Destiny PItts: Transfers to Texas A&M (All Things Suspension and Transfer Related)

[Shades]

By the way, if Pitts is looking to have a career in the WNBA ..... don’t you think WNBA coaches, admin, owners are going to call and trust what Whalen has to say on this?? Very bad attitude problems ... why would I sign her?

She didn’t think that part through very well.

I dunno.... maybe she can transfer to UConn and join Bueckers. That could boost her draft stock immensely. If she stayed with the Gophers, her WNBA future would likely to amount to being drafted in the third round by the Lynx as an obligatory gesture, only to be cut later because it’s almost impossible for a third round pick to stay in the WNBA nowadays. Too much talent and not enough roster spots. Is Pitts one of the 144 best female basketball players in the world? I suspect she’s not even close, especially as a Gopher.

 

[46Gophers]

She did what she thought was right. And she (quite justifiably) thought that the right thing to do was to turn it over to the AD’s formal disciplinary process (admittedly, my assumption, but high probability). My guess is, that’s the point where things went south.

Admittedly, a lot of assumptions here, but you guys are bending over backwards to make all sorts of assumptions as to why Destiny is some kind of outlaw here, whereas my primary assumption is that in the incident, Destiny was tired, mad at herself for her playing errors, which gradually morphed into a bit mad at her coach for yelling at her incessantly, until she eventually (sadly) took the bait and got some kind of bad attitude, or poor body language, or poor posture, or some other ridiculously stupid reason to kick the best player off the team. I too am clueless as to how that could happen, but apparently it did.

"My assumption, my guess, my gut".....give it a break. You have no idea what did or did not occur. You rant on like you know exactly what took place when you really don't and likely never will. If this is the first time she was ever disciplined, she sure did not handle it very well.

 

[Veritas]

She did what she thought was right. And she (quite justifiably) thought that the right thing to do was to turn it over to the AD’s formal disciplinary process (admittedly, my assumption, but high probability). My guess is, that’s the point where things went south.

Admittedly, a lot of assumptions here, but you guys are bending over backwards to make all sorts of assumptions as to why Destiny is some kind of outlaw here, whereas my primary assumption is that in the incident, Destiny was tired, mad at herself for her playing errors, which gradually morphed into a bit mad at her coach for yelling at her incessantly, until she eventually (sadly) took the bait and got some kind of bad attitude, or poor body language, or poor posture, or some other ridiculously stupid reason to kick the best player off the team. I too am clueless as to how that could happen, but apparently it did.

You have "American lawyer" written all over you.

 

[adchester]

While I certainly don't agree with Pitts' actions, it seems like Whalen completely overblew the situation. Young competitive athletes are emotional and sometimes those emotions seep into high stress game situations. It happens.

The proper thing for a coach to do is sit the player down, have a heart to heart, understand the player's frustrations, and come to an agreement on how to correct the behavior. Maybe Whalen did this, we do not know the details, but it does not seem like it. It seems like she laid down a suspension and gave Pitts a written list of rules to sign. This seems like overkill and not very personal.

I can see why Pitts would feel like Whalen didnt care for her as a person if the above is true. I tend to believe this is what happened due to the responses of teammates which seem overwhelming in support of Pitts on Twitter (again probably not their full thoughts on the matter, but they easily could've not posted those tweets as well). It will be interesting to see if there are more transfers at the end of the season.

 

[Shades]

"My assumption, my guess, my gut".....give it a break. You have no idea what did or did not occur. You rant on like you know exactly what took place when you really don't and likely never will. If this is the first time she was ever disciplined, she sure did not handle it very well.

At least he’s engaged enough with the women’s program to have a thought-out opinion. Can you claim the same?

 

[46Gophers]

At least he’s engaged enough with the women’s program to have a thought-out opinion. Can you claim the same?

Nope, that's why I haven't expressed one. Also, not willing to go on rants and conspiracy theories when there are so many unknowns.

 

[tripledouble]

If this was just a body language issue, I'll never understand how it escalated to this point. If it was more than a body language issue, then it would behoove the U to at least acknowledge that it was more than a body language issue, without necessarily giving specifics The U has more to lose on this than Pitts does. (Reputation with prospective recruits, transfers, etc.) If a body language issue escalated to the necessity to have a "signed document", then both parties lost. This should have been resolved with one simple meeting between the coach and the player. I'm guessing that they may have been at an impasse and the AD was notified; if this happened, I'm also guessing that things went drastically south from there. If I'm a coach and I have a player who is disgruntled with some of the decisions I've made, I'm not going to ask her to sign a document that says she'll comply. I'm either going to trust the player to make the necessary changes (handshake agreement) or I'm going to dismiss her from the team immediately. If I have a player I can't trust to make those changes, then there's no point in keeping her on the team. (I'm not implying that Whalen initiated this document; I don't think she did.) But if a third party got involved in this disagreement and a signed document was required to "solve" two-game body language issues, then the U erred in the way they handled. I'll fully admit that Pitts also played her part in it and made some mistakes, but if the way this was handled cost the team their best player, a possible NCAA appearance, and possibly some transfers and future recruits, that's a high price to pay.

 

[WHB Brewer]

A.J. Barker Part II

Let's take the unchallenged word of a 20-21 year old college kid as the truth.

+1000000

Whalen has mentioned Geno as one of her coaching mentors from her time on the US Olympic teams. I'd be willing to bet that something along the lines of what Geno talks about here is why Pitts is taking her talents elsewhere. her comment about "my first discipline situation of my career at Minnesota (or as a basketball player at any level) " is quite interesting. too bad she didn't get some discipline earlier in life

 

[Calgoph]

I dunno.... maybe she can transfer to UConn and join Bueckers. That could boost her draft stock immensely....

Interesting that you chose to invoke UConn in your post. Maybe you missed post #83 above. If so, it would be worth your while, and probably some others here, to scroll back and hear exactly what Coach Auriemma's thoughts are on body language.

edit:
(LOL funny that two of us referred back to the same post simultaneously.)

 

[ISUnorth]

You are comparing apples to oranges. The athleticism and defensive effort in the WNBA will not allow her the open looks she gets in college. Adult women will shut her down and humble her in a heartbeat. Pitts is a good player, not a WNBA all-star.

This might be true. WNBA is the top 144 players in the WORLD. Last years Big 10 POY and 2019 Citizen Naismith Trophy Award winner got drafted, cut, resigned before getting to play in 25 games and average a little less than 5 ppg. The Big 12 POY got signed by the Lynx after getting cut by the Sun and was deep bench in September.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

This might be true. WNBA is the top 144 players in the WORLD. Last years Big 10 POY and 2019 Citizen Naismith Trophy Award winner got drafted, cut, resigned before getting to play in 25 games and average a little less than 5 ppg. The Big 12 POY got signed by the Lynx after getting cut by the Sun and was deep bench in September.

OK, I'll accept that point.

I used the phrase "oranges to tangerines" to express that there are a lot of similarities, yet some significant differences between shooting threes in the WNBA and in the NCAA (or even in the Power-5 conferences).

So yeah, I intended to concede that point from the get-go. But thank you for your examples pointing out the huge differences between playing in the Power-5 and in the WNBA. Defenders in the WNBA are going to run you off the three-point line certainly as good-or-better than Iowa ran Scalia and Hubbard off our three-point line in the 4th quarter last night.

