DJ Durkin and Damon Evans will retain jobs at Maryland, source says


And while investigating that, they discovered an awful, abusive environment throughout the program (both S&C and in general).


If your neighborhood has a gas leak, and upon investigating the gas leak, they stumble upon dead bodies in someone basement ... they're supposed to throw up their hands and say "we never had cause to look for dead bodies, oh well!" ?? Fat chance.

You can argue that until you're blue in the face. If enough people disagree with you ... then what they believe becomes what is true. You can stomp your feet at that all you want, you won't win.

The second official report did not find a toxic environment. Some things were near the line or over the line a bit but nothing truly abusive. You’re making things up again.

You realize they reinstated him because they didn’t find enough fault? He wasn’t fired for cause? He was fired because of the PR storm/narrative out there.
 

The second official report did not find a toxic environment.

The first one did. Who's lying? You apparently want to believe the second one. More people believe the first one.

He was fired because of the PR storm/narrative out there.

Good. Sometimes it takes a s__tstorm outcry from the public to right a wrong.
 

I'm a big fan of the Alien franchise (not the newer ones, but not going to go into that). The biggest thing in a situation like this is context.

Me enjoying a watch of Alien is one thing.
Me enjoying a watch of Alien with my young nieces during breakfast is another.
Me enjoying a watch of Alien in the lunchroom of my workplace forcing everyone to endure it is also another.

Context can suddenly make things more complicated. Were the students forced to watch them? Guessing, no? I suppose they could choose to show how weak they are and leave if they felt uncomfortable. Point being, I don't care about personal movie tastes or whether you like to cast magic missle. I do, however, care about what methods are being used to "toughen up" humans.


Ok, fine. But how did it relate to a kid dying after running ten 110 yard sprints with 60 second rest in between, plenty of water available, on a moderate day? Was that abusive? Draw the line for me here as I don’t see it. The trainers ****ed up.
 

The first one did. Who's lying? You apparently want to believe the second one. More people believe the first one.



Good. Sometimes it takes a s__tstorm outcry from the public to right a wrong.


What first one? Neither found an abusive environment. You still haven’t read them yet still post nonsense on this.
 


The trainers ****ed up.

And when an investigation of this was conducted, it also found an awful, abusive environment ran by Durkin.

Therefore, Durkin deserved to be fired. And was.


Please stop trying to pretend that you can win the argument by faulting the trainers. I just blasted it to smithereens, twice in 5 mins.
 


Ok, fine. But how did it relate to a kid dying after running ten 110 yard sprints with 60 second rest in between, plenty of water available, on a moderate day? Was that abusive? Draw the line for me here as I don’t see it. The trainers ****ed up.

This is a tough situation. As a FBS Head Coach, when a player on your team dies as a result mistreatment by medical trainers, the HC still bears a level of responsibility. They are the face of that football program. That said, I don't hold Durkin responsible for the tragic event. The trainers ****ed up. Regarding the separate issue of "toxic culture", things are certainly suspect, but I don't know enough to say whether things were abusive. If I remember right, Durkin had asked for a doctor to be present during practices, but was turned down (probably getting that part wrong, trying to remember).
 

MrC, we all know you’re the smartest man here. You’re still upset I called you out for the grammar error while mocking another poster’s intelligence. That was pretty funny. I won’t apologize. You’ve been hounding me like a scorned lover ever since.

I’d prefer to stick to arguing the known facts, but you seem determined to default to personal attacks when I don’t see things your way. A few of you are reliable in that respect.

Another example of the most accurate moniker! You are a classic, reminds me of someone that always had a comment about everything....
 
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Maybe you should read them. They did find an abusive environment and reports of violent actions, even choking one player by the strength coach.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sport...ryland-football-takeaways-20181025-story.html

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Weirdly, apparently those facts did not, in the opinion of the report writers, indicate the culture met a dictionary definition of “toxic.” OK. Since the report is the ultimate truth on the topic, it must be accepted that the culture was not toxic.

So it must have only been poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious.

Good riddance to that culture, whatever adjective is used to describe it.
 

Maybe you should read them. They did find an abusive environment and reports of violent actions, even choking one player by the strength coach.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sport...ryland-football-takeaways-20181025-story.html


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They included a solitary incident

. He denies that this took place, though it was described by two eyewitnesses and the player’s mother.

