https://www.theeagle.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/letters-for-oct/article_f638ffe2-86e3-558e-aafb-2adc46816db0.html
I debated a long time about whether to post this and I'm sincerely NOT trying to rabble-rouse. This is a faculty member who, by all accounts, has had a good career and is liked by his students. I just think it's interesting to note that there is always a friction between academics and sports at A&M (and probably everywhere else). Thought others might find it interesting, too. My opinion is that he unfairly created mountains out of molehills just to criticize Fisher, but he's entitled to his opinion.
I debated a long time about whether to post this and I'm sincerely NOT trying to rabble-rouse. This is a faculty member who, by all accounts, has had a good career and is liked by his students. I just think it's interesting to note that there is always a friction between academics and sports at A&M (and probably everywhere else). Thought others might find it interesting, too. My opinion is that he unfairly created mountains out of molehills just to criticize Fisher, but he's entitled to his opinion.
Quote:
Hope A&M administrators have counseled Jimbo Fisher
Recent events involving A&M's head football coach and one of his top players has prompted this letter.
As an Aggie (Class of 1960), collegiate athlete, sports psychologist, and 53-year faculty member, I am appalled at the behaviors displayed by Coach Jimbo Fisher, who has a decade-long history of coddling an assortment of sex offenders, felons, miscreants and ne'er-do-wells while at Florida State. Twenty-nine of his players were arrested during his 10-year tenure there. Sports analyst Mike Rosenberg has studied university athlete arrests over a recent five-year period and found that Florida State was number 10 on the list (A&M was third). As he further indicated: "Imagine what FSU's arrest rate would be if Tallahassee police actually arrested football players."
We are five games into Fisher's troubled (and troubling) tenure in which he has been captured on television pushing and shoving assistant coaches and/or other team personnel and inexcusably grabbing a player by the facemask. These missteps have gone viral to tens of thousands of television viewers. It is my fondest hope that these outbursts have not gone unnoticed by the athletic director and the university administration. I am going to assume, perhaps naively, that the powers that be already have acted so that we might not have to endure 10 more years of this boorish, mind-boggling misbehavior.
Perhaps even more ominous in some ways is the prospect of A&M turning once again into a powerhouse reminiscent of the days of Paul "Bear" Bryant, Emory Bellard, Jackie Sherrill and R.C. Slocum. Winning coaches often are given a behavioral and ethical blank check by university administrators, alumni and the adoring public if they pile up the wins.
In our case, let's pile up the wins but let's do it with class. Shoving or pummeling assistants and assaulting players is not class!
ARNOLD LEUNES
College Station
