re: Could you support your team if a convicted child molester played on it?

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Then why did your school let Daniel Hood play? Did you stop rooting for them then?

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A lot of Tennessee fans did not want him to play. Unfortunately for those fans, the head coach, Kiffin, did.

He was also 13 years old at the time, which does change things a little, and served time in juvenile detention.

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Catholic High School principal Dickie Sompayrac had this to say in Hood’s defense: "We certainly don't want to minimize the terrible incident he was a part of six years ago. But it was six years ago. We would have never taken a chance on Daniel had it not been for all the character references he received and everybody that came forward. He's exceeded all of our expectations here at Catholic and has been a model student. The support he's received within our community is really unprecedented."

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There's also this

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According to multiple sources, Hood and his cousin have actually spoken several times over the past few years and are working to rebuild their relationship.

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and this from Hood

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“I had a good friend tell me I should go as far west as possible, but I don't think that it's a situation that I should try to avoid. It was heinous. It was awful. Any bad thing you could say about it would probably fit it. But I think it's not trying to put it in a corner and forget it ever happened. I think you have to take it and learn from it and grow from it...I've got a debt to [the victim] that I can never repay, just trying to throw it away like it never happened would be the worst thing I could do for her."

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you never plead Guilty to something you didn’t do

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If he pleaded Guilty he shouldn’t have listened to his councel, you never plead Guilty to something you didn’t do.

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this is not true and it's "counsel". There are plenty of situations where it can be more advantageous to pleading guilty even if you're not.

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If you do what he did I don’t think you should just get to say sorry and be accepted back. That’s just my opinion and I would not watch or buy tickets to a university event if they let someone like him play for them. That’s just me, I can’t speak for anyone else. Sitting by and not doing anything may be worse. It’s disgusting.

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I'm not saying what I would or wouldn't do, just providing a bigger picture as to some of the reasons they allowed him to play. Like I said, there were plenty of UT fans that did not want him playing, but that was Kiffin's decision not theirs.

So that's why we had fans bringing plungers to the Tennessee game in 09.

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I imagine child molestation wouldn’t be on that list.

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It depends. His plea deal included no jail time. If they had enough evidence to convict and he was looking at a long jail sentence, then it may have been in his best interest to plead guilty, as that's a pretty big risk to take when you're talking about losing your freedom. But that's not what you said. You said "you never plead Guilty to something you didn’t do" which is laughably ignorant.

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Maybe if they would have been as upset about that as there fake outrage over Schiano they could have gotten him to change his mind.

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You think Lane Kiffin, especially 9 years ago, gave two shits about what others thought or wanted?

If the stands would’ve been half full your damn right someone would have cared.

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If you didn’t do it, you don’t plead guilty and allow everyone to use that against you. Can the evidence really be that bad if you are innocent? Shouldn’t a good defense attorney be able to create plausible doubt? I know there are outliers but I’m talking in generalities here.

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You never know how things can go down during a trial. You can't take chances like that if the deal is a good one. You would be doing a disservice to your client just because he says he is innocent.