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I know this doesn’t really have anything to do with Maryland, but this struck me as odd. Butch Davis was fired as Head Coach at UNC. A move that really isn’t that shocking based on the bad press and NCAA investigation UNC has been going through this past year. However, I did notice the quote for the UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp and found it very telling:

“To restore confidence in the University of North Carolina and our football program, it’s time to make a change. What started as a purely athletic issue has begun to chip away at this University’s reputation. I have been deliberate in my approach to understanding this situation fully, and I have worked to be fair to everyone involved. However, I have lost confidence in our ability to come through this without harming the way people think of this institution. Our academic integrity is paramount and we must work diligently to protect it. The only way to move forward and put this behind us is to make a change.”

I have no dog in this fight, but this seems like a good quote for a difficult situation. If I were a UNC fan, I would be proud of this statement and move on.

Now look at Ohio State. OSU their, I believe it was their Chancellor who at the initial idea of firing Jim Tressell responded that he hopes Tresell didn’t fire him. Compare the two responses. Actually when I think about it, you can’t really compare them, they are in different leagues. But one shows rational thought out thinking, the other is what a dorkier kid might say to the popular kid on a playground to try to appease the cool crowd.

Now I don’t know (or care actually) what is going to happen to UNC when this is all said and done. I do know that OSU tried to be pro-active and punish themselves by erasing all their wins from the past season. A nice gesture on paper, that means very little to the teams they beat, and to those teams fans who had to sit through the loss, and stew about it for an additional 6 days. All I can say is that I hope when the NCAA is done punishing OSU, I feel like justice has been done.

On the surface what OSU did wasn’t that bad. Traded merch for tat’s. They didn’t abduct any kids or anything. But the way Tressell ran his program, the hiding behind his family and his bible, just boils my blood. As a famous person once said “There is a special place in hell for hypocrit’s”, I hope too that there is a special place for OSU when the NCAA is through. Somehow I have the feeling that I will be disappointed. Any penalty that is more than a slap on the wrist seems to only happen to Maryland.  Afterall,  2.5 hours of practice time got reduced for the 2011 season, not the 2010 one.  Doesn’t seem right does it?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 at 7:16 am and is filed under Maryland Terps Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.