Washington Post Tony Franklin Article
- Thread starter rcodeman
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Any investigation should be totally outside the university or board of trustees.
Any result that cleans house here (no more of the three stooges) will be a satisfactory result.
Any result that cleans house here (no more of the three stooges) will be a satisfactory result.
Yea I agree with you. It is definitely a bad look. I just don't see it producing what we all want it to. I think if it is at least partially true then Stock, Massaro, and McPhee all need to go. Regardless of your views on the restrictions for the pandemic it does not set a good example if the ones in charge do not follow them. I am sure there are a lot of requirements handed down by CUSA and NCAA that Stock and many other coaches do not like, but if they do not abide by them they get in trouble. This should be no different.
dnj article is a cliff notes summary, not the hard hitting piece MT fans need or want
Ex-MTSU offensive coordinator Tony Franklin speaks out about COVID-19 concerns, per report
In a story by The Washington Post, former MTSU offensive coordinator Tony Franklin said he raised questions on COVID-19 issues more than once.
www.dnj.com
linked a gomiddle thread from that period
Stock on tape admitting wrong-doing?
https://twitter.com/search?q=travis%20hamilton&src=typd&lang=en
middletennessee.forums.rivals.com
WaPo is national media so it’s already there.
The premise that some want this to be true to unload Stock is irrelevant.
I don’t believe TF more than Stock because I want Stock gone. I believe TF because there is a pattern of behavior with this program under Stockstill covering stuff up and undermining people including players when it fits his agenda.
Further the smoke here is not only the past occurrences of things being smoothed over or covered up but the fact that:
a) TF had no reason to create a problem when he still has $700K due to him over the next two years. My only beef with TF is doing this after the season instead of when he should have he felt people weren’t being safe then he contributed to it by not speaking out then.
b) while it appeared they were trying to do the right thing initially it’s clear that quickly faded and Stock didn’t take the situation seriously. We could see that on TV. The evidence here is the fact that as the season went on we kept having more and more players catching it to the point we couldn’t even finish the season.
c) at least one player admitting the environment wasn’t safe and being taken seriously.
The internal “investigation” probably wasn’t even legitimate and was nothing more than the AD asking a few questions. So, here’s the litmus test. The university should release the details of the investigation. Otherwise, this was nothing more than a paper tiger to ensure the University’s reputation wasn’t impacted by this. Which has now already failed to do so.
The premise that some want this to be true to unload Stock is irrelevant.
I don’t believe TF more than Stock because I want Stock gone. I believe TF because there is a pattern of behavior with this program under Stockstill covering stuff up and undermining people including players when it fits his agenda.
Further the smoke here is not only the past occurrences of things being smoothed over or covered up but the fact that:
a) TF had no reason to create a problem when he still has $700K due to him over the next two years. My only beef with TF is doing this after the season instead of when he should have he felt people weren’t being safe then he contributed to it by not speaking out then.
b) while it appeared they were trying to do the right thing initially it’s clear that quickly faded and Stock didn’t take the situation seriously. We could see that on TV. The evidence here is the fact that as the season went on we kept having more and more players catching it to the point we couldn’t even finish the season.
c) at least one player admitting the environment wasn’t safe and being taken seriously.
The internal “investigation” probably wasn’t even legitimate and was nothing more than the AD asking a few questions. So, here’s the litmus test. The university should release the details of the investigation. Otherwise, this was nothing more than a paper tiger to ensure the University’s reputation wasn’t impacted by this. Which has now already failed to do so.
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The Washington Post is national news sure, but it is not really gaining any traction. I looked on Twitter and if you type Tony Franklin the DNJ story comes up (0 comments as of right now). I looked at the Washington Post's Twitter and did not find the story. It is on the author's (Kent Babb) page and has a whopping 7 comments, 27 retweets, and 52 "likes".
Right. And now we’re hearing upwards of 40 players plus additional staffers caught it. We have no clue what the long term effects of this are, either. If I’m the parent of a player who contracted Covid AND I can prove negligence by those tasked with overseeing my child’s well-being...well that ain’t gonna sit well with anybody.
I didn't have tickets, but if ticketholders filed a class action lawsuit over the missed home games it could get national attention. If the missed games could be connected to negligence, maybe it would embarrass them enough to make a change. I know it's a reach, but I've been known to dream.