That being said, Destiny does have fairly good prospects for the WNBA, and whether (if drafted) she can turn that into a career or even just a few years of playing, well that's up to her talents and efforts. Given her work ethic (especially, lately, her work ethic in helping her teammates improve (hint: Sara Scalia)), it could happen. I'm sure we all wish her success if she pursues that WNBA dream (even the seemingly anti-Pitts posters among us re the current Transfer-Portal situation).

Unfortunately, the several honors that she's on the watch-list for, are certainly out the window for this year. And if she qualifies as eligible for her new team in January of next year (as seems feasible) it's a short season. Wherever she goes, we all wish her luck - to state the obvious.

 

[Shades]

And if she qualifies as eligible for her new team in January of next year (as seems feasible) it's a short season. Wherever she goes, we all wish her luck - to state the obvious.

I don’t see why she couldn’t be deemed eligible for the fall, considering the circumstances.

 

[MennoSota]

I dunno.... maybe she can transfer to UConn and join Bueckers. That could boost her draft stock immensely. If she stayed with the Gophers, her WNBA future would likely to amount to being drafted in the third round by the Lynx as an obligatory gesture, only to be cut later because it’s almost impossible for a third round pick to stay in the WNBA nowadays. Too much talent and not enough roster spots. Is Pitts one of the 144 best female basketball players in the world? I suspect she’s not even close, especially as a Gopher.

1. Why would UConn take her?
2. Why would sitting the bench at UConn make her a better prospect for the WNBA?
3. Whalen has overseas contacts as well.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

(By the way, for numbering purposes, this is my rant #2 in the
"Destiny Pitts Suspended & Taiye and Kehinde Bello Do Not Travel with Team to Illinois" thread
.)

Some additional general information (still unknown if true or not, so still just a conjecture) might provide further insights on the general nature of the Destiny Pitts/Lindsay Whalen meltdown and subsequent disciplinary fiasco that resulted in Pitts leaving Minnesota via the Transfer Portal, as of immediately.

In the STrib: Destiny's Teammate's Respond on Social Media thread, @tripledouble said ...

> This should have been resolved between coach and player.

Which is tantamount to one of my key arguments. At the time that I stated it, I really had no concrete evidence pro or against my argument. If my slightly augmented line of reasoning is anywhere close to the truth, then my key argument (based on faith, really) now has at least some partial support.

And @baller4life responded ...

> Destiny tried to resolve it -- to have her trust in the coaches built back up and to earn back their trust, as well. She was 100% on board with the penalties as written for a player's first team infraction (which, if you can believe it, is not an indefinite suspension). When Destiny reached out to Coach Whalen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, though, she was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way in the future. And that that was her only option. To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself.

In another report by @adamj95, some seem to suggest that perhaps the "poor body language" might have been something along the lines of flipping the bird at Coach. Or perhaps a more plausible explanation is that the "poor body language" (still undefined as to exactly what that is) was the original infraction allegation (occurring in Nebraska, maybe?), and "conduct unbecoming a player" was a later bird-flipping infraction that was triggered in Destiny at least partially by the ridiculous reaction by the Athletic Department and Whalen to Destiny's repeated efforts to make amends and patch things up with Whalen for her claimed initial infraction of "poor body language" (whatever the H that is).

But the whole thing about flipping the bird is not only unconfirmed, but vigorously denied by those that claim to be in the know. So the potential bird-flipping seems more probably fake news.

Perhaps "poor body language" was the earlier half-time shrug-off (the only coherent noun I can think of) at Nebraska - on a Saturday (away); the Northwestern game was home on the following Thursday. This timeline jibes with @baller4life's timing ...

> When Destiny reached out to Coach Whalen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, though, she was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way in the future. And that that was her only option. To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself.

Four important things here. (1) Destiny made at least three different attempts on three different days to try to reconcile with Whalen - apparently all unsuccessful, as she wasn't even able to have a private discussion with Whalen. (Did Whalen refuse to meet with Pitts? We still don't know.)

The situation as of this point (after the poor body language, per my weak conjecture), was an incident of "poor body language" that Pitts was trying to resolve mano-a-mano with Whalen, but Whalen was seemingly not cooperating.

(2) Instead, the situation had already been escalated by the Athletic Department into the input pipeline to the so-called "standard disciplinary system" (I'll call it) - a system apparently designed as the standard methodology for resolving any accused discipline infraction by a student athlete.

Thus, already at this point the (faulty, in my opinion) Athletic Department Disciplinary System had taken control of the Whalen vs. Pitts issue. Whether this issue gets resolved amicably now lies almost completely within the confines of the system's control algorithm.

Except that Whalen perhaps still had the opportunity to jump in and resolve the issue personally with Destiny mano-a-mano. Or maybe not? Was Lindsay effectively already taken out of the loop by the "system"?

On the face of it, it seems that perhaps Lindsey was being hard-hearted, and refusing to meet with Destiny on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. But equally plausible is that once the "system" got in gear, Lindsay was forbidden by the system to interact with the player except at certain checkpoints within the system (like after she signed certain stupid but mandatory documents).

(3) Destiny was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way, in the future. And that that was her only option.

This document-signing "step" of the system is an inflexible requirement on the part of the Disciplinary System, apparently. If signed by Destiny, it's legalistic terminology is tantamount to hanging a Sword of Damocles over Destiny's head in perpetuity (or at least until she graduates).

Did Destiny feel safe accepting such threat of impending doom, on the odd chance that she messed up in the least at some time in the future? Probably not. Destiny was more than willing to do her best (as witnessed by her repeated efforts to work something out with Whalen). But maybe she was not completely confident in her abilities to behave completely perfectly. Hey, nobody's perfect. As a corollary to that theorem, maybe Destiny sensed that she herself might be perfect in the future with some high probability, but not with 100% certainty. this step in the Disciplinary System is completely faulty in its design. In fact, it's horrific! It requires you to have such confidence in your future 100% perfect performance against whatever standard is being laid down, that essentially, one has to be a true Goody Two Shoes to have the slightest chance to fulfill such a "contract for perfection."

Also, as someone pointed out, maybe the circumstances you grew up in might come into play as to what your behavior might be in the future - and what's the probability distribution of your being exactly perfect in your behavior in the future, especially when you might not even know the complete list of future-behavior requirements you're obligated to meet. Maybe some of those mandatory requirements might be considered common sense in some parts of the USA, but not so much on the streets of Detroit. Plus, the document Destiny is apparently obligated to sign, apparently implies that Destiny must be a Statistics major in order to properly forecast the probability distribution that Destiny can be clean-as-a-whistle perfect for the next 1.5 years.

Who knows (and this part is pure conjecture, not even probabilistic conjecture), maybe she knew that she might have a bit of a temper sometimes. Maybe she was worried that, in a moment of emotion and heated discussion, she might even swear. Do you think people from Detroit might swear occasionally? Heck, they might even be susceptible to doing something as verboten as flipping the bird at someone - maybe even her Coach (who she otherwise truly loved and cared about). And that latter hypothetical is completely independent of whether or not she actually did swear or flip the bird. It’s only one factor among many in the decision process of whether or not Destiny should be willing to hang that Sword of Damocles over her head.

Fearful of something like that, would you want to sign a legal document that put your entire future at risk if you so much as messed up one single time in 1.5 years of future play? I woudn't. And I don't typically run around flipping people off, but I might if provoked enough. You'd literally have to be on pins and needles all the time, worrying about, OK, what potentially undesirable behavior am I in danger of committing in the next few seconds, and how do I avert that?

