Mbakwe to play Thursday?

I disagree whole-heartedly that this is the right thing for their program or university. Living in Minnesota, it’s interesting to hear the gripes about the tainted past of the program and how it hurts the university’s image, but still want Mbakwe to play.

Personally, I think it’s a mistake on the part of the U of M and Tubby. It sets a bad precedent for the rest of the team. A no contact order means no contact, good intentions or not. Tubby’s policy is obviously “I don’t care if you break the law, as long as you didn’t mean it or showed a lapse of judgement.” I don’t know why the U of M has repeatedly let the basketball teams get away with murder, and then later down the road play the victim and wonder what went wrong. he never would have been recruited by Painter in the first place, but if anyone on our team did anything like this, it would at least be a suspension until the criminal rulings were finalized. Look at LewJack last year. Painter doesn’t put up with crap, and I’m surprised that Tubby and the U are.

Maybe it’s a good parallel, maybe it’s not, but there are other schools/programs out there that run a tight ship too.

Case in point is the University of Minnesota-Duluth. They just won the D-II national football championship, and have both men’s and women’s hockey ranked in the top 5 nationally D-I. Bob Neilson is the football coach and AD, and was named the D-II National Coach of the Year. He’s done an impressive job in both roles, and is an outstanding member of the community as well. UMD has many academic all-american athletes, and a high graduation rate (not that unusual for a D-II school though).

What makes this relevant to this discussion is that 2 of his star football players were suspected of underage drinking and possession of marijuana, and he suspended them for their biggest regular season game until it got sorted out. There have been other small instances of off the field issues, both in football and other sports (LB on the football team was stripped of his captainship for public intoxication), but he’s set the precedent that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated.

The people here in Duluth take great pride in the on and off the field performance of UMD, and we kind of scratch our heads about what the U of M allows in their programs.