SDHornet wrote:
Where does the accountability start? Pflu is in a position of leadership and needs to be held accountable at some point. Like it or not he IS responsible for what happens under his watch. How many of these fuckup players were recruited while he was HC?
A lot of the alleged "fuckups" were recruited by Hauck (Donaldson and the tazer incident guys, not to mention Donaldson is from Missoula, so it's not like it was a "bad seed" was "brought in" to the community). I don't think Hauck is to blame or anything, but it seems like—if Pflugrad was fired here—then Hauck should have been fired in 2007 after the burglary arrests.
How can you be responsible for things you have no control over? Pflugrad doesn't go to the college parties (at least, I hope not), he isn't in their bedrooms… My point is that a college football player's decision to rape someone almost certainly isn't going to be based on what the football coach said or what he might do. It's something that goes way beyond playing sports & doesn't have anything to do with the football program unless the coach actively did something to cover it up or something (which there's no evidence of at this point). These guys are adults and the coaches aren't their parents. To me, blaming the coaches is a way of saying the actual rapist isn't totally to blame, and that's just silly.
As for evaluating someone's character during recruiting… people act as if that's easy or something. Coaches recruit a lot of guys, and they talk with them a bit but I doubt they would really know one way or the other unless it's obvious. Some may have committed crimes when they were juveniles, but who knows what that says about them and those records often get sealed upon turning 18 anyway. And, at any rate, I'm guessing most of the alleged fuckups here didn't do anything serious when they were juveniles. It's not like you can talk to a high school kid for 30 minutes and say, "Oh yeah, he's gonna be a rapist." When someone goes to college is often the first time their real tendencies start to come out.
Your idea of accountability doesn't sound like real accountability, but instead sounds like an arbitrary panacea.
Of course, again, my entire assessment is based on what we know now. If it turns out Pflugrad & O'Day did cover something up or hide a crime or whatever, then they should be gone. But if it's Engstrom folding under pressure from booster-types that are just desperate for things to go away because of bad PR, then it was a terrible decision.