This is a good point. To take that a step further, how did the team contribute to ongoing community spread. How many of those players infected someone else that may have died over it? There were over 70 deaths in RuCo in December alone. I spent the month Tenn because I had a bunch of time to burn. If I knew how to attach photo would post one of the entire state of Tenn in the red on a hotspot map.
A National advocacy group has posted in the facebook group.... and Chris Hinton and his wife have been meeting with NCAA and gov't officials about this. So it may get some traction.
As bad as this looks for MT and this staff/ administration. The same article could have been written with ( insert any school here) in the headline. This may just light the fire.
Just watch any sideline on any given Saturday. There is no consistency in following the “rules”
Just watch any sideline on any given Saturday. There is no consistency in following the “rules”
With Tony Franklin, you have to consider the source. He's a loon. I mean crazy as hell. I trust nothing he says ever. He spins everything to make himself look like a saint which is far from the truth. MT was doing nothing that any other team wasn't doing. Look at Charlotte. When did they not have Covid? Hell, the waterboy and half the fans got it the way they kept missing games. Every team kept playing when they shouldn't. UAB had the same issues and they won the conference.
I'm not defending Stock at all. I'm just saying that thing is so overblown it's laughable. Very skewed and 100% hearsay.
I'm not defending Stock at all. I'm just saying that thing is so overblown it's laughable. Very skewed and 100% hearsay.
Also, Tony was sending the Washington Post stuff before the season began. Isn't that a breach of his contract? Dude is a cancer. So glad his crazy ass is out of here. If him and Stock argued everyday, no wonder why kids left the program.
Why didn't he just quit in March? Why did he take the money paid by an unethical school and coach? Why did he make an average of 300k a year for his career from this "violent" game and never donate it all back to medical research if he cared so much? Also, he went bankrupt while making all of this money and selling his TF spread system. I'm telling you, he's gonna end up in an insane asylum. He's as mad as a hatter. He wrote a "tell all" book when he left UK. Come on. Why did anyone hire him after that? What a nutjob. Kudos to the Washington Post for making toilet paper during the Covid crisis. Complete B.S.
Stock's an A hole but we knew that. We did nothing that just about every other D-1 school didn't do.
Why didn't he just quit in March? Why did he take the money paid by an unethical school and coach? Why did he make an average of 300k a year for his career from this "violent" game and never donate it all back to medical research if he cared so much? Also, he went bankrupt while making all of this money and selling his TF spread system. I'm telling you, he's gonna end up in an insane asylum. He's as mad as a hatter. He wrote a "tell all" book when he left UK. Come on. Why did anyone hire him after that? What a nutjob. Kudos to the Washington Post for making toilet paper during the Covid crisis. Complete B.S.
Stock's an A hole but we knew that. We did nothing that just about every other D-1 school didn't do.
I say fire Will Healy and Willie Taggert tomorrow then if this is the new standard. Their teams had way more Covid cases than we ever thought about. UAB too.
I am good with that as long as we hire one of them after firing Stock. Preferably Healy.
These situations are different though. Charlotte's situation was clearly one that was bad luck where they actually did protect player safety and did everything they could to avoid team spread whereas you see all sort of signs at MT where the exact opposite was true. See below for some additional context in how different Healy felt about all this vs how Stock felt about it.
Opinion: As college football reaches finish line during pandemic, was it all worth it?
There were many different versions of the experience of playing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but teams made it to the end - for better or worse.
www.usatoday.com
LOL!!! I totally call B.S. on that bro. Words are one thing and actions are another. Plus, the results were the same. They had more cases than we did. They still played so they were all complicit.These situations are different though. Charlotte's situation was clearly one that was bad luck where they actually did protect player safety and did everything they could to avoid team spread whereas you see all sort of signs at MT where the exact opposite was true. See below for some additional context in how different Healy felt about all this vs how Stock felt about it.
Opinion: As college football reaches finish line during pandemic, was it all worth it?
There were many different versions of the experience of playing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but teams made it to the end - for better or worse.www.usatoday.com
At the end of the day........the fact remains that Stock and Massaro brought him back to Murfreesboro on a 5-year guarantee at $300k+, knowing full well of TF