FanPost

Is our drain clock or counter-clockwise?

14th arrest?  THIS SEASON???  What the hell is going on?

Look, I've come to expect this sort of behavior from the Texas', the Penn States, the...ummm...Baylors (Dude.  Public urination is an everyday occurrence in college towns...hell, it's almost a right, if not a right of passage.  Well, maybe not for coaches.  But come on.  Show some class.  At least take it outside).  This isn't supposed to be a Hawkeye trait.

There's been a lot of talk about what exactly is wrong with the team, despite last weeks win.  Oops Pow Surprise did a great job detailing the attrition that has decimated the Hawkeye ranks this year (and the last several).
Let's assume for a second that there's nothing we can do about the injuries.  I'm not about to question anything Chris Doyle does, he'd come to my house and make me eat my keyboard.    So that leaves legal issues, academics, and far more often than seems normal, simply leaving the team.  Homesickness, "not a good fit", whatever the you want to call it, we're just losing some guys.
Here's my point.  We were good (play, record, whatever your metric is).  We had a good team, with many quality wins and national exposure.  From this came one very good recruiting class, but the rest have been fairly standard classes for us.  Nothing truly special, but with no less talent than we're used to.  We have (should have) good players, enough to be competitive.  Despite the winning program, we haven't been able to sustain the recruiting, at least not enough to stop the drain.
What is going on in this program that's causing this?  Are the coaches not trying everything they can to keep the guys on the team?  I find that hard to believe.  Are we seeing the result of good (i.e. highly regarded) recruits who are spoiled and unwilling to listen and buy into the team first mentality?  Who believe that they can do whatever they want because they're football players?  Where are the leaders on the team who need to buddy up to the underclassmen, help them fit in?  Is the drain is already so bad that there aren't enough leaders left to help the underclassmen, and force the idiot guys to toe the line?  How can we stop these kids, because we need to remember that's all they are, from doing anything stupid...well, it's college, not to take pictures of themselves doing anything stupid.  Legal issues may be due to stupid kids doing stupid things, but if they have teammates looking out for them, if the coaches are preaching discipline and pride and they are listening, these things are less likely to happen.  

In the grand scheme of things, I don't mind the injuries.  But criminal matters reflect badly on all of them.  And any guy lost to simple homesickness/loneliness/"not fitting in" is almost an insult to the culture that we're supposed to have.
I have no answers.  I'm just venting.  I don't know if these numbers are consistent with other teams at this level.  I'm just sad, doubly so since this wasn't Dana Browns first run in with the law.  We're supposed to be better than this.

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