Yet I let my defenses down through much of the Faust, Davie and Willingham eras. Lean times for Dame when it was almost easy to feel sorry for them. They were like that big, powerful, terrorizing menace in Beyond Thunderdome who'd finally met his match in the cage. Once the helmet had been knocked off and all dignity stripped away, you saw the vulnerable simpleton underneath. "Ah naw, Mad Max. You can't kill him. He's just a baby, really. He doesn't even know what he's doing. He can't hurt us now. Oh and his little person friend really cares about him. See, they're like a family. Look at him smile, will ya. Jeez, he's kinda cute even. We'll call him Mongo."
Thankfully Charlie Weiss has restored world order, NBC is breathing a sigh of relief, and the Irish are feeling good about themselves again, developing new advancements at the School of Self-contratulatory Sciences in South Bend:
From Tim Prister at IrishIllustrated.com
After hearing it yet another time, Mike Brey finally became annoyed. He didn't want to hear it anymore. It didn't apply to life at Notre Dame. So save the comments.Kyle McAlarney, his sophomore point guard, had been caught with marijuana in his car. Not only would he be suspended from the team for the balance of the season, but he also was dismissed from school, forcing him to return home for the semester.
At a state school, McAlarney likely would have received a slap on the wrist. At Notre Dame, it was just short of the death penalty.
"I got frustrated the two weeks after Kyle left us with (people saying), 'Well, at school X, it would be a (one) game (suspension).'"I said, 'Wait a minute. The kids who are here and I myself that came to coach here, we know what we signed up for. We completely get it, and that's not the deal here.'"
You can't get caught smoking pot at Notre Dame and get away with a slap on the wrist. Call that archaic, outdated, or overly strict if you wish. But that's Notre Dame. You know that—or at least you should know that—when you choose to come to Notre Dame.
Does that hurt Notre Dame's ability to recruit?
"It endorses who we are for the clientele that's interested in us anyways," Brey said. "It underlines that." There is a certain young man out there that is going to be a fit for us, and I think it just endorses to him and to his family the standards here. (That's) one of the reasons you come here."
By today's standards, a kid smoking a joint isn't that big of a deal. Since Jan. 8, the Florida football team has had seven players encounter legal problems, including a wide receiver who fired a gun with two teammates present, a tailback who was caught purchasing eight grams of marijuana, an offensive guard charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor following an incident with a gun, a safety with felony charges following a theft, a couple other marijuana possession charges, a public brawl, a probation violation, and a complaint filed after a player tossed a man onto the hood of a car.
Defensive tackle Marcus Thomas, an NFL-level performer, failed three drug tests before he was dismissed from the team last fall. Other than that, the Gators have diligently been pursuing their studies at Gainesville.
"We're had a few guys who've made small mistakes and a
guy or two who've made some big ones," said head coach Urban Meyer, who said that the recent crime wave within the Florida football program "isn't an epidemic."
Oh, coach, you are wrong. It most certainly is an epidemic, and winning national titles does that to athletic programs. Victory at the highest level creates the feeling of entitlement and invincibility off the field as well as on the field. The Gators are experiencing that right now. Pete Carroll and the USC Trojans have had to deal with it. Lou Holtz had to deal with it to a lesser extent from 1988 through 1993 when the Irish were averaging 11 victories per year.
After McAlarney was arrested last December, the University let him dangle in the wind for several weeks before he was removed from school for the rest of the semester.McAlarney wasn't happy, his mother wasn't happy, and both expressed their displeasure with Notre Dame for their harsh reaction.
I believe the McAlarneys said something about being
ashamed of and embarrassed by Notre Dame. They didn't believe the punishment fit the crime. Despite their displeasure with the University, McAlarney sucked it
up, took his punishment, and began preparations for his return this summer. The second summer session began Tuesday and McAlarney was back in school. A great deal of discipline was required for McAlarney to get to this point. He could have bagged Notre Dame, transferred, and been eligible for the second semester of the 2007-08 season somewhere else. He didn't do that, and McAlarney is a better man for it, even if the punishment was harsher than the crime itself, which it wasn't.
Not all will agree with that. Some will rant about Notre Dame's draconian mindset. Everyone's entitled to his opinion, as is Notre Dame. In matters such as these,
Notre Dame rules on the side of strictness.If Florida had ruled as harshly, perhaps defensive tackle Marcus Thomas wouldn't have failed three drug tests, and perhaps the current crime spree in Gainesville wouldn't be quite so rampant. Notre Dame's rules serve many purposes, including that of a deterrent. Call it overly harsh if you will. McAlarney understands it now.
Compromising one's principles is one of those things that aren't worth it. Kyle McAlarney has much to be thankful for, including a school that held him to a higher standard than many other Division 1-A programs would have. In the long run, that's not punishment. That's a gift from a school that McAlarney will one day be able to proudly call
his alma mater.
Stories like this mean just one thing: it's open season on Mongo.
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