The requirement to sign such a document is a horrible idea. Did anybody think to consult with the Psychology department before putting this ludicrous system in place?

So at this point in the system process (which although implemented by humans, amounts to a Robotic Process Automation, which is all the rage these days in manufacturing and even CEO decision making, but should never, ever be used in a case of disciplinary action), the system apparently had full control of the process authomation, and the system (as enforced by an assistant AD) now (at this point of the flow-control) insisted that Destiny complete the next step of the Disciplinary Robotic Process Automation - namely sign a legal document that threatens to ruin her entire basketball career, if she so much was intimidated and angered enough to swear or maybe flu p the bird at somebody (something I imagine was done all the time on the streets of Detroit, and not necessarily with any ill intent in mind - it's just an expression of "I don't particularly like that but I'll think about it").

So Destiny is now between a rock and a hard place. She wants to make nice with Lindsay, but Lindsay is not available. Destiny is doing due diligence, here. Lindsay is absolutely not doing due diligence. Or, she is prohibited by the ground rules of the system from doing due diligence. One of these or the other. We don’t know which. But in any event, Destiny is road-blocked from making any progress on her attempts at a personal reconciliation and move-forward plan with Lindsay.

She is told that if she wants to move forward at all in the disciplinary process, she first has to sign an untenable document which puts her at risk if she even does the silliest, most minor infraction of the rules, which I imagine are myriad, and I imagine she doesn't even know them all. The whole situation at that point is ludicrous, and I wouldn't sign that obnoxious document either, even though I've generally had model behavior.

(4) To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself.

Maybe it was out of Lindsay's control? Maybe it was in the assistant AD's hands? Who knows? Maybe the assistant AD didn't tell Lindsay, "Hey, here's the document that Destiny needs to sign, in case you want to hand deliver it yourself"? Who knows. Wouldn't it be horrible if Destiny got dismissed from the team, largely due to an incompetent assistant AD?

In any event, the net effect from Destiny's perception is that "my Coach is ignoring my pleas for reconciliation." And my Coach (well, the system really, but her Coach from Destiny's point of view) is insisting that I sign this stupid, unsignable document before she will even talk to me.

Since she didn't sign that document (yet), probably the standard punishment for first infraction was not yet fully implemented, pending signature. Destiny made every effort to work things out with Whalen for the "poor body language." The disciplinary system (and Whalen, as a mere cog in the wheels of said system) had not provided a single useful response to her efforts.

ThenNorthwestern game was a trying game. As I posted in the pre-game notes, the Northwestern guards are thieves. True to form, they stole the ball approximately exactly the number of times that I predicted they would in the pre-game notes. That was expected if the team did not take suitable measures to protect the ball better than they usually do (which they didn't). This caused frustration all around on our team - among both players and Coaches, obviously. We had 21 turnovers. About 10 more than usual.

Two of those were Pitts turnovers (less than her share). Taiye had zero turnovers. Also, Pitts was apparently dragging a bit and not covering Sheid's three-pointer attempts as well as Lindsay expected and demanded. Destiny got in trouble and benched for a while for the latter. She also got in big trouble for her turnover when she (apparently) had a major brain-fart during a fast break, and drove right into a defender (outside the little circle) while trying to make a layup, when it should have been obvious that this would be a charge on Destiny. It was. She should have stopped and popped - with a 90% probability of making the 5-foot jumper. Was being tired involved in this mistake? Who knows. Whalen was furious! Not only was this yet another (of the 21) turnover, but it was later in the game at a crucial juncture in which the two points were desperately needed.

Whalen was fully justified in benching her. But Whalen also was really super-mad. If I recall, this was the point at which Whalen yelled at Destiny excessively long and excessively loud. I'm not sure that Destiny paused to get her reaming-out sufficiently long enough to satisfy Whalen's need to yell. Destiny sat down on the bench. Not sure if she was displaying any attitude at this point. Whatever happened there, that's what I was euphemistically referring to as the "invitation to a yelling/screaming pissing contest."

Pitts was very frustrated. She was mad at herself. Perhaps she was mad at her Coach for yelling so loud and long at her. We might lose, and it might end up her fault in hindsight thanks to the charge.
I suspect that the next event happened in the locker room after the game. Perhaps there again was a heated exchange about the bad charge that Destiny committed. Not to mention yelling at the rest of the team for their 19 other turnovers. If she did yell back at Coach earlier, perhaps there was a heated exchange in the locker room about not embarassing our team on national TV.

Apparently it's OK for the Coach to embarass us on national TV via extreme yelling and screaming at the team, but not OK for a player to do so. (Various posters have said, yeah, that's standard procedure and every player, including Destiny, should know that.) We don't know what happened next. In total frustration for her current situation of a lost game with her partially at fault, plus perhaps a shouting match in the locker room, was Destiny totally frustrated and depressed? Maybe. Was there any swearing involved? Maybe. Maybe not. Was there a bird-flipping as a result? Maybe. Maybe not. (But by accounts of some who claim to have access to reliable sources, no.) We don't know. There will be no video footage from the locker room.

In any event, now she's even more in the doghouse, especially if a bird was flipped (which might indeed constitute "conduct unbecoming a player"). As a result, the Athletic Department suspends her indefinitely.

(Again, in this section in particular, this is all speculation as to what might have transpired, and only guesswork. But if so, was this seemingly severe penalty a Mark Coyle decision? A Lindsay Whalen decision? Who knows.) Destiny does not want to sign this penalty document with all the conditions. It seems like a sure-fire ticket back to Detroit.

The Athletic Department insists she sign it. There's a stalemate for a few days, as she thinks it out, and (with sadness all around) consults her teammates and best friends (which are overlapping sets).

Meanwhile, back at the Gopherhole ranch, us non-informed fans are speculating that Lindsay and Destiny are having daily meetings to work this out. They're not. They haven't had a single meeting geared toward reconciliation. It's a stalemate.

After much thinking and consulting with her friends and teammates, and no chance whatsoever to have that personal discussion with Whalen that she wanted, and no chance to have a discussion with Mark Coyle, and no due process whatsoever (only the Robotic Process Automation embedded within an F-ed up Disciplinary System), Destiny eventually decides, "this is ridiculous, I'm outta here." Cue the Transfer Portal tweet pre-game on Thursday.

Is this exactly what happened? Probably not. But something quite like it, I'm relatively certain.

Who screwed up here? The Disciplinary System!

Who or what prevented Destiny to have the 15 minute personal talk with Whalen that might have resolved this whole mess amicably without any threatening Swords of Damocles hanging over her head? Why, the System, of course!

Conclusion: The Disciplinary System is totally screwed up and useless. Somehow it managed to work sort-of-OK within Men's Basketball within the last several years. Maybe because of a slower-moving process there, with scrutiny at every step via fans and the media? Media-based checks and balances so-to-speak?

But it sure as heck didn't work for Destiny Pitts. The Athletic Department's Disciplinary System absolutely failed Destiny Pitts. It failed to give her a day in court. It failed to give her any sort of due process. It failed to give her any sort of administrative review. Not even by Mark Coyle (except perhaps for a rubber stamp on his way out the door). If it were summer, I'd joke that he was probably out playing golf. She only got as far up the chain as an assistant AD, who had power to do exactly nothing for her, except hand her the pen.

Who designed, or at least approved the system? Mark Coyle. Or perhaps his predecessors.

