A neutral perspective on Royce...

[nuggett]

ALL young people make mistakes.
Lets hope the young man can see where he went wrong, corrects himself and tries to
mature and become a better person for it. This would probably not have been such a
huge deal had it not been for him being a high profile student athlete.
Tubby is a great Father figure to the young men in his charge and it
is too bad that White will miss the opportunity to have him as a mentor.
Its time to stop worrying about what could have been had he been a Gopher and
let the team move forward with what they do have.

 

[station19]

Thank you for this post, gopherlady.

Still new here, Still learning who people are.

Thought I'd be debating team strategy with die-hard fans like myself to help me feel closer to home, but this season's problems have become an unfortunate focal point. If we are forced to discuss this stuff, which it seems we are, thoughtful, well-reasoned posts like yours make the discourse rise above all the blaming and name-calling.

I would rather Royce White find a path for himself that is fulfilling and healthy, than the Gophers to make any tournament.

It does seem he's missing mentors in his life.

The blaming of UMPD, of Tubby, of maturi for this is deeply misguided in my opinion.

My own father has passed on but I can hear his advice to Royce.

1. keep your mouth shut.
2. If they let you back to practice, go, show up early, work harder than anyone, and don't expect anything to happen, just keep doing that.
3. Sooner or later the coach will see you're serious about your commitment and things will begin to change.
4. handle your legal stuff quietly, again, keep your mouth shut, you may feel you're wrongly accused, so what, just get it handled and move on
5. if you lose a year, it's only a year, this may be hard to understand now, but hold the thought in your mind that whenever you're allowed to play, you are going to dominate.
6. you got yourself into this pig-$@!+, its your job to get out, nobody else's, and you can do it.

One thing I would ask some of the more senior posters is to remember to judge newbie's by the content of their posts rather than the quantity of them. IMO there is no correlation between the two.

Great post.

 

[millions2spare]

Good Post nugget: let me add..
unfortunately tubby is not going to have a chance to teach rw about life and be a father type figure because of the idiotic moral standards placed on a 19 year old. Some people have commented that they don't like RW's attitude, his MOA mistake, his Jwalking charge, his class load,his GPA (These are all irrelevent qualities people dislike about RW per other posts). But the facts are he has not been convicted of a felony, has not been arrested, only accused but is in fact a student with a 3.4 gpa in good standing and a hell of a Basketball player who could lead the team to the NCAA. If the standards the AD set were based on Innocent until proven Guilty. --hence The RULE of LAW--Tubby would have a chance to teach him the greater life lessons and the Gophers would have had a very successful season! Until the AD retires we are going to be saddled with Mediocre athletic program..

Sorry to be blunt.

 

[GoldInDirt]

He actually does - it's just whether or not he listens to them. From what I understand, he has a great Uncle, Tubby, Rene Pulley, and of course, his grandfather, Frank White. He is a very wise man who loves Royce and wants the best for him. Those are just the ones I know about - like I said, it's just if he listens to them, or his "boys."

That's what I was trying to imply, that there is the availability of good mentors (there are plenty of good mentors in the world) but that nobody has been able to develop such a relatioship with Royce such that he can be mentored. I've read good things about his uncle, but I don't know much about his parents or other family figures.

I do believe there are too many students, some of them athletes, that come from backgrounds that offer less support then the average background. That places those students at a disadvantage and could be one cause for some of the problems that these less fortunate students get into. Sometimes we need to keep that in context - that not everybody has had the same opportunity and we need to give them some extra opportunity to learn new and better ways. Regardless, you can still fault these students - such as Royce in these circumstances - for making the wrong decisions. It's just tough to tell if there's a way to help them out, if they're willing to reach out for help before things get worse.