that every coach will be more accountable for doing better background research on players during recruitment.
He said that might include criminal background checks in the future. But, should the university decide on such action, there are legal issues surrounding public records of most proceedings in juvenile courts around the country.
“We’ve started more intensely doing what we are calling background research,” Pederson said.
“And that is asking more and more questions, asking our coaches to ask more specific questions as we recruit student-athletes. But I think the discussion of criminal background checks is probably a national discussion to have.””
Some felt that after Haywood’s hiring, and all the talk of character, discipline and accountability that AD Pederson was implying that Wannstedt was lacking in those areas. Pederson danced around any direct questions stemming from the SI.com article.
Pederson was asked if the number of arrests was, at least in part, why he made the decision to fire Wannstedt.
“I don’t want to go back and relook at anything that we’ve done here,” Pederson said. “We’re giving every bit of support we can to coach Graham to move this program forward.”
Translation: I’m not going to lie to your face and say no, but I’m trying not to trash the guy. No comment.
As for former Coach Wannstedt, he’s not happy with the article.
Contacted Wednesday, Wannstedt, now an assistant coach with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, expressed disappointment in the article, saying it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of the way he ran his program nor was it an accurate portrayal of the players he recruited.
“We had an unfortunate stretch of incidents last summer, but I am very proud of our body of work during my six years with regards to players behavior,” Wannstedt said. “Every player [we recruited] was evaluated and scrutinized, and we tried to project whether they would become productive members of our football program as well as the university at large. Every player and each incident was evaluated on an individual basis, and we did our due diligence to make sure that we treated each player fair.
“Almost all of the incidents resulted in either a suspension or a player being eliminated from our program, and many of the incidents in question did not result in a conviction of any kind.”
Look, Wannstedt did a lot of good with the players. He graduated them. He looked after them. He also did not handle off-the-field problems well. Whether it was the non-suspension of Sheard. Or even the previous year’s non-suspension of Adam Gunn. The players never had any outside incentive to consider what their actions could mean.
What does it mean going forward? This is the tough area. Programs tend to give the coaches plenty of discretion on who they recruit as long as the kids can academically qualify and were not in obvious negative situations. Most quality coaches, in fact, demand that they have wide enough discretion in recruiting. No good coach wants to be micro-managed or have an AD looking over his shoulder at every move.
Even with changes coming, you can bet that Coach Graham still has discretion. It’s just that he has to be more thorough in checking and really has to trust the kid if he’s going to take a chance on borderline cases.
“I think this is atypical of both our football program and this athletic department,” Pederson said. “Certainly, anything that reflects on the university in a negative way is disappointing to us.”
Pederson said the university began an internal examination prior to the SI investigation. But the report caused the university to accelerate its effort to minimize criminal behavior among its student-athletes, Pederson said.
“I’ve talked with (student-athletes) about this numerous times, and they have a responsibility themselves to make sure they have upheld the standards they set for themselves and their families,” Pederson said.
In the arrest on Fernando Diaz, the one thing that is clear is that this message has been made to the players. The unnamed friend/football player with Diaz knew the score as he tried to get Diaz to stand down.
It’s a start.
The irony (nice way to put it) or hypocrisy (more accurate way to put it) of it all is that 99.8 percent of the time Graham and his coaches will be all over those same players DEMANDING that they be EXPLOSIVE and FIERY and to SEEK AND DESTROY and DISRUPT ANYTHING or ANYONE standing in front of them and to NOT BE A PUNK and GET PUSHED AROUND or else they’ll be a LOSER and ON THE BENCH and out of football.
While its true that no coach can prevent these things, I do think the attitude of the coaching staff and team policies can go some way to minimizing them. Although Wanny is a great guy, I don’t think he was ever able to instill a winning attitude on the team because of his hesitancy, so it all became about me, me, me, and waiting for the draft. I hope Graham is able to handle this better.
But you’re right, cnor(whatever)az, the same applies in football and the military. The best guys to beat the other side are the immoral thugs who care about nothing but themselves. Society wants this. Society doesn’t like it though if, when the battle is over, these guys can’t draw the line anymore.
The offseason arrest train keeps on rolling, this time deciding to make a stop in Pullman, Washington where Washington State linebacker Louis Bland was arrested early Saturday morning…
===
Well, I guess since the Offseason Arrest Train was already in Pullman, it decided to make a quick journey over to Seattle to catch its latest college football player.
According to KIRO TV in Seattle, Washington running back Johri Fogerson was arrested overnight and is currently in Snohomish County Jail…
===
I suppose I’m beginning to believe in a 0.01 tolerance policy. Like DUIs. If these guys know growing up there not getting a scholi unless its REALLY minor, maybe it stops.
==================================================
You’re right, HbgFrank, but the question then becomes, How will the coaching staff respond? You can’t kick a redshirt freshman off the team and then let a projected All American play on Saturday after they both commit the same offense. It’s called “being held accountable”. There was no accountability on the field last Fall, what makes anyone think there would have been accountability off the field?