I rest my case. Even though it's only an approximate case, and open for tweaks and minor disagreements as to the pertinent facts - which are nevertheless loosely based on the fairly reliable general facts I used in my earlier big post, augmented by some new tentative insights that may be equally plausible..

For all we know, that inadequate Disciplinary System may have been in place before Mark Coyle's tenure. Some may yet argue that Coyle's head should roll for either putting in place, or not fixing a horrible Disciplinary System. One that got Destiny Pitts, our best Gopher Women's Basketball player, summarily kicked off the team (FAPP) with narry a chance to work this out verbally (with Whalen) and unthreateningly (read: no Swords of Damocles hanging over your head due to ridiculous paperwork that you're forced to sign under the gun).

For whatever reason, this actually happened. It should not have happened. The net effect is a huge blow to the Women's Basketball program that was otherwise at least starting to grow under leadership of Whalen and Pitts and Brunson and the Bello sisters.

Was Whalen hard-hearted and not willing to talk to Destiny? Don't know. But from my knowledge of Whalen, I suspect not. Was Whalen prevented from interacting with Pitts such as to resolve the issue in a more simple, non-threatening, caring manner? Don't know. But from my knowledge of how systems are capable of screwing up (check: General Systems Theory), I think so. At least I strongly suspect it. to be so in this case.

Claim: The actual Disciplinary System per se of the Athletic Department for student athletes, is the true troublemaker here. it's also almost certainly true that some fraction of the blame rests on Destiny Pitts' shoulders, and some fraction of the blame rests on Lindsay Whalen's shoulders. But I now am convinced more than ever that a mal-designed and mal-implemented Disciplinary System in the Athletics Department is culpable for the majority of the blame.

Systems can be like that. Just like in Software Engineering of a computer hardware/software system, the designers are never cognizant, in advance of the design/implementation, of what the true requirements are; and what oddball scenarios are typically not imagined at design/implementation time, but should have been if they wanted to get it right.

Conclusion: The Athletic Department Disciplinary System proper is mostly at fault here, although Destiny Pitts and Lindsay Whalen are no angels, and unfortunately, friction between them (plus the frustration of losing games that we should have won) were most likely the causal trigger of a chain of events that the Disciplinary System was ill-designed to handle.

I rest my case.

And my heart aches for Destiny Pitts. She didn't deserve being chewed up and spit out by the system.

Whether one wants to hold Mark Coyle responsible for implementing/approving an incredibly horrible Disciplinary System for athletic teams, that's your choice.

It might be more efficient just to re-design and re-implement the Athletic Department's Disciplinary System - along more humane and indeed human-compatible design principles - than to hire a new AD that is equally inept at (shall we call it) Disciplinary System Design Principles.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

I don’t see why she couldn’t be deemed eligible for the fall, considering the circumstances.

Nice point. Hopefully her new school will help her apply for an exception.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

If this was just a body language issue, I'll never understand how it escalated to this point. If it was more than a body language issue, then it would behoove the U to at least acknowledge that it was more than a body language issue, without necessarily giving specifics The U has more to lose on this than Pitts does. (Reputation with prospective recruits, transfers, etc.) If a body language issue escalated to the necessity to have a "signed document", then both parties lost. This should have been resolved with one simple meeting between the coach and the player. I'm guessing that they may have been at an impasse and the AD was notified; if this happened, I'm also guessing that things went drastically south from there. If I'm a coach and I have a player who is disgruntled with some of the decisions I've made, I'm not going to ask her to sign a document that says she'll comply. I'm either going to trust the player to make the necessary changes (handshake agreement) or I'm going to dismiss her from the team immediately. If I have a player I can't trust to make those changes, then there's no point in keeping her on the team. (I'm not implying that Whalen initiated this document; I don't think she did.) But if a third party got involved in this disagreement and a signed document was required to "solve" two-game body language issues, then the U erred in the way they handled. I'll fully admit that Pitts also played her part in it and made some mistakes, but if the way this was handled cost the team their best player, a possible NCAA appearance, and possibly some transfers and future recruits, that's a high price to pay.

> If a body language issue escalated to the necessity to have a "signed document", then both parties lost.

See my latest "extension" to my original conjectures ... but my new impression is that the Athletic Departments requires "signed documents" all over the place. In fact, they (seemingly, at least in this case) use signed documents in place of having the player actually talk to the Coach and work things out. Ridiculous, I know, but new insights loosely point directly to this conclusion.

 

[WHB Brewer]

I don’t see why she couldn’t be deemed eligible for the fall, considering the circumstances.

What circumstances. Getting into a disagreement with a coach hardly seems worthy of a transfer waiver. If that were the case, more would throw a tantrum

 

[WHB Brewer]

> If a body language issue escalated to the necessity to have a "signed document", then both parties lost.

See my latest "extension" to my original conjectures ... but my new impression is that the Athletic Departments requires "signed documents" all over the place. In fact, they (seemingly, at least in this case) use signed documents in place of having the player actually talk to the Coach and work things out. Ridiculous, I know, but new insights loosely point directly to this conclusion.

Where has it been reported that there was a y requirement of a signed document? And where is proof that the coach didn't talk to the player?

 

[Veritas]

Some additional general information (still unknown if true or not, so still just a conjecture) might provide further insights on the general nature of the Destiny Pitts/Lindsay Whalen meltdown and subsequent disciplinary fiasco that resulted in Pitts leaving Minnesota via the Transfer Portal, as of immediately.

In the STrib: Destiny's Teammate's Respond on Social Media thread, @tripledouble said ...

> This should have been resolved between coach and player.

Which is tantamount to one of my key arguments. At the time that I stated it, I really had no concrete evidence pro or against my argument. If my slightly augmented line of reasoning is anywhere close to the truth, then my key argument (based on faith, really) now has at least some partial support.

And @baller4life responded ...

> Destiny tried to resolve it -- to have her trust in the coaches built back up and to earn back their trust, as well. She was 100% on board with the penalties as written for a player's first team infraction (which, if you can believe it, is not an indefinite suspension). When Destiny reached out to Coach Whalen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, though, she was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way in the future. And that that was her only option. To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself.

In another report by @adamj95, some seem to suggest that perhaps the "poor body language" might have been something along the lines of flipping the bird at Coach. Or perhaps a more plausible explanation is that the "poor body language" (still undefined as to exactly what that is) was the original infraction allegation (occurring in Nebraska), and "conduct unbecoming a player" was a later bird-flipping infraction that was triggered in Destiny at least partially by the ridiculous reaction by the Athletic Department and Whalen to Destiny's repeated efforts to make amends and patch things up with Whalen for her claimed initial infraction of "poor body language" (whatever the H that is).

Perhaps "poor body language" was the earlier half-time shrug-off (the only coherent noun I can think of) at Nebraska - on a Saturday (away); the Northwestern game was home on the following Thursday. This timeline jibes with @baller4life's timing ...

> When Destiny reached out to Coach Whalen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, though, she was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way in the future. And that that was her only option. To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself.

Four important things here. (1) Destiny made at least three different attempts on three different days to try to reconcile with Whalen - apparently all unsuccessful, as she wasn't even able to have a private discussion with Whalen. (Did Whalen refuse to meet with Pitts? We still don't know.)

The situation as of this point (after the poor body language, per my conjecture), was an incident of "poor body language" that Pitts was trying to resolve mano-a-mano with Whalen, but Whalen was seemingly not cooperating.

