Wednesday, April 24, 2013

As The Sandi Turns

For those interested in the results of yesterday's Matt Painter/Morgan Burke press conference discussing the Sandi Marcius situation Boilerdowd wrote about yesterday, H&R is all over it.

I have to say, I think Burke and Painter are doing more than is required of them here -- as b-dowd pointed out, if a somewhat immature young man is going to whine about his lot in life when he orchestrated his arrival at that lot, there's not a lot you can do about it. Painter and Burke already had done more than enough for Sandi, I think everyone agrees, and this is just further clarification.

From Matt Painter:
"Sandi voluntarily withdrew from our team," Painter said. "Now he wants us to pay for his school after the fact and that's just something that we haven't done. As a head coach, and this is something Morgan (Burke) talked to me about when he interviewed me: 'You're in charge of your roster.' Nobody can tell me who's on my roster and who is not on my roster, and Morgan's in charge of the grant-in-aid.
"I wish (Marcius) nothing but the best. I gave him a blanket release so that he can play anywhere else that he wants. We were committed to paying for his school this summer if he was with us, and we were committed to paying for his fifth year of school next year, which would have been grad school, if he was with us. We committed to Sandi from Day 1 and have paid for all of his schooling while he's been with us. Now he's decided to leave our program, and he's not with us and he voluntarily did that. No one told him he had to leave. We wanted him to stay. That was the decision that he made."

I love iron-fisted Matt Painter, I don't know about you. As I mentioned, visit H&R for more quotes, including Matt Painter's explanation on how this differs considerably from John Hart's situation. Again, I find myself thinking he has no obligation to lay this all out -- but if it winds up painting Purdue in a more positive light, that's fine by me. Full details, truth and clarity are never a bad thing.

2 comments:

zlionsfan said...

I can think of at least two reasons for all the details: one, to counter whatever Marcius' advisers are saying, and two, to highlight differences between Marcius' situation and those of players from certain other programs who suddenly find themselves looking elsewhere as a result of oversigning. (Even though Purdue isn't in that situation, sometimes it helps to make it clear what's going on.)

From what little we know, it sounds like Marcius' advisers just assumed his Maymester classes would be paid for ... which is another indication that perhaps he is not getting great advice. So when it became clear that they wouldn't be paid for, his advisers wanted to raise a stink, hoping that would work.

25 years ago, Purdue was pretty strict about what you could do if your classes hadn't yet been paid for. (Basically, nothing. You pays your bill and then you gets your schedule.) I suspect that has not changed much since then ... which means that Marcius doesn't have much time to get this straightened out if he intends to graduate in May.

I'm glad Painter was willing to draw the line openly on this one. It sounds like there's still time for Marcius to change his mind, if he's so inclined ... maybe he should think about it, and maybe not around the people who've been advising him recently.

James said...

AMEN!!!