Cowherd likened the differing punishments handed down by Brian Kelly – the dismissal of Max Redfield and indefinitely suspended Devin Butler juxtaposed to the internal discipline of Te’von Coney, Kevin Stepherson, Dexter Williams, and Ashton White – to the way Nick Saban and Alabama generally handle disciplinary actions. Essentially, Cowherd attempts to draw the conclusion that players of less value are often scapegoated in regards to discipline, whereas players of value are treated and disciplined differently. Cowherd’s direct comments are as follows:

Remember when Alabama’s left tackle got in trouble in Louisiana – pot, guns, whatevs. What did I say on the air that day? I didn’t react. I was proactive, I said no way in hell he’ll miss game one. Oh, he didn’t, because ‘Bama was thin at left tackle and I knew it. What they use is the old, ‘We will punish him internally, we’re not worried about the optics.’ But yet, Alabama is loaded at guard – Alphonse Taylor got in trouble and they suspended him indefinitely. Oh, you guys are tough there. Why don’t you suspend the left tackle? Because you’re thin at left tackle.

Notre Dame kicked Max Redfield off the team – a senior who has massively underachieved and been in trouble before. For the record during spring practice, freshman Devon* Studstill replaced him anyway. Brian Kelly was tired of him. Devin Butler – we will suspend him! He’s already got a broken foot – wasn’t going to play the first month anyway. What you will find is, the underachieving senior, ‘You’re outta here!’ Guy that can’t stay outta trouble at a bowl game, Max Redfield, underachiever, you’re outta here. The guard at Alabama, Alphonse Taylor, who kept putting on weight, frustrating Nick Saban, deep at the position, you are suspended indefinitely. Left tackle at Alabama, young players at Notre Dame, we’ll take care of it internally. C’mon guys, don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

Notre Dame taking a page right out of Nick Saban's playbook https://t.co/KNvnwfADjR

— Colin Cowherd (@ColinCowherd) August 23, 2016

In the name of full disclosure, I personally agree with Cowherd just as much as I disagree. If you are unfamiliar with Colin Cowherd, it is important to note that his “hot takes” are rarely middle of the road in nature. He continually finds himself at the margins of issues, which, to his credit, is one of the reasons he hosts one of the most popular sports radio shows in the country.

On this specific comparison, I disagree. Cowherd is wrong to liken Notre Dame and Brian Kelly to Alabama and Nick Saban. Yes, Alabama and Saban habitually slap players on the wrist for wrongdoings that range from violations of team rules to breaking laws. Yes, Alabama does this in favor of preserving talent and in favor of future potential wins. Brian Kelly’s decision to dismiss Max Redfield was despite future potential wins. Cowherd conveniently neglects to mention that Redfield logged 64 tackles in 2015 – most of any returner on the 2016 defense. He has 143 career tackles and played in 27 games. This experience is invaluable to a young defense such as the 2016 group the Irish will be fielding.

I don’t believe it is farfetched to make the conclusion that there is no way Nick Saban and Alabama would dismiss a player of Redfield’s caliber and experience, especially when you consider that the Notre Dame defense is remarkably thin at the safety position. Cowherd himself would agree with this notion when he concludes that Saban was quick to suspend a guard, a position they are deep at, yet go easy on a tackle, a position they are thin at. Cowherd, however, contradicts his own logic, neglecting to mention how thin Notre Dame is at safety. Instead he inaccurately pronounces true freshman Devin* Studstill’s name and inaccurately implies that Studstill was slated as the starter for the opener. If Cowherd had done his research he would know what we (Domers) all know: Studstill has been cited as very talented and has shared time with the 1’s in practice, but has also been victim of a nagging hamstring injury. Make no mistake, Redfield was the starter and Kelly dismissed him regardless of talent, experience and wins.

I concede the fact that the disciplinary actions between Redfield and Butler differ with their peers – no doubt about that. However, Cowherd also neglected to reference Brian Kelly’s statement where Kelly addresses these differences, “The expectations we set for the members of our team are high, but they are especially so for the upperclassmen who are expected to provide leadership and a positive example to the other members of the team. Max and, at least at this stage in the review of his case, Devin, have failed in that regard and so have lost the privilege of continuing to be part of our team.”

Yes, Max has had issues in the past which also contributed to Kelly’s dismissal decision. Shouldn’t a repeat offender be treated as such? In regards to Butler, the prosecutor in the case has formally charged him with two felony counts. Per ND’s representative, any student faced with felony charges is subject to dismissal from the university, let alone the football team.