(2) Instead, the situation had already been escalated by the Athletic Department into the input pipeline to the so-called "standard disciplinary system" (I'll call it) - a system apparently designed as the standard methodology for resolving any accused discipline infraction by a student athlete.

Thus, already at this point the (faulty, in my opinion) Athletic Department Disciplinary System had taken control of the Whalen vs. Pitts issue. Whether this issue gets resolved amicably now lies almost completely within the confines of the system's control algorithm. Except that Whalen perhaps still had the opportunity to jump in and resolve the issue personally with Destiny mano-a-mano. Or maybe not? Was Lindsay effectively already taken out of the loop by the "system"?

On the face of it, it seems that perhaps Lindsey was being hard-hearted, and refusing to meet with Destiny on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. But equally plausible is that once the "system" got in gear, Lindsay was forbidden by the system to interact with the player except at certain checkpoints within the system (like after she signed certain stupid but mandatory documents).

(3) Destiny was told by an assistant AD to sign a contract, which called for an immediate dismissal from the program with any other major or minor infraction in any way, in the future. And that that was her only option.

This document-signing "step" of the system is an inflexible requirement on the part of the Disciplinary System, apparently. If signed by Destiny, it's legalistic terminology is tantamount to hanging a Sword of Damocles over Destiny's head in perpetuity (or at least until she graduates). Did Destiny feel safe accepting such threat of impending doom, on the odd chance that she messed up in the least at some time in the future? Probably not. Destiny was more than willing to do her best (as witnessed by her repeated efforts to work something out with Whalen). But maybe she was not completely confident in her abilities to behave completely perfectly. Hey, nobody's perfect. As a corollary to that theorem, maybe Destiny sensed that she herself might be perfect in the future with some high probability, but not with 100% certainty. this step in the Disciplinary System is completely faulty in its design. In fact, it's horrific! It requires you to have such confidence in your future 100% perfect performance against whatever standard is being laid down, that essentially, one has to be a true Goody Two Shoes to have the slightest chance to fulfill such a "contract for perfection."

Also, as someone pointed out, maybe the circumstances you grew up in might come into play as to what your behavior might be in the future - and what's the probability distribution of your being exactly perfect in your behavior in the future, especially when you might not even know the complete list of future-behavior requirements you're obligated to meet. Maybe some of those mandatory requirements might be considered common sense in some parts of the USA, but not so much on the streets of Detroit. Plus, the document Destiny is apparently obligated to sign, apparently implies that Destiny must be a Statistics major in order to properly forecast the probability distribution that Destiny can be clean-as-a-whistle perfect for the next 1.5 years.

Who knows (and this part is pure conjecture, not even probabilistic conjecture), maybe she knew that she might have a bit of a temper sometimes. Maybe she was worried that, in a moment of emotion and heated discussion, she might even do something as verboten as flipping the bird at someone - maybe even her Coach (who she otherwise truly loved and cared about). Fearful of something like that, would you want to sign a legal document that put your entire future at risk if you so much as messed up one single time in 1.5 years of future play? I woudn't. And I don't typically run around flipping people off, but I might if provoked enough. You'd literally have to be on pins and needles all the time, worrying about, OK, what potentially undesirable behavior am I in danger of committing in the next few seconds, and how do I avert that?

The requirement to sign such a document is a horrible idea. Did anybody think to consult with the Psychology department before putting this ludicrous system in place?

So at this point in the system process (which although implemented by humans, amounts to a Robotic Process Automation, which is all the rage these days in manufacturing and even CEO decision making, but should never, ever be used in a case of disciplinary action), the system apparently had full control of the process authomation, and the system (as enforced by an assistant AD) now (at this point of the flow-control) insisted that Destiny complete the next step of the Disciplinary Robotic Process Automation - namely sign a legal document that threatens to ruin her entire basketball career, if she so much was intimidated and angered enough to flip the bird at somebody (something I imagine was done all the time on the streets of Detroit, and not necessarily with any ill intent in mind - it's just an expression of "I don't particularly like that but I'll think about it").

So Destiny is now between a rock and a hard place. She wants to make nice with Lindsay, but Lindsay is not available. Destiny is doing due diligence, here. Lindsay is absolutely not doing due diligence. Or, she is prohibited by the ground rules of the system from doing due diligence. One of these or the other. But in any event, Destiny is road-blocked from making any progress on her attempts at a personal reconciliation and move-forward plan with Lindsay. She is told that if she wants to move forward at all in the disciplinary process, she first has to sign an untenable document which puts her at risk if she even does the silliest, most minor infraction of the rules, which I imagine are myriad, and I imagine she doesn't even know them all. The whole situation at that point is ludicrous, and I wouldn't sign that obnoxious document either, even though I've generally had model behavior.

(4) To make matters worse, Coach Whalen did not even take the time to state this ultimatum herself. Maybe it was out of Lindsay's control? Maybe it was in the assistant AD's hands? Who knows? Maybe the assistant AD didn't tell Lindsay, "Hey, here's the document that Destiny needs to sign, in case you want to hand deliver it yourself"? Who knows. Wouldn't it be horrible if Destiny got dismissed from the team, largely due to an incompetent assistant AD?

In any event, the net effect from Destiny's perception is that "my Coach is ignoring my pleas for reconciliation." And my Coach (well, the system really, but her Coach from Destiny's point of view) is insisting that I sign this stupid, unsignable document before she will even talk to me.

Since she didn't sign that document (yet), probably the standard punishment for first infraction was not yet fully implemented, pending signature. Destiny made every effort to work things out with Whalen for the "poor body language." The disciplinary system (and Whalen, as a mere cog in the wheels of said system) had not provided a single useful response to her efforts. With no initial punishment for first infraction implemented yet (and Destiny not yet suspended, or at worst having a single-game suspension pending but not yet implemented - to be served at some future time), they all head down to the Barn to play Northwestern on Thursday (after three days of trying to work with Whalen on a personal basis, and failing all attempts, perhaps thanks to the disciplinary system itself).

This Northwestern game is a trying game. As I posted in the pre-game notes, the Northwestern guards are thieves. True to form, they stole the ball approximately exactly the number of times that I predicted they would in the pre-game notes. That was expected if the team did not take suitable measures to protect the ball better than they usually do (which they didn't). This caused frustration all around on our team - among both players and Coaches, obviously. We had 21 turnovers. About 10 more than usual.

Two of those were Pitts turnovers (less than her share). Taiye had zero turnovers. Also, Pitts was apparently dragging a bit and not covering Sheid's three-pointer attempts as well as Lindsay expected and demanded. Destiny got in trouble and benched for a while for the latter. She also got in big trouble for her turnover when she (apparently) had a major brain-fart during a fast break, and drove right into a defender (outside the little circle) while trying to make a layup, when it should have been obvious that this would be a charge on Destiny. It was. She should have stopped and popped - with a 90% probability of making the 5-foot jumper. Was being tired involved in this mistake? Who knows. Whalen was furious! Not only was this yet another (of the 21) turnover, but it was later in the game at a crucial juncture in which the two points were desperately needed.

Whalen was fully justified in benching her. But Whalen also was really super-mad. If I recall, this was the point at which Whalen yelled at Destiny excessively long and excessively loud. I'm not sure that Destiny paused to get her reaming-out sufficiently long enough to satisfy Whalen's need to yell. Destiny sat down on the bench. Not sure if she was displaying any attitude at this point. Whatever happened there, that's what I was euphemistically referring to as the "invitation to a yelling/screaming pissing contest."

