This Ones for the Shula Haters (Alabama's Head Football Coach)

Shula's method puzzling

This entry was posted on 9/19/2006 7:41 AM and is filed under Finebaum Column.
I want to take back all the criticism about Mike Shula's handling of discipline in the Juwan Simpson affair. I was dead wrong in wanting Shula to be more forthright.

After the Louisiana-Monroe game Saturday night, Ala-

bama's head football coach finally explained the unexplainable, his utterly insane and incredibly infantile method for handing out punishment.

It reminded me of that tired but true Mark Twain quote: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Shula's decision to spread out punishment of seven players over three games and implement discipline in the order of the violation is very possibly one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Where did Shula come up something this ridiculous? A third-grade class?

Shula said the methodology was developed so it wouldn't hurt this team.

Hurt the team?

Forget the team.

What Shula has done is embarrass the entire university and its tradition in the process. That sound heard Saturday night in the aftermath of Shula's gibberish was Bear Bryant rolling over in his grave.

Why is it that four national championship coaches (Mack Brown, Larry Coker, Steve Spurrier and Bob Stoops) in the last few weeks have suspended star players on the spot? The answer is obvious.

I said a moment ago Shula's rationale sounded as if it came straight from a third-grade class. Scratch that. That's embarrassing to hard-working and industrious third-graders. This comes right out of nursery school.

And why did Shula suddenly break this double secret code of silence to lay this on the public? Did someone in the school's public relations department realize that now that Alabama's preseason exhibition games are over and with a big game looming, Shula could put this story to bed once and for all and nobody would notice this smokescreen because all of the focus would be on Arkansas this week?

The reason why it was handled this way, Shula said, was "because I didn't think it was fair to the football team to suspend all seven (players) for one game."

When pushed to explain why the decision was made public after the third game, Shula inexplicably responded, "So we can move on."

What is that supposed to mean?

Had Shula made this ridiculous utterance in July, some would have laughed at him but at least it would have been over. Instead, Shula has turned it into a three-ring circus.

I'll always remember the first time the White House press corps asked Richard Nixon's spokesman, Ron Ziegler, about the Watergate break-in in 1972. It was nothing more, he said, "than a third-rate burglary attempt."

Well, it brought down the twice-elected 37th president of the United States, who resigned in disgrace.

Ultimately, a coach's future is determined by what he does on the football field and Shula's record there is mottled. Until now, he had always had the reputation of being classy and a man of integrity.

Now, he appears to look totally moronic. This latest episode is not only unexplainable but completely indefensible.

Alabama took a chance by hiring an unproven coach so we all knew it would be scary once the training wheels came off. But could anyone have imagined this kind of train wreck?