re: "He's a REALLY great kid"

My Dad was a high school coach and decades ago some of my teammates were USA Today Top 25 guys. I knew guys who went on to the NFL. That kind of talent. But sitting here on my laptop in my white-collar job, it's still hard to remember somethings that these kids are just kids. They just turned 18. A lot of them come from broken homes. A lot of them didn't have great parental examples growing up. I give them a break on their interview skills or minor mistakes (not felonies, but just immature kid stuff) that they might have gone through.

Any coach at any big-time program can turn a lot of these kids around. And a lot of them need it-- it's just a few of them get their mistakes published and then folks on messageboards go nuts.