Pitts was very frustrated. She was mad at herself. Perhaps she was mad at her Coach for yelling so loud and long at her. We might lose, and it might end up her fault in hindsight thanks to the charge. Plus, she was under the stress that there was apparently no hope of ever resolving the initial disciplinary issue unless she signed a document that she found threatening and unacceptable - but that document was part of the standard disciplinary process - a process that somehow prevented Destiny from having meaningful conversation with Lindsay about the initial alleged infraction. Did Pitts yell (from the bench) at Whalen at that point? I don't know. Maybe someone can find the video. But perhaps.

I suspect that the next event happened in the locker room after the game. Perhaps there again was a heated exchange about the bad charge that Destiny committed. Not to mention yelling at the rest of the team for their 19 turnovers. If she did yell back at Coach earlier, perhaps there was a heated exchange in the locker room about not embarassing our team on national TV.

Apparently it's OK for the Coach to embarass us on national TV via extreme yelling and screaming at the team, but not OK for a player to do so. (Various posters have said, yeah, that's standard procedure and every player, including Destiny, should know that.) We don't know what happened next. If total frustration for her current situation of a lost game with her partially at fault, plus seemingly no care whatsoever on the part of her Coach to meet privately and resolve the issue on the first infraction (with grace and love and forgiveness and care, as it should have been), was Destiny totally frustrated and depressed? Maybe. Was there a bird-flipping as a result. Maybe. We don't know. There will be no video footage from the locker room.

In any event, now she's even more in the doghouse, especially if a bird was flipped (which might constitute "conduct unbecoming a player"). As a result, with the first disciplinary action yet uncompleted via Destiny's refusal to sign the first mandatory but objectionable document, the Athletic Department can't just summarily kick her off the team and delete her scholarship (because she didn't sign the first document, thankfully, at that point). Rather, they wing it, and now suspend her indefinitely. (Again, in this section in particular, this is all speculation as to what might have transpired, and only guesswork. But if so, was this escalation of her proposed penalty a Mark Coyle decision? An Lindsay Whalen decision? Who knows.) This time another document to sign, probably worse than the first document, or at least as bad. Again, Destiny does not want to sign this document. It seems like a sure-fire ticket back to Detroit.

The Athletic Department insists she sign it. There's a stalemate for a few days, as she thinks it out, and (with sadness all around) consults her teammates and best friends (which are overlapping sets).

Meanwhile, back at the Gopherhole ranch, us non-informed fans are speculating that Lindsay and Destiny are having daily meetings to work this out. They're not. They haven't had a single meeting geared toward reconciliation. It's a stalemate.

After much thinking and consulting with her friends and teammates, and no chance whatsoever to have that personal discussion with Whalen that she wanted, and no chance to have a discussion with Mark Coyle, and no due process whatsoever (only the Robotic Process Automation embedded within an F-ed up Disciplinary System), Destiny eventually decides, "this is ridiculous, I'm outta here." Cue the Transfer Portal tweet pre-game on Thursday.

Is this exactly what happened? Probably not. But something quite like it, I'm relatively certain.

Who screwed up here? The Disciplinary System!

Who or what prevented Destiny to have the 15 minute personal talk with Whalen that might have resolved this whole mess amicably without any threatening Swords of Damocles hanging over her head? Why, the System, of course!

Conclusion: The Disciplinary System is totally screwed up and useless. Somehow it managed to work sort-of-OK within Men's Basketball within the last several years. Maybe because of a slower-moving process there, with scrutiny at every step via fans and the media? Media-based checks and balances so-to-speak?

But it sure as heck didn't work for Destiny Pitts. The Athletic Department's Disciplinary System absolutely failed Destiny Pitts. It failed to give her a day in court. It failed to give her any sort of due process. It failed to give her any sort of administrative review. Not even by Mark Coyle (except perhaps for a rubber stamp on his way out the door). If it were summer, I'd joke that he was probably out playing golf. She only got as far up the chain as an assistant AD, who had power to do exactly nothing for her, except hand her the pen.

Who designed, or at least approved the system? Mark Coyle. Or perhaps his predecessors.

I rest my case. Even though it's only an approximate case, and open for tweaks and minor disagreements as to the pertinent facts - which are nevertheless loosely based on the fairly reliable general facts I used in my earlier big post, augmented by some new tentative insights that may be equally plausible..

For all we know, that inadequate Disciplinary System may have been in place before Mark Coyle's tenure. Some may yet argue that Coyle's head should roll for either putting in place, or not fixing a horrible Disciplinary System. One that got Destiny Pitts, our best Gopher Women's Basketball player, summarily kicked off the team (FAPP) with narry a chance to work this out verbally (with Whalen) and unthreateningly (read: no Swords of Damocles hanging over your head due to ridiculous paperwork that you're forced to sign under the gun).

For whatever reason, this actually happened. It should not have happened. The net effect is a huge blow to the Women's Basketball program that was otherwise at least starting to grow under leadership of Whalen and Pitts and Brunson and the Bello sisters.

Was Whalen hard-hearted and not willing to talk to Destiny? Don't know. But from my knowledge of Whalen, I suspect not. Was Whalen prevented from interacting with Pitts such as to resolve the issue in a more simple, non-threatening, caring manner? Don't know. But from my knowledge of how systems are capable of screwing up (check: General Systems Theory), I think so. At least I strongly suspect it. to be so in this case.

Claim: The actual Disciplinary System per se of the Athletic Department for student athletes, is the true troublemaker here. it's also almost certainly true that some fraction of the blame rests on Destiny Pitts' shoulders, and some fraction of the blame rests on Lindsay Whalen's shoulders. But I now am convinced more than ever that a mal-designed and mal-implemented Disciplinary System in the Athletics Department is culpable for the majority of the blame.

Systems can be like that. Just like in Software Engineering of a computer hardware/software system, the designers are never cognizant, in advance of the design/implementation, of what the true requirements are; and what oddball scenarios are typically not imagined at design/implementation time, but should have been if they wanted to get it right.

Conclusion: The Athletic Department Disciplinary System proper is mostly at fault here, although Destiny Pitts and Lindsay Whalen are no angels, and unfortunately, friction between them (plus the frustration of losing games that we should have won) were most likely the causal trigger of a chain of events that the Disciplinary System was ill-designed to handle.

I rest my case.

And my heart aches for Destiny Pitts. She didn't deserve being chewed up and spit out by the system.

Whether one wants to hold Mark Coyle responsible for implementing/approving an incredibly horrible Disciplinary System for athletic teams, that's your choice.

It might be more efficient just to re-design and re-implement the Athletic Department's Disciplinary System - along more humane and indeed human-compatible design principles - than to hire a new AD that is equally inept at (shall we call it) Disciplinary System Design Principles.

You are funny. How many humans have read the entirety of this post let alone the ones above? I bet two or less. How many would you guess? You have two posts in this tread that are longer than the Declaration of Independence.

 

[tripledouble]

I'm thinking that things were out of Whalen's hands by the time it got to the AD's office. 1) It never should have reached that point. 2) Once it did, it's my feeling that Whalen still should have fought for Desitiny, unless she was done with her. A lot has been said about the consequences for Destiny. Not enough has been said about the consequences for Whalen with this fiasco. It turned out to be a lose/lost situation for both.

I view any document to be signed from the athletic department as a CYA document. College basketball teams are like families. I've heard stories of some families that have written contracts signed by kids and some families may have even been successful with that, but to think that's something that's going to be universally successful in a disciplinary situation is silly.