I’m certainly not defending Court and all of his antics but when we know at least one of the sources was the punter called out by his own teammates as a pathological liar, and other sources are the Daniels twins and their lying mother one has to take these allegations with a hefty grain of salt. I’m a skeptic by nature so yeah, I question motives. Then you have the ESPN story which was clearly overwrought and hysterical. As time goes on the whole affair has started to stink.

You’re aware many coaches have been accused of abusive or intimidating behavior by disgruntled players, including Jerry Kill, Gary Patterson, Beckman to name just a few while other players have been put into the hospital with dangerous rhabdo (from much more abusive workouts) at Iowa, Oregon?

It’s fair to argue that the days of negative reinforcement should end but those motivational tactics are alive and well at all levels of sport because guess what, they work. Not everyone is cut out to deal with criticism or headwinds. The lying punter, the Daniels twins, among them.




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Quotes from reddit thread on Justice for Jordan rally.




The players don’t get to determine how and what I support. Football should be abolished, so they can shove their sport up their ass for all I care. That’s not going to change the way I feel about UMD’s role in Jordan McNair’s death.
In other words, **** their game.

and

I’m not sure, but going to their games isn’t the answer. This may take a university wide role to actually do something to make them feel like they’re a part of the community again. The issue I see with doing that through "going to the games" is that people that do, tend to also buy things at the stadium, participate in events there, and actively take a role in whatever the owners of the team feel "benefits" the team. We should not want to in any way support the stadium, the football events, or the institution that set these events in motion through their action / inaction. We need to separate the players from the game, and if you truly care about them, that’s what everyone should strive to do.

You CAN and SHOULD support the team outside the stadium (which is my point), and ethically, you should find ways to. If the only thing you can come up with is "I’ll just go to the games", you’re either being a passive part of the problem, or just are cognitively lazy, or want to be morally self righteous while still participating in something that has ended in the death of someone. There aren’t too many other options. Someone literally died, and if your best guess for showing support for their teammates is continuing to go to games at the stadium he died in, you might need to reevaluate where these ideas came from.

and

Lot’s of students don’t care about it. University’s are places to share, gain and further knowledge. I don’t understand why this sports-capitalism combo platter even exists. What does this pretty much profesional football team have to do with school?

And

I saw that in my email inbox, there was yet another UMD based spam email. This one from our "student government association".

Long story short, a portion of the email implied the following: not supporting our sports programs is equivalent to not honoring Jordan Mcnair.

This is ridiculous, insulting, and oppressive to individual thinking. Justice for Jordan, and supporting the sports program, have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with each other. Supporting sports or anything else is a personal preference, and it is not our student body’s job to tell others what their opinions should be.

and

They didn’t worded that way, they were basically guilt tripping. It was worse at the rally, they weren’t saying "we encourage you to support the players however you can, and we’ll be giving tickets for the game," they straight up said "if you support our student athletes you’ll go to the game." It was grossly disrespectful, and commercializing the stupid ****ing game

and

They are wrong. Football is a vile sport that cases lifelong brain damage to it’s players. Asking me to support the players by attending a football game is like asking me to support an abused spouse by attending a vow renewal ceremony. **** football. Maybe UMD should get the message from the low game attendance and prioritize academics over televised sports.

AND

I read that **** and it was the most bull**** thing I have ever gotten. They trying to use the death as a reason to promote football game attendance. That’s just sick.

AND

Don’t act like the point of holding a game on campus isn’t merchandise and concessions sales and TV revenue.

I think far more students would feel comfortable supporting the football team if they played on engineering field or frat row with no cameras.

So the football players can be upset but it’s not about the football team. It’s about coaches abusing and killing a fellow Terp and the millions of dollars ge got paid to do so.
 



Another example of the most accurate moniker! You are a classic, reminds me of someone that always had a comment about everything....

If there’s one truism I’ve learned in my time here it’s that if I’m the opposite end of an argument for alchemy, MrC, Cruze, Mulligan that’s a good thing and I’m probably on the right path.

Look, DJ was toxic because the narrative from the get go was out of control and I said from the start I’d be surprised if he was retained. He had an amped up strength and conditioning guy that allegedly did some not nice things. Durkin wasn’t, however, responsible for McNair’s death.

The regents, being old farts that have that old school way of looking at issues thoroughly and then making even handed judgments assessed him as not guilty. They do not possess the new school trait of making sweeping conclusions after having 5% of the facts (or less).

If getting mad, raising voices, intimidating behavior is a fireable offense we’d have to fire virtually every athletic coach in America. Maybe the testosterone culture needs to change and tone down a bit. However, the culture that needs to change more in this case is the preparation of athletic training departments.