To conclude, Cowherd misrepresents the intentions of Brian Kelly and disingenuously correlates them to the purposely low standards set by Nick Saban and Alabama for the preservation of wins.

The full clip of the above transcription from The Herd can be found here.

Cheers and Go Irish!

The post Cowherd: In punishments, ND & Bama no different appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

According to those very numbers, which, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie, Notre Dame is the only program ranked in the Top 26 by AP, USA Today, ESPN.com and by the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate. Pedestal, please, Mr. Reilly. We deserve it. We’ll perch upon it as you watch us on television thanks to our gaudy contract with NBC or perhaps we’ll scoot it up to the BCS table while we plot another cycle of bowls and conference alignment.

You see, the NCAA tracks academic metrics on every school. One of those metrics is the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), a number that “takes first time full-time freshmen in a given cohort and only counts them as academic successes if they graduate from their institutions within a six year period.” The cohort (whatever the hell that means in this context) (again, Arts & Letters, here) as per the NCAA’s tables, comprises the years 2001-2004. With that out of the way, may I please present you Notre Dame’s 2012 schedule as arranged by opponent and their GSR:

Holy shattered academic illusions, Bat Man! Navy only graduates 91% of its football players in six years?!?! Actually, the percentages that surprised me were BYU at 59% (maybe it’s something to do with their mission year?) and Oklahoma at 48%. That’s a joke, right, Coach Stoops? You’re taking a page out of the ol’ Bearcats playbook, aren’t ye boy-o? Attention parents of recruits! YOU HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF GUESSING A COIN TOSS THAN YOU DO OF GRADUATING FROM OKLAHOMA. LSU, by the way, rates a respectable 77% – a percentage only made respectable by Oklahoma, Purdon’t’s 59% and Pitt’s 65%. Michigan’s in at 71%. Tee hee.

I may have been unfair to Oklahoma in comparing it to Cincinnati’s basketball program of old, which graduated 0% of its players at one point. But 48% is pretty poor. And since the 50-50 coin toss analogy above may have been perhaps too facile such that it lost its resonance, here’s one that you history buffs out there can explain to the masses: you stood a better chance of landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day and coming out unscathed (41% casualty rate) than you do of getting a degree from Oklahoma as a football player.

So, ND runs the table against its schedule, as far as GSR. But Ooooooh! Oooooooh! Bayou Irish! So what? Big deal! Open it up! Take it national! Where does ND stand against everyone else? Peep this, Loyal Readers:

Kudos to BC and the Middies for showing up, but, really? Until I started this project, I thought Furman was a muppet and I still don’t know what a “Wofford” is. Possibly where they did the Olympic cycling? Fr. Sorin, I am sure, is tickled (and possibly thereby making bagpipe sounds) at having TWO teams on the list, in a manner of speaking. But our football program is eighth out of 235 and has a higher GSR than Yale and Harvard. Think about that.

So, to return to Messrs. Reilly and Cowherd, ESPN ranks ND at 25. ESPN, for those of you living in compounds protected only by high walls and a complicit national intelligence service, pays Reilly and Cowherd, so there’s a no small amount of irony in that juxtaposition as they pocket their pieces of silver. USA Today ranks ND at 24 and AP has us just outside the top 25 with 83 votes.

SO FIND ME ANOTHER TEAM RANKED IN THE TOP 26 ACROSS ALL THE POLLS! Unless and until everyone goes full North Carolina and just stops making football players go to class at all, let’s not so readily dismiss the “student-” part of “student-athlete.” It’s beyond grotesque to lump ND, or any school for that matter, in with Penn State, as Reilly did, and equate the covering up of child molestation with a mediocre run of football. Sticking to the football part of that effrontery, Biscuit dismantled the idea that a team cannot recover from a run like ours, for starters. So, there’s that.

And there’s also this: what I am going to call the NFL Success Rate (NSR). How many Irish players got drafted last year? Four. That’s right, four. In the middle (or maybe it’s the end?) of all this suck, we produced one more draft pick than U$C and Michigan and the same number as Stanford. And what school has had the most players picked overall? Not Notre Dame. Notre Dame is in second with 471, behind USC, with 480. In third place is Ohio State with 404. Not a bad NSR.

So after all these years of desert wandering, we’re still putting out draft picks with the best of them PLUS we’re graduating 97% of our players. I like that. I’ll like it more if we’re 4-0 after the Michigan game. And I’ll like it most if we’re playing for the MNC soon. What’ll RickCowherd say then?

The post Davidson College Ranks Ahead of The Irish: GSR or a Sick Rick Reilly Fantasy? appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.