And to those people who are placing Bobby Knight as someone who should be looked up to as the guru of discipline in today's world, that's silly also. It may have been successful in that era, but it's not going to play with today's athletes...and even then it wasn't right for everyone.

 

[Shades]

Fox TV Stations: Anvato Player Frame

 

[let'sbeclear]

You are funny. How many humans have read the entirety of this post let alone the ones above? I bet two or less. How many would you guess? You have two posts in this tread that are longer than the Declaration of Independence.

Yes, posts that long are the gopherhole.com equivalent of "poor body language."

 

[CutDownTheNet]

Nope, that's why I haven't expressed one. Also, not willing to go on rants and conspiracy theories when there are so many unknowns.

(By the way, for numbering purposes, this is my rant #3 in the
"Destiny Pitts Suspended & Taiye and Kehinde Bello Do Not Travel with Team to Illinois" thread
.)

Hey, @46Gophers, I really like your post. In spite of it seemingly being critical of my posts (which I don't mind at all - that's discussion and one of my aims is to stimulate discussion).

The specific good thing about your post is that it made me realize a key insight about this whole thread, not to mention my own longer postings, and an insight that helps us all understand each other's varying perspectives and arguments. Let's look at your post ...

> Nope, that's why I haven't expressed one. Also, not willing to go on rants and conspiracy theories when there are so many unknowns.

... part by part ...

> Nope, that's why I haven't expressed one.

That's cool for you. I, however, have expressed one - or I at least have made an attempt to guess at an approximation to what's really going on here. Notice the word "guess". It factors in below.

> Also, not willing to go on rants ...

I'll own this one. I am, in a sense, ranting on this topic. But I prefer to use the more gentle phrase, "exploratory creatinve thinking" than "rant."

Hey, one man's exploratory creative thinking is another man's rant. But I'm happy if you want to call it a rant.

A rant is typically when you're upset about something, and want to (perhaps) write about it to not only express your opinion, but maybe even blow off steam. And often-times, when people rant/exploratory-creative-think about something, their initial thoughts don't even make any sense at all. That's why, the better rants are are not the ones where you just write from your heart (as in, perhaps, free-form poetry) but those rants that you revise several times as you get better insights via the ranting process (or exploratory creative-thinking process, if you prefer my mouthful).

In my case, all attributes apply. I am upset about what happened to Destiny. In fact, I'm hoppin mad about the whole affair. I would like to get to the bottom of it, but initially did not know how, since verifiable facts are scarce in this case. If I could, would I rewind the clock and volunteer to be moderator in a meeting intended for Destiny and Lindsay to make nice? You bet.

My first draft of my admittedly verbose rant was not too useful, and perhaps just expressed the fact that I could "smell something stinky" in this whole Destiny/Lindsay fiasco. Where there's stink, there's perhaps something rotten in Denmark. And I wanted to understand it better so as to criticize whatever weak parts there may be.

My second draft was a lot better. I was able to gain potential insights just by the process of rant-writing. It began to become creative exploratory thinking in some sense. When I got it good enough to represent an outline of whatever more expansive insights were right around the corner (if I could only pull them out of a hat), I went ahead and published it. It constituted my "rambling thoughts so far" as to what might have transpired. I explicitly noted that it was all conjectural, albeit informed conjectures that may be in the ball park.

(By the way, I enjoy it when @Shades likes to jokingly poke fun at me for verbosity. He likes to call me @CutDownTheWords. Maybe some day I'll get to editing this down to the condensed version.)

> Also, not willing to go on ... conspiracy theories when there are so many unknowns.

That's really the key insight in your post. I want to replace the term "conspiracy theories" with a more technical one in a moment. But admittedly, my rant sounds like an elaborate conspiracy theory. And in a sense, it is. With my new insights from my later not-as-big-but-still-pretty-big post (rant #2), I now conjecture (putting it at a high level) that the Athletic Department's formal Disciplinary System "conspired" to cause the crazy results culminating in Destiny Pitts' entering the Transfer Portal, after (what I refer to in the first post, rant #1) for-all-purposes being summarily kicked off the Gopher Women's Basketball Team. As I described in rant #1, it wasn't a direct ejection, it was an indirect ejection by means of putting her in an untenable position, such that she quite literally had no other reasonable choice but to resign her Minnesota scholarship and transfer to a new, hopefully friendlier, school.

In rant #2 I believe I have discovered a first-order approximation to some additional details, not known at rant #1 writing time, but that now shed more light on how this whole affair went south.

Notice I use the terms "might be" and "conjecture" and "approximation" and "probability" a lot in discussing my own rants #1 and #2. That's because, as I admit from the get-go, all of what I'm writing about (a.k.a., ranting about) is mere speculation. I try to fine tune my conjectures such as to have a high probability of being relatively close to the truth. But as you point out with the phrase, "when there are so many unknowns," nobody knows what the exact truth is, here. Destiny's teammates perhaps witnessed a few things that make their approximation of the truth more accurate, but even they don't know completely.

when you try to create "exploratory creative thinkings" as complex as #2 and #3 by employing a large set of approximations to the truth, there's complexities not only in the (approximation of the) facts, but also in the (approximations of the) way that they relate.

At the end of the day, you get something that you might as well call a "conspiracy theory" since it's so conjectural, so approximate. But my aim is to obtain an outline of the truth, something that can serve as a working hypothesis, and although still full of conjectures all over the place, gain approximate insights into "what the heck went wrong between Destiny and Lindsay" and "why was it not able to be resolved more sensibly."

So my rants #1 and #2 very much look like conspiracy theories. But I claim that they are not so close to the Sci-Fi channel as one might think. I claim that even though they're chock full of conjectures, and if fact are arguably one giant convoluted conjectre by their very nature, I have taken some care to make sure that all my conjectures are as close to the known general facts as possible, and tie together in a reasonable, logical matter, such that the final result is less "conspiracy theory" and more "exploratory creative thinking."

The next thing I'll claim is that the common trait among many of the posts in this thread is that everybody is trying to do some form of exploratory creative thinking, just like myself. Just like me, everybody cares about Pitts, and everybody wonders "what the heck happened here," and "how did the situation devolve to the final Transfer-Portal result," and questions like that. Yet nobody can make a straight leap to the exact answer since "there are so many unknowns."
Furthermore, in most or at least many of posters (in this particular thread, that is) rationale for their "belief" (as I'll call it for lack of a better term) as to what happened or what might have happened, are employing (brace yourself for the technical term) "modal logic."

Modal logic is logical phrases concerning not necessarily "what is true," but things like "what might possibly be true," or "what must be true," or "what cannot possibly be true," or "what must be false," and so on. The theory of that is pretty complicated, and I had the class as an undergrad, but I'm due for a refresher course. But at a high level, we can underand that it involves connectives expressing relationships like the above.

So most posters in this thread that are (unlike @46Gophers) venturing some soft of opinion, or partial opinion in this thread, are, in reality, constructing argments in modal logic.

They/I start with suppositions that they believe in such as "it could not be true that Lindsay did X-and-such," or "it is quite possible that Destiny did Y-and-such," and so on. Based on these statements in modal logic as unproved suppositions (taken on faith by themselves based on the fact that they just cannot imagine otherwise, or sometimes supported by partial evidence among the large set of probable truths), they are actually using instictual modal logic (based on common sense, because they didn't read the book) to make deductions in modal logic. And thereby, they come to some tentative conclusions that are hopefully approximately true.

