On to the Goal

Well, the “Florida is the new Thug U” story has now been around long enough to be reduced to this: Criticism of the PR response. And when you reach that stage, it really is time to stop talking about the subject, especially since it was mostly ridiculous offseason bluster to begin with.

I respect Dr. Saturday’s opinion, and he certainly wasn’t the first to question Florida’s response. And given that part of it was hilariously lifted directly from the Scared Straight playbook — shuffling players into a ridealong program with Gainesville police — I have to admit that it was a bit overwrought. At least they didn’t decide to go in this direction:

Nah, we’ll leave that part to Tebow.

In all seriousness, I think the issue did warrant a response because, from its outset, it completely lacked context. The column that begat this meme was woefully short on detail. Among the things it missed:

• Actual number of players arrested
• Number of charges dropped
• Analysis of the severity of the crimes
• Thorough comparison to other major football programs and university populations as a whole

The initial round of follow-up attempts wasn’t much better, and things didn’t really come into focus until the Gainesville Sun and Jeremy Fowler, among others, began to confront the bloviating and “faux righteousness” (as Doc Sat put it) with, get this, actual facts. From the beginning, that was half of my objective in writing about the topic.

The other half was to stress that this is not a minor issue, and that is where my opinion departs from that of Mr. Hinton, et al.  I don’t necessarily buy the reasoning that this story was going to go away. Sure, the Gators are not the only college football program with a high arrest total, but they’re the only college football program with a high arrest total and a 2008 BCS trophy. Relax, I don’t mean that in the “THEY HATE US BECAUSE WE WIN!” vein. But if I were part of the Florida braintrust, I’d have been thinking four things:

1. Like it or not (OK, generally we “like”), we’re one of the most visible programs in America.
2. Even if it’s just for public intoxication, someone else is probably going to get arrested in the next six months.
3. The higher the number of incidents, the more likely it is that the “thug” perception becomes its own reality.
4. We better damn sure get out in front of this with some context.

Sure, it’s possible that everyone manages to stay out of trouble and the story fades into the ether. It’s also equally possible that, right at this very moment, Bob Ley is on a C-130 preparing to parachute into Gainesville with an army of cameramen and a briefcase full of spotshadowed Alachua County Court transcripts. As such, I err on the side of letting the facts see the light of day, especially when those facts are actually favorable when compared to the initial mock outrage.

So that brings us full circle, in a sense. All of these issues make the Gators look bad, at least for as long as people are talking about them. But paradoxically, we needed to talk about them to get the facts straight. As I noted from the beginning, some of these incidents are serious and some are, well, stupid. Forgive me if I don’t feign outrage over Dorian Munroe removing a boot from his car. That clarification alone was worth the bloodletting.

But now it’s time to stop. I could waste 1,000 words on whether you need thugs to win (probably) or how fair the inevitable OTL piece is going to be (not very), but it is all wasted energy barring any new developments. And just as I’ve closed every previous such post, pray those inevitable new developments aren’t of the “OH THAT IS SO MESSED UP!” variety.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Law & Order. 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.