I don't sit in on recruiting visits but I respectfully disagree. I know a local kid who LSU recruited but is now with Michigan cause he wanted to be a receiver and was told, up front, if he came to LSU he'd be a DB. I've heard other stories about coaches being credited for being up front and how the athletes later realized that the coach, in the final analysis, did know what was best for them.
That is a breath of fresh air. Really. In the end, I would have much rather lost these kids and had our coaches keep their integrity intact, than land them with lies. I'm a huge fan of Malzahn, and I think if he was our head coach, we would be that team with integrity again.
In fairness to Ark, who knows if they were misled or if there may have been a situation where goals weren't clear between coaches or something. It's a stretch but maybe Mal had intentions of using a spread but Nutt wasn't totally committed but a door was left open (This was during recruiting)....or maybe with McFadden coming out, things changed and new wrinkles put in. Sounds lame to think it could happen but who knows with the QB issues.....hell I don't know. I know one thing, often the story you hear from disgruntled parents and kids is sometimes wishful thinking in their minds and far from reality.
All I know is that they had the Heisman runner up in McFadden, and the parents are ridiculous to complain no matter what was allegedly promised. When you have McFadden, you don't throw the freakin' ball enough for these kids to have 60 receptions! You give the ball to McFadden! If you don't, that's how you lose your head coaching job! I like what someone said earlier in this thread..."Would they be OK with it if their boys had 60 catches a peice, and ARKY went 0-12?!" They might well be happy, but Houston Nutt would be looking for a job!
Generally speaking, in sports, Sadly, you'd be surprised how, to many parents, that's all they care about. The ones who didn't play sports and don't have a concept of the meaning of "Team" go to the game to see one thing and one thing only.....their child shine.
It is really sad to see things like this happen. If I were an Arkansas fan, we just had our best year in a while, we win the SEC West, get to a decent bowl, have a runner up in the Heisman race and then something like this happens, I think I would be pissed. I certainly would not consider these parents friends of the program. Even worse for the young men, if they transfer, what coach or AD in their right mind would invite these problems into their school. I heard on sports talk radio here in Memphis this afternoon that the Williams kid who was released was looking at Ok State, Tulsa and a couple of other schools close to NW Arkansas. ldskule:
