Here's the difference $C
by Bruins101NCAA on May 13, 2008 4:16 AM PDT
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Cruising the CondomChronicles and other sites, it never fails to amaze me to what lengths these USC fans go to make excuses for their team. They are beyond apologists; into the uncharted territory of the irrational mind. We cannot begin to fathom it—not even with deep diving bathyscaphes, the reasonable cannot sound the strange twists of logic that lead to such views. Who are the ones with the Myrmidons I wonder?
As far as I can tell, several themes have emerged from the standard SC fan:
- "It’s not the player or the universities fault, it is the 'scumbag' hanger-on who it making all this up because he is jilted by the now professional player." As if their current players come with squeaky clean credentials. Scumbags they be, but they are scumbags amongst scumbags. However, these particular scumbags were smart and grabbed documents to back-up their stories.
- "It’s not the universities fault because the athletic director, coaches, or compliance officers couldn't monitor everything these kids do." Here is where the term “INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL” comes into play. The two biggest scandals in college sports of late happened right over by Expo Park.
- "Everyone violates the rules, we just happen to get caught." No, you CONSISTENTLY violate the rules in MORE AND MORE PROFOUND ways.
- "UCLA is just as crooked—remember the body-parts scandal or the handicapped parking scandal?" This is the best argument? Not only is it a variation on pot/kettle/black, it’s also a “straw man” informal fallacy. For every one of our scandals there is a far more nefarious story at USC. Senora Ross, OJ, Bush, OJ2, racist Facebook, the list goes on and on and on with NOTHING being done about it.
Your scandals have nothing to do with ours. They do not take away from yours and the fact of the matter is, UCLA has done more to remedy the aforementioned scandals. We had a loose coach. He’s gone now. We had some shady people at the medical center. Guess what? They got fired. We had some players violate the law. Guess what? They were prosecuted. The difference here is that when something goes wrong, heads roll. When they go wrong over there, NOTHING HAPPENS! We can admit our scandals. You should try it sometime.
If you think for one minute that your little lame jabs back at us are hurting, you are sorely mistaken. I think that if you care about the reputation of your university, you will stop blaming others and take care of your own house because in case you haven’t looked around…
TROY IS BURNING.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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You have to remember
USC placed a handful of professional cheaters on Nixon’s Watergate team. This is what they do. Pointing the finger at UCLA is a tried and true method to deflect unwanted attention. It is not meant to prove anything to us, or the college sports world at large, it is meant to re-affirm their own feelings about themselves. And judging by the fall back position they are taking with this, it’s working well.
A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment. John Wooden
Delay, obfuscate, accuse
I worked on a really big case once. The other side acted like justsc – they bullied and lied. Eventually things cot up with them, and we got 18 discover sanction orders totalling $98K. But throughout the case (which is still going on following an appeal), they were very predictable. They said they wanted desperately to get to trial, but they did nothing but cause delays. They wrapped every issue in so much gibberish that it took a week to strip away the irrelevancies, and in motions they generated tons of paper which basically said nothing, but you still had to read it. I remember reading a hearing transcript on a motion to compel production of documents in which the lawyer for the other side said in the space of about a minute that (a) there were no documents, (b) they had produced the documents already, and© they would produce the documents by the end of the week. I am not making this up. But above all, they accused. They accused us of stuff they were guilty of. It was so predictable that we could do our motion and reply papers at the same time because we knew we would be accused of what they did.
And yes, the chief bad guy had a justsc connection.
But that’s what we can expect from justsc. They will stall. They will spin and get their smoke and mirrors working. And they will point the finger anywhere and everywhere but at themselves.
One good thing, I suppose. Being a trOJan is a pretty serious punishment in and of itself .
98K?
98K in discovery sanctions? OUCH! That has to hurt. Hope it was a big law firm.
I’m still in law school so I have no direct experience in these matters, but don’t you have to really screw up for monetary sanctions?
by Bruins101NCAA on May 13, 2008 3:56 PM PDT up reply actions
Unbelievable arrogance helped them.
Using the term “unbelievable arrogance” in a discussion of justsc – hey, that’s really a stretch. Anyway, along with unbelievable arrogance, they had a propensity for talking themselves into corners that they couldn’t get out of when we confronted them with actual facts (mostly things they had said in other proceedings or in pleadings they had filed.) Our discovery referee was a retired Supreme Court Justice, so it was pretty exciting to me when he asked me to call him by his first name. I had to explain that to me the first name of any retired Supreme Court Justice was “Justice.”
Anyway, it was an interesting case to say the least.
Don't Remind Bruins of Watergate
The Watergate analogy does not further your argument. While the chief dirty trickster was Donald Segretti a USC grad, the brains behind the cover up and numerous other problems with the Nixon Whitehouse were Haldeman and Erlichman, two UCLA grads, one a former Student Body President and big fundraiser for Pauly Pavilion.
Wow! MexiBruin -- What a great use of history.
For those who don’t know, a significant number of those sent to jail over Watergate violations were SC alums. Some were on tracks I almost took. My first job choice when leaving UCLA was to go into advertising and, at the time, J. Walter Thompson was the place to go. Some of the Watergate convicts were from JWT.
But, when the draft notices started coming, I ducked into the USC Law Center (where I got a great education). When ready to graduate, my first choice for a job was the Justice Department’s National Task Force on Organized Crime and Racketeering. But, people in the know told me that I ought to be very careful about joining a Justice Department run by John Mitchell; I had wanted to go to Justice to serve with Ramsey Clark who, after all these years, remains my favorite Attorney General. I turned down the position and went to work at BC before returning to CA. Why all this history? Because a bunch of the lawyers in that unit also got in trouble.
Mexi, the difference between then and now is that they were all punished. Amazing, isn’t it? The USC sports program is stronger than the rest of the university. is that they were all punished.
sjh
But remember...
H.R. Haldeman went to USC as well as UCLA.
by Bruins101NCAA on May 13, 2008 4:11 PM PDT up reply actions
Seriously
There is no need for getting worried about what those guys say. They are as predictable as this guy:
A friend of mine forwarded me an email from his Trojan colleague who ended with this line:
Fight on! Fight Investigations!
Informal Logical fallacies
Informal logical fallacies: The only interesting part of the the very boring subject that is Logic.
For those of you who are interested, I remember the red herring, the slippery slope, the ad hominem, and of course the straw man. It appears that they have different names depending on the author of the logic book.
by Bruins101NCAA on May 13, 2008 4:05 PM PDT up reply actions
Body Parts Scandal?
And that involved exactly how many athletes?
Stay on topic. Do not grasp at straws to try to find a flaw.
Lack Of Outrage
I too took a look over at the blogs from the dark side to see how they were reacting. I was amazed at how little outrage there was at how the Universty could let this happen and how all these scandal affect their image and reputation. Everything was the fault of the slimy agents and the program had absolutely no way to be suspicious of anything; just sticking their collective heads in the sand.
At least when the parking scandal hit you felt like the UCLA community found it very embarassing and demanded action rather than making excuses.
bru79 (formerly Calchas)
I welcome the comparisons
Any attempt to deflect wrongdoing by pointing the finger at UCLA inevitably comes to an uncomfortable conclusion for them. They may talk about the dirty Toledo years. Handicapped parking, the SUV, which they still haven’t let go of all these years later, not that I expect them to. Unfortunately for them, the next question becomes “what happened to UCLA?” People were held accountable. That’s the extension of the story that they don’t want to face.
Karma is a bitch, trOJies. And don’t think we’re going to forget about this scandal anytime within the next half century either. You’ll hear about it every single time you start a pissing match between SUC and UCLA. In case we forget, we will always be reminded of it, since OJ2 just happens to share the name with a certain famous double murderer who also happens to be your most famous alumnus.
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