Wow, there's a lot of bitterness on this thread and I don't see why. In the end, each kid has to make a choice that's best for him and if that means pleasing mom, who are we to criticize? A lot of you value your mom's opinion I bet. In the end, he's still just a kid and this is a huge decision to make. He's going to one of the top football schools of the last decade, so I think he chose pretty well. Drop it and move on. This kid's decision to attend OU doesn't affect LSU's phenominal class in the least.
Y'all are being pretty hard on this kid and his mom. She's probably overprotective of him because her other son ended up in jail, and there is no mention in this article of any kind of father figure in his life. She knows that nobody would care about her boy if he couldn't play football, and she's taking an active role in deciding which school will actually give a damn about "J-Mac" the person, the student. Why do you think Bobby Knight recruited so well at Indiana? He convinced a lot of mothers that he would be hard on their sons, keep them out of trouble and graduate them. Yeah, Ms. Adams is obnoxious and seems pretty entitled. But I will bet you that the diary of any highly-recruited athlete from a single-mother household would read a lot like this. Or worse.
We're just discussing it. Thats what a forum is for. I don't think most people here think shes a horrible person, just a pain in the ass thats usually not good for a program. I hope this kid is happy with his choice. He's not a Tiger so it's his loss AFAIC.
There's a fine line between bitterness and discussing it. When people are calling other people creative names and maming assumptions about what coaches and parents think and say it's a sign that there is some b itterness beyond the level of just discussing it. That line has very obviously been crossed. I could understand if this was Randle or jackson but this was a guy that LSU was probably never really in the running for. He was just throwing LSU a look because of Shepard and/or because LSU has cranked out a few D-Linemen in the past few years. In the entire article, it's pretty obvious that OU and UT were the real players here.
Pretty ironic, right? The overbearing-mom that refuses to give her son his independence complains about how she wants her son to be independent of having a maid.
Better pray for a miracle. All signs point to Momma and her boy being a big headache for Stoops over the next few years.
Momma ain't letting her boy make his choices. The article says "he initially had his heart set on Texas." After his mom told him that he was going to Oklahoma, he didn't seem to be convinced that is what he wanted to do: he worried what an Oklahoma degree would mean for landing a job in Texas. He also thought that the Longhorns offered him the best education and that Austin had the most entertainment. “There ain’t nothing to do at Oklahoma except football,” McFarland said. ... McFarland nearly committed to Texas ... [When Stoops came to visit the family home], He dismissed talk that McFarland would not be able to get a job in Texas with an Oklahoma degree. The article also says that the son wanted to go to Southern Cal ("McFarland wanted to commit to the Trojans"). He wanted to go to Southern Cal so much that "After going to U.S.C., he was talking about he has to grow up and can’t just depend on his Mama" and Momma told him no way, that you ain't going to California and being that far away from me, you're staying right here in the local region so I can keep you under my thumb.
???? You are crazy if you think all single moms are this obnoxious and feel so entitled. All the single moms I know are not like that at all. Also, the article says the son "is a top student and the president of his class," he sounds like college material to me, like somebody that a lot of colleges would be interested in, whether he played football for them or not. This had nothing to do with academics. Texas (#47) is a better school that OU (#108). Southern Cal (#27) is a better school than OU (#108). In fact, the article says that "He plans to study kinesiology and hopes to become a physical therapist or a strength coach." Southern Cal has the #1 physical therapy program in the nation, OU is not even in the Top 50. This was more about Momma wanting control of the million-dollar lottery ticket she was holding with her son and his potential to be a First Round Draft Pick. Why do you think Momma was only looking at powerhouse football programs that turn out NFL players? If Momma was concerned about academics, she'd be looking at schools like #4 Stanford (Pac-10), #8 Duke (ACC), #12 Northwestern (Big Ten), #18 Notre Dame, #18 Vanderbilt (SEC), etc, etc. Big picture is this: Momma wants her boy to make millions in the NFL, so she is going to send him to a football school known for putting players in the NFL. Momma wants to be in control, so she is only going to let her boy go to a school within driving distance. Momma has a history of butting heads with the coaches. She talks smack about the high school coach, the OU coaches, the Texas coaches, and the LSU coaches. The reason she likes OU, is because that is the place that gives her the most control, the biggest opportunity to be a pain-in-the-ass to the coach. Unlike Texas and LSU, OU's University President (a former governor and state senator) had Momma over for dinner, and that is exactly what Momma wanted--she likes OU because she feels she is in with the University President (Stoop's boss) over there, and she likes having that control over Stoops. As for how the OU President offered him a "spot in the President’s Leadership Class, a selective scholarship group for freshmen"... When I read that, I thought they were saying he got to be in their Honors College. That's not the case. That President's Leadership Class is just something for rich kids to put on their resume. It's just a program where the members get to rub shoulders with the other connected kids and where the members get to go to a bunch of luncheons, picnics, retreats, etc with the big-name people at OU. http://www.ou.edu/student/plc/schedule.htm
