Now that it has been a few years: What was the story with Michael Dyer?

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He likes his guns and weed

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But who doesn't like guns and weed?
That wasn't the problem. The problem was that most of us can pretend like we don't like guns and weed enough to keep our scholarships and our jobs. Mike Dyer couldn't do that.

It doesn't matter how you want to label it. Michael Dyer was horrible at making choices, even with his future hanging in the balance.

He was also a 20 year old freshman. Not your usual wide eyed teenager. It was clear he wasn't going to improve his behavior quickly

No doubt, and I can agree with that to a certain extent. I get making a poor choice and living with the consequences because of being young. However, when you make that same poor choice over and over in the face of great loss, and you can't do the right thing? There may be more problems than youth happening there.

By the way, I made my fair share of poor choices at that age, but never would I make the choice of knowingly let my friend take a weapon I own to go commit a crime.

I do agree with your overall message though. It's pretty accurate.

Is the "Im a man, I'm 40" not one of the best coach meltdowns?

You know that dude was sooooo pissed heading to that press conference to go off like that.

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I get making a poor choice and living with the consequences because of being young. However, when you make that same poor choice over and over in the face of great loss, and you can't do the right thing?

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I've been on this of late, thinking about it's ramifications...A lot. Go with me here for a second.

I used to think that the verse in Proverbs (22:6) "Train up a child in the way in which he shall go and when he is old he will not depart from it", was good, solid biblical advice on raising children. But then it dawned on me...it is an immutable truth about the power of modeling...which is to say that WHATEVER way in which he is raised, when he is old he will not depart from it. It is inescapable. That's what happened to Mike Dyer (and others like him).

Those neuronal pathways of piss poor decision making that were modeled were too powerful to overcome. They had been paved like a 6-lane superhighway in his mind by the time he grew up. Hence the repeated failures in spite of what would seemingly be obvious negative consequences. We can break that path, but few ever do...it takes transformation...and a LOT of work. Work to consciously pave new pathways in the brain despite our own biology working against us. Work that we don't or won't do as teenagers and young adults because we are not mindful enough to see it.