ESPN Reporter Compares Rutgers Scandal To Penn State Scandal After His Camera Guy Gets Hit With A Water Balloon
Mo posted this and nailed it, but I couldn’t resist blogging it too. Is this reporter kidding me? Is ESPN kidding me? How righteous is this guy? I’m surprised he didn’t tell viewers with squeamish stomachs to turn away before he broke the news that his camera guy got assaulted with a water balloon. That’s how serious and disgusting he made it sound. And then just to make sure people knew he wasn’t joking he compares the Rutgers situation (MeanCoachGate) with Penn State. Child molestation with a coach being mean. Hmm I wonder why Rutgers students are calling him a vulture?
As a side note here are some quotes nobody is talking about. Rutgers players once again defending Mike Rice reitrating what I keep saying. This whole “scandal” is a joke. 3 game suspension was fair.
PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) Two Rutgers basketball players on Mike Rice‘s team say the fired coach wasn’t the abusive tyrant he appears to be on a widely viewed video that ultimately cost him his job.
”You can’t let those individual moments define what he was,” junior forward Wally Judge said during a telephone interview Thursday. ”In my past two years, me being an older guy and being under other coaches, I have grown from the moment I stepped in these doors, not only as a player but also as a person because of how he has treated me.”
Sophomore forward Austin Johnson agreed.
”He did a lot for us off the court, academically, socially,” he said during a separate telephone conversation. ”I have to say I enjoyed my time, even it was an emotional rollercoaster.” ”I feel if people had a chance to see the other portions of practice, or had been at practice, their judgment would not be as severe,” Johnson said. ”I am not saying what he did wasn’t wrong, because I do believe it was wrong. But it is also tough because it was a highlight reel of his worst moments.
Advertisement
Judge believes some of those moments come across worse on camera than they really were.
”Honestly, a lot of the things that have been seen have been taken out of context. A lot of things that aren’t seen are when we grab him and kid around,” Judge said. ”Like I said before, when people ask me why did I play for him, I told them `He’s a player’s coach.”’Mike was almost like a big brother. He would get on the floor with us and go through drills with us. He made it fun. When you have a big brother-type of figure, you know you can play around like that. I have grabbed Mike and put him in a headlock and we joke around and kid. That was the type of relationship he built with his players.”
Like the two Rutgers players, Pitt guard Travon Woodall also defended Rice, who recruited him when he was an assistant coach there.
”They are going at my man Mike Rice too hard,” Woodall tweeted. ”He’s the reason I came to Pitt.” Woodall later added Rice is ”not the only coach to put his hands on a player, or talk the way he did.” ”I have a lot of respect for him. When he was here, he was somebody I would talk to because he knew of my aspirations for playing at the next level and he was a guy who had done it,” Judge said. ”He was a great guy to talk to. As far as this situation goes, I understand everything that is going on; I can’t necessarily be mad at him, but it’s been blown out of proportion. There are certain ways of going about things and this wasn’t the way.”
”He wasn’t a guy we hated or despised,” Judge said. ”After practice, we would all go in the locker room and laugh. It was never a sad face or a hung head. What he did was he separated the court and he separated life. When we were on the court, we were on the court and locked in. That’s why you see so many intense moments because he was so locked in on turning this program around. When we got in the locker room we were a family. We laughed.”