Post by PantherU on May 10, 2021 0:16:50 GMT -6
Granted, I've only been back to checking the board frequently for the last couple months, but this is demonstrably false. From the small sample size I can see, you're right on the money about 1/3rd of the time.
You literally based this latest "real uncut unedited scoop" off of a tweet from a guy named Chad Lykins tweeting "Tomorrow? (shrugs)" - except the guy tweeted that on Friday night, suggesting that "Tomorrow" was Saturday.
You were also certain that PBJ was making his announcement on April 6th.
Nobody knows anything outside the Baldwin household. I'm not even sure anyone inside the Baldwin house knows at this point.
This isn't what I want to talk about, though. There's something that I would like to get off my chest here that's been festering in my mind every time I've read the board in the past couple months.
I want to be abundantly clear here, this will sound like this is a knock on you but it's not, it's a knock on PBS: the fact that you, a parent of one of the players, is on this board sharing inside information is a problem. This is especially true because we all know you're a parent of one of the players and we even know which player it is.
Now, you're passionate about the kids, even beyond JT. This is perfectly fine. It's great, even. I love when parents are passionate about their kids and their kids' teammates. But your open presence here undermines the program. If the coaches don't have some level of control over the flow of information, then a whole lot of bullsh*t gets out and everyone finds out the players are angry because they had to come back to campus to practice on Christmas Eve and then a ton of people think the coach is a f***ing asshole and he's dug himself into a hole when he needs the fans to like him so they say nice things to everyone around them and more people come to games and say more nice things.
This is not really your fault. This is Pat Baldwin Sr's fault. He does not have control of his program. Were there parents on the board when Jeter was coach? Absolutely. Were there parents on the board when Bruce Pearl was coach? For sure. But there's no way in hell either one of those coaches would let a parent be open about being on the board, sharing inside information with the fans.
For one thing, inside information changes constantly. Fans of this program who never had the level of access that I had while Jeter was here are getting to see firsthand how things can change quickly. Kids will decide they're transferring during their freshman year, have a change of heart overnight and end up being the 5-year "program guys" we love having around.
Sometimes kids are angry at a coach, and tell a parent or friend about it, then talk to the coach and get new perspective and everything is fine. Or they know that a teammate is pissed and thinking about quitting, so they tell a friend or family member and that person has information that could be obsolete by the time it gets to them. It's a game of telephone.
Occasionally, a kid will vent to their friends or family about playing time or strategy and then they tell the coach as well and the coach will try to address their concerns and make them feel more involved in the process - but their friends and family only know they're disgruntled, they don't go back and tell everyone they vented to that everything's cool now, so their friends and family will form an opinion on the coach's job performance that doesn't match what the player's current thoughts are.
If I had a dollar for every time I had a parent, or a brother, or a cousin, or a friend of a player come to me and tell me something bad is going on, I'd be rich. Is it sometimes true? Oh yeah, sure, sometimes. Is it sometimes bullsh*t? Not usually, but college kids change their minds all the time, and they don't always update everyone on how they're feeling at any given point.
Bruce Pearl was fantastic at making people feel like they were directly involved in the program. And he did plenty of things that weren't all that different from Baldwin making the kids come back right before Christmas for practice. But no one was on the message board airing out that dirty laundry, because Pearl had control of the flow of information (and everyone was loyal to him and wouldn't want negative information coming out anyways).
Rob Jeter was more of a 1-on-1 people person, a lot more understated, but he had control of the flow of information. By the time anyone knew that Torre Johnson had punched his girlfriend and got arrested, Jeter was already kicking him off the team. When one of the players developed a substance abuse issue due to taking painkillers to get past an injury he got on the court, the general public didn't know he went to rehab or even had a problem. When that same kid smoked some weed that fall because he was still struggling with the pain, knew he wasn't supposed to do that and then self-reported to coach Jeter about it, a bunch of people knew about it. His teammates, the staff, some family members and friends of his teammates, hell even I knew about it. You know who didn't find out about it? The fans, or the general public.
And when a certain piece of sh*t athletic director tried to kick that kid off the team and get him kicked out of school, so not only would he be dealing with the pain but he'd lose the support structure of the program to help him get through it? Nobody went to the message board and said, "Guess what I know?!" That kid ended up getting past it and graduated because he had that support structure to prop him up - his coaches, his teammates, his friends and family - and no one talked about it in the open. Because you don't talk about family business with people outside the family.
Your open presence on this board, sharing the inside information of the moment (that is always subject to change), is one of the clearest examples of how Pat Baldwin Sr. does not have his sh*t together in leading this program. Pearl or Jeter would have had your account shut down in a heartbeat, and they'd have taken you aside and explained why in a way that would make you love them after the fact. Baldwin's too busy shopping for a lifeboat, and before that he was too busy coaching his team to regression.
Again, I want to stress that this is not a knock on you. Controlling the flow of information is an important part of running a Division I hoops program, and it's an aspect at which Pat Baldwin Sr. has proven to be an abject failure.
