Justin Boren's father just wishes that all the speculation and murmurings surrounding his son's self-ziggy from the Michigan football program would all go away.
Well, tough. His son created this monstrosity; he can now deal with the fallout.
Boren, a starting offensive lineman and Honorable Mention All-Big Ten player in 2007, abruptly left the football team this week. No great crime there. Student-athletes are free to drop out whenever they'd like. But Boren didn't just quietly walk away.
“Michigan football was a family, built on mutual respect and support for each other from (former) Coach (Lloyd) Carr on down. We knew it took the entire family, a team effort, and we all worked together," Boren said in a statement.
“I have great trouble accepting that those family values have eroded in just a few months. ... That I am unable to perform under these circumstances at the level I expect of myself, and my teammates and Michigan fans deserve, is why I have made the decision to leave.”
And Mike Boren, who played at Michigan under Bo Schembechler, has the temerity to be agitated by the furor that those comments of his son's has spawned?
If you want to leave, leave. Boren was a starter, so simply leaving without saying anything at all might have been strange, too. But a simple, "I've chosen to go in a different direction" would have sufficed. You can't torpedo ALL speculation, but you can certainly do things to discourage some. And you can certainly do things to egg it on, which is what Justin Boren did with his cryptic, silly statement.
What in Hell's acre is he talking about? Family values? Talk about a hackneyed, overused, now almost meaningless term. You can't get much more broad, speculative, and non-committal than that.
In the first paragraph he lauds former Coach Lloyd Carr and the environment that he created. ("We knew it took the entire family, a team effort, and we all worked together"). Then in the next paragraph he says of new coach Rich Rodriguez, though he doesn't refer to him by name,
"I have great trouble accepting that those family values have eroded in just a few months."
So here's what any clear-thinking, sane person can gather from Boren's statement.
Coach Rodriguez has, "in just a few months", fostered an environment where it DOESN'T take a team effort, and everyone DOESN'T work together. He's eroded those mystical family values, after a few spring practices.
Here's father Mike: "We wanted to have this go away quietly, but we didn't want people to think he's a quitter or couldn't handle the system. There were definitely problems. It just could not work. Justin went to the right people and tried talking to people, but no one wanted to listen."
Note to dad: if you want things to "go away quietly", then you don't toss out head-scratching, vague statements such as the one your son issued. This is MICHIGAN. Your kid didn't leave some small, podunk school here. And as for Justin wanting to talk to people and no one wanting to listen, that's just more fodder for everyone to kick around. Another cryptic remark.
So now we're all left to submit our own version of what went down between Justin Boren and Michigan football, i.e. Rich Rodriguez. The coach, for sure, won't comment. He only likes to talk about the kids who play for Michigan, as it should be.
It amuses me when people plant seeds then act incredulous when things start sprouting. Yes, this will pass. We will move on. But don't whine about the interim storm, when you created those conditions to begin with.
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