You all are posting little sub-theories that employ modal logic, if you will. Or, if you're a Sci-Fi afficionado, you might like to rephrase that as "you all are posting small partial theories based on modal logic, plus the conjectured ground truths that you think to be the most plosible.
You all have done a great effort on this. And in a lot of cases, different posters come up with opposite conclusions. That's mostly because different people are starting with different ground truths, in other word, different approximations to the real truth (that we don't know). Or maybe some of us made modal logic errors, who knows. Some conclude that Destiny is evil (typically based on a modal proposition like "Lindsay could not possibly have done Z-and-such." Some might conclude that Whalen "needs to be" (modal!) on the way out, or she "cannot possibly be held responsible" (modal) for this.

But the point is, we all, collectively, are getting partial insights as to what "might have transpired" (again note the modal language!) in the case of Destiny and Lindsay, and "how could it have gone so wrong" (modal).

Well, maybe because my initial exploratory creative thinking was more "ranty" than most, or maybe because I was more determined to "get to the partial truth' than most, my initial draft gradually got more and more comprehensive. I said to myself, well let's keep going. Let's try to draw any partial/tentative conclusions that I can with a goal to be more comprehensive, even if perhaps more speculative (more modal).

So the end product (the ground probabilstic truths, plus the modal logic, plus common sense, plus even articles just taken on faith that perhaps come from my knowledge of the parties involved) looks much more like a conspiracy theory to the casual reader - than any of the partial modal-logic arguments that you all have constructed.
I think they're all valuable, even if they're all merely conjectures. I probably lifted ideas from everyone's partial modal-logic argumentation.

The latest rant #2 is even more conjectural since it's more detailed, than the more general rant #1. But rant #1 informed the direction in which I took rant #2.

They're both conjectures. And (again with the modal language) it is almost certainly true that parts of this conjectural argument are, in reality, false or else not-quite-true-but-close, either due to wrong insights as to what might have happened, or tentative facts that are conjectures in their own right, but that I took as ground truth in order to start making sense out of this whole mess.

I came to the conclusion that (and lucky-guess me, it turned out to be exactly what my sixth sense suggested in the first place) that the bulk of the fault in the "sending Destiny packing" was due to the actual system itself - the formal "Disciplinary System" used by the Athletic Department to administer disciplinary actions to student athletes for alleged infractions. I'm more convinced than ever that this conjectural explanation might be (modal) closer to the truth than any other reasonable conjecture.

But your modal-logic mileage may vary. See if any of my conjectures make sense, and are self-consistent, and fit the general facts as we know them - and if any new facts are discovered, feel free to revise the conclusions that I have initially posited.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

You have "American lawyer" written all over you.

A good lawyer has to be able to succinctly make a point.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

Yes, posts that long are the gopherhole.com equivalent of "poor body language."

Love your great joke, @let'sbeclear and @Veritas too.

Let's hope that I'm not suspended indefinitely like Destiny was.

I don’t have to go through the Athletic Department’s Disciplinary System for my infraction of verbosity, do I. If so, then I, like Destiny Pitts, refuse to sign their ridiculous documents.

And I have no problem if you or anyone else does not have the time or desire to read it. Everybody has to make choices how to spend their time.

If one person reads them, and gets some insights out of them into the Destiny/Lindsay affair, that's great.

Even if nobody else reads them besides myself, the process of thinking it out, as well as perhaps the capability to read it again to refresh my mind (what was I thinking there again?) are worth the effort.

The end result is still conjectural (the caveat I noted originally). But I think it's conjectural with high probability of being more-or-less true. In other words, within the ball-park of containing sufficient truth to be insightful.

I got insights from working it out and writing it.

Also, it convinced me that my initial intuition was more on-track than I had imagined.

For the reader that wants the Reader's Digest version ...

I suspect that the lion's share of the responsibility for Destiny and Lindsay (seemingly mysteriously) being unable to resolve their differences in a sensible manner, is due to systemic issues in the Athletic Department's Disciplinary System and related processes, policies and procedures.

Coyle's Disciplinary System sent Destiny packing - in a nutshell.

I'm still upset that Destiny got treated this horribly. But I'm at least calmed a little bit by having an approximate estimation of what went wrong. That doesn't mean that we're anywhere close to having a solution in place to protect the next poor accused athlete from getting totally whacked by the Disciplinary System proper.

Also, if my conjecture (in rant #1 as extended by rant #2) is anywhere close to the truth, then that means that Destiny's statements in her tweet are true. She was totally blind-sided. And the system really did her wrong. Per my conjecture, Destiny did everything possible that she could do to try and make peace with Lindsay. And Lindsay was either not willing or not interested in working with her toward that end (in other words, became hard-hearted); or else (and I find this more likely) Lindsay was prevented by the mechanics of the Disciplinary System from resolving it that more-humane way.

By my theory, the Disciplinary System is perhaps 90% at fault. Destiny and Lindsay are perhaps 5% at fault, each.

If you want to attribute some fraction of the System's 90% to Coyle, that's your prerogative.

Or you could just believe that my research was waste of time. Certainly, you're free to not read it. Or, another alternative is that you could just take my above conclusions on faith. In the latter case, then my conjectural conclusions (summarized above) become modal-logic arguments from probabilistic ground truths, in which my final conclusions then become probabilistic truths to you, since you took my word on it, without proof. At least without a traditional symbolic-logic proof.

 

[CutDownTheNet]

A good lawyer has to be able to succinctly make a point.

Darn good thing I didn't go to law school, then. I would have flunked out.

I have to resort to a quote that is attributed to just about everybody. "I would have made it shorter, but I didn't have enough time."

I've found that in any business writing that I have to do, I generally have to do it in triplicate. (a) First a white paper (Word doc) that explains everything in sufficient detail, at least enough so that when I come back to it a year later, I can re-figure out what the heck I was talking about. (b) Then a synopsis paper (Word doc) for my immediate management that gives them an overview, but just enough meat that they can ask questions. (c) Then some slides (PowerPoint, maybe 2-10 slides depending on target audience) that gloss over everything for C-Level Suite management.

I'll let you know when the (c) version is complete.

But seriously, I do appreciate the comments. I suppose if enough people complain (well, I know @Shades is onboard), I'll have to break down and take a writing course. Trouble is, those courses make you write about topics you don't care about.

 

[let'sbeclear]

But seriously, I do appreciate the comments. I suppose if enough people complain (well, I know @Shades is onboard), I'll have to break down and take a writing course. Trouble is, those courses make you write about topics you don't care about.

I like that you take the jabs about the length and content of your posts with such good humor. And I love how much you obviously care about Gopher women's sports.

 

[EaganGopher22]

By my theory, the Disciplinary System is perhaps 90% at fault. Destiny and Lindsay are perhaps 5% at fault, each.

Based on how the U handled the situation for the 10 members of the football team a few years ago, your theory may be fairly well based (for several of the players, not all).

 

[Calgoph]

A good lawyer has to be able to succinctly make a point.

What Sir Thomas More said referencing lawyers...

"They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters." — Utopia, Bk. 2. (1516)

 

[fan of Ray Williams]

You are funny. How many humans have read the entirety of this post let alone the ones above? I bet two or less. How many would you guess? You have two posts in this tread that are longer than the Declaration of Independence.

Literally, that was the longest post I have ever, ever seen on Gopherhole. My goodness.