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If there’s one truism I’ve learned in my time here it’s that if I’m the opposite end of an argument for alchemy, MrC, Cruze, Mulligan that’s a good thing and I’m probably on the right path.

Look, DJ was toxic because the narrative from the get go was out of control and I said from the start I’d be surprised if he was retained. He had an amped up strength and conditioning guy that allegedly did some not nice things. Durkin wasn’t, however, responsible for McNair’s death.

The regents, being old farts that have that old school way of looking at issues thoroughly and then making even handed judgments assessed him as not guilty. They do not possess the new school trait of making sweeping conclusions after having 5% of the facts (or less).

If getting mad, raising voices, intimidating behavior is a fireable offense we’d have to fire virtually every athletic coach in America. Maybe the testosterone culture needs to change and tone down a bit. However, the culture that needs to change more in this case is the preparation of athletic training departments.


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Bingo. This is 13 pages of the usual suspects on this forum arguing for lack of reason and intelligence.
 

So why is this issue worth 13 pages? Or any number of pages? In my opinion, this is why:

I am a consumer of a form of entertainment called college football. That entertainment involves very young men operating in remarkably high pressure environment at considerable personal risk. I suspect most of them love it. What compensation they receive (scholarships for those on scholarship, food, etc) is a tiny portion of the economic value they contribute to the colleges and universities they play for. And those institutions, along with the athletic conferences they are part of, certainly seem motivated to maximize the money they make from this form of entertainment.

So as a matter of personal values, I care about how these young men are treated. I think it is important.

This thread, for all its faults, (and yes, I have contributed to those faults, will try to do better) has led me to do research on the issue and learn more. It has given me food for thought. I have strong and differing opinions than some others. So what? That is fine! I don’t need to respond to them if I conclude they are consistently unreasonable (one way I will try to do better), and no one is obligated to respond to me or read my posts if they feel the same way.

But this thread led me to think about these things more deeply. The time I spent reading outside of GH because of things I read in this thread on GH was time well spent.

One final point. This thread has gone on for 13 pages, but it has been 13 pages largely focused on the subject of the original post. That might be GopherHole record!
 

As always, on any contentious topic, people will take sides. And usually, the truth lies not on either extreme, but somewhere in the middle.

Let's try to find the middle.

I would say that no college FB program exists in a vacuum. The FB program is part of a University - part of an academic setting. It is also a public form of entertainment. People buy tickets to watch the games. People sell advertising to companies to advertise on the team's radio and television broadcasts. People donate money to the Football program, and people donate money to the University at large. If the Maryland FB team was a private company, that would put the matter in a different setting. In that case, Durkin may very well have kept his job. But, the FB team is not a private company. There are a host of different concerns that need to be balanced, including public opinion (which does impact a University as far as fund-raising, funding from the legislature, etc.)

I get Pompous' argument. But, in the larger context, I also get why, in the end, it wasn't worth it for Maryland to fight public opinion. There are times when you can win the battle and lose the war. Keeping Durkin (I believe) would have been in that category.

In the end, mistakes were made. If no mistakes had been made, we're not talking about it. But mistakes were made, and in the current culture and climate, somebody had to pay. Maybe more than one somebody. Might not be 100% fair, but the last time I checked, life was not 100% fair.

And, in the end, I suspect every head FB coach in D1 is going to bed saying, "there, but for the grace of God, go I."
 

I think there’s an issue though, with the jump to conclusions crowd. I’m not going to back down from calling them out. I mean, read those reddit quotes. This is the state of affairs in 2018.

It’s clear that Jordan suffered at the hands of a training staff that was either poorly trained or simply didn’t/dont have the attention to detail to be competent in an allied health field. That chain of command goes up into the athletic department and to President Loh. Loh explicitly refused a request from staff to put the athletic training staff under medical school management which may have led to better training and accountability. He did not control the narrative from the outset. Durkin was sacrificed due to his “toxic culture” which is arguable considering the apparent sources for the reports, not due to killing the kid.
 

I see you ducked out of the argument I was winning with you Pompous. You went back to trying to have arguments with other posters, that you think you were winning.
 

I see you ducked out of the argument I was winning with you Pompous. You went back to trying to have arguments with other posters, that you think you were winning.

Can you remind me what you were winning? Serious question.
 

Well on a s___ day for football, might as well argue about this stupid crap.

You ducked out of answering my last post in reply to you. Couldn't think of a response again, I see.
 




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