I agree that Wanny did much to take care of his players but he was too lenient much of time, and for anyone who argues this, I offer 2 words: Elijah Fields
I’m just sayin.
Now College football programs would like to run criminal police reports on incoming recruits.
Whatever we’re doing in the last 10-20 years(maybe longer), it’s been wrong. It’s not working, we need to try something different. Because as we’ve seen it’s only going to get worse.
And I turned out ok.
Chas makes excellent points – the main one being that the players themselves had no incentive to change their negative behavior when there was no accountability required, or imposed, by the Head Coach previously. Then when the blow-back over Sheard’s non-suspension was so strong he flipped 180 degrees and went to a blanket dismissal policy after the incidents following Sheard. The inconsistency and favoritism is, and was, a recipe for disaster. The last thing a Head Coach should publicly be is evidently self-centered and that’s what DW was in his uneven application of discipline.
It is imperative that an organization sets standards that are reasonable and fair – and then applies them across the board. That wasn’t happening at PITT. These players are not stupid (regardless of if some of their actions were). They know when something is bent and that the rules are being changed to fit certain situations. That’s what happened and the outcome was that the effects of doing so were seen both on and off the field.
It was a crappy year all around and it is good we are getting a fresh start for 2011.
Outta sight, out of mind you know.
“Pitt would like you to believe these were isolated incidents when, in fact, there have been a series of offenses. I found out firsthand. A search of the Allegheny County court records turned up arrests or citations of 21 players in the 2010 Pitt football media guide. Eight were starters. None missed a game.”
Read more: Gorman: Pitt wins national ‘title’ – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review link to pittsburghlive.com
TAZE DON’T FAZE US !
Hard to say. Back in the middle ages when I was at Pitt all we had to do was put our traffic tickets in an envelope to the attention of Izzy down at the station.
A search of the Allegheny County court records turned up arrests or citations of 21 players in the 2010 Pitt football media guide. Eight were starters. None missed a game.
Read more: Gorman: Pitt wins national ‘title’ – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review link to pittsburghlive.com
There weren’t 21 players arrested, just a total of 21 that were either arrested or given a citation for something as trivial as public drunkenness. We all have been there done that and appeared in public drunk. Hopefully on more than one occasion. Like I said before this was an SI hit piece on Pitt specifically, since they took a moment in time (in this case 6 months) and used that moment in time to formulate a story.
Very faulty indeed, to take such a small sampling of time and come to a conclusion. This would be laughed out of any real study of sociology and/or statistics. Somebody or something has Pitt in the cross hairs.
There’s certainly need for improvement at Pitt with regard to off the field behavior but we all knew that after the rash of incidents last fall.
I hope we don’t wind up with a mindless zero-tollerance policy. We’ll be recruiting from the chess clubs rather than from HS football teams.
I think there has to be some consideration for the nature of the incident that a kid is involved in. Incidents while in HS should carry a different weight than incidents after ( a refletion of the effectiveness of a program’s mentoring effort).
The fact the athletes have a higher rate of bad behavior than the rest of the student population is not surprising. I’m guessing that lot more athletes come from at-risk environements than student populations in general. That argues for a stronger mentoring and monitoring programs to help these kids stay out of trouble and get moving in a more positive direction.
“Zero tolerance” is like a red flag for me. There needs to be room for judgement by coaches, with some oversight, as to the character of the recruit.
I think that the incidents last fall were plenty of evidence that there is a problem. Elijah Fields should have been cut loose on earlier offenses. Sheard should have gotten a more severe suspension at the least.
Now we have a fresh start and we can see where it goes from here. I just hope we can avoid over reacting at the expense of some kids that need a break to overcome a bad decision in HS.
And BTW, don’t believe anything to read about any of the old staff being granted interviews either – that never happened because the PITT administration wouldn’t allow it. The only reason any of the old staff was on retainer after Dec 7th at all was because of contractual obligations – those who weren’t the bare minimum necessary for the bowl game were not allowed back to the practice facilities. Wannstedt was given that fake position because his contract ran through “the last game of the 2010 season” hence his being gone the day after.
It very well may have been the same outcome regardless if DW had won more games – I’ll agree with Kevin Gorman on that point. All you have to do is look at the last coach who went to a BCS game and remember what happened with him after he embarrassed the University… that is the Cardinal Sin at PITT.
The HC (in any sport) balances winning against keeping ones job. What has to be swept under the rug for that next win currently resides in the shadows. I don’t want to say it, It hurts to say the words, but …. BYU…. There, I said it. Because the policy belongs to the school, the HC is not threatened, nor is he (she) forced to make a decision which may hurt the program, public view of the HC (ego stuff), and “upset” the alumni.
It becomes simply – Here’s the rule, you broke the rule, you’re done – and I CAN’T HELP YOU (or hide you) !
