Maryland’s Regents Try To Excuse A Killing

Sam Wilkinson

According to a faithful reader, I'm Ordinary Times's "least thoughtful writer." So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

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12 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    A gallon of water? When I have spent time in very dry areas, we tried to drink a quart. “Drink until you slosh” was the advice. You can actually hear water sloshing in your stomach.

    I can see that. But a gallon?

    I think of this attitude as “there is no body, only mind”. Which is nonsense.

    What I know now about weight training suggests that the fastest, best gains come from working only once a week. Twice might be better, the data is ambiguous. And yeah, sure, work until exhaustion.

    But that is so contrary to the “working harder is always better” attitude that you can’t even get those guys to listen to you.

    The best route is to just win, and beat them on the field. Sometimes that doesn’t work, they will say to each other, “think how much better they would be if they trained harder”.

    By the way, I don’t really think of Court’s claims of deep concern for the welfare of his players as dishonest. I think he believes it. It’s kind of like the moment in Infinity War where Thanos tells Gamora what he’s up to, and she says, “You’re insane!” Yeah, he might be, but he means it, and he actually loves her, even though he sacrifices her up for his “higher purpose”.

    This is a form of insanity, and it’s tolerated because it wins football games. Or so it seems.Report

    • Sam Wilkinson in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      @doctor-jay It’s tough to claim that you care for your welfare of your players after your system has killed one of them. You could certainly claim, “I care about these players but my method has failed in the most extreme way.” But to make the claim that you care about your players welfare in the immediate aftermath of all of this? There is no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt here.Report

  2. Slade the Leveller says:

    I learned of this story in September, after talking to a guy who was on the Big 10 Network pre-season road show. I had no idea this kind of Bear Bryant Junction Boys mentality survived into the 21st century.

    The regents’ reinstatement of Durkin was pretty shocking. In a system that can be pretty tone deaf, and I refer to big time NCAA athletics, this really stood out.

    Although, if Brian Kelley can keep his job, I suppose anything is fair game.Report

    • Sam Wilkinson in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

      It is an absurdity that Brian Kelley got away with it.

      As for the Big 10, what more would its institutions have to engage in before it would be properly understood as one of the most corrupt in American college sports?Report

      • Slade the Leveller in reply to Sam Wilkinson says:

        After involuntary manslaughter and pedophilia? Who knows where the bottom is?

        Maybe they can investigate themselves to find out.Report

      • I asked myself pretty much the same question: Can the NCAA find the conference guilty of “lack of institutional control” if enough schools have these problems?Report

        • InMD in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Watching this play out locally (and as an alum) there’s a big fact the national narrative seems to be overlooking. Many big state schools have arrangements with affiliated medical colleges through which the training staff actually report to clinicians, not coaches. Wallace Loh allegedly rejected a proposal by the AD (also allegedly supported by Durkin) a year ago to do just that.

          Now Durkin needs to go and the attempt to retain him was bizarre and about as tone deaf as they come. But IMO Loh is the real scoundrel here, and all of this was allowed under him. The only option after something like this is a complete house cleaning. It’s baffling anyone thought any different (you should’ve heard local sports radio today).Report

          • Sam Wilkinson in reply to InMD says:

            @inmd I’ve got no problem with Loh going. I tried to get criticisms in at him, but he wasn’t bad guy this week. That said, and as I’ve written elsewhere about similar situations, everybody who knew has to go. Everybody.Report

  3. Drew Seitz says:

    The victim blaming here is unconscionable.

    “As much as we hate to say this, Jordan didn’t do what Jordan was supposed to do. A trainer like [Maryland athletic trainer] Wes Robinson thinks a kid’s properly hydrated and runs a drill set up for kids that are properly hydrated, and when the kid didn’t drink the gallon he knew he had to drink, that’s going to send the wrong signal to the person running the drill.”

    Drinking water does not prevent heat illness. The problem is heat, not dehydration and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference how much water that kid drank. Overexertion + heat and high humidity = heat illness. Not to mention, the body can only absorb about a liter of water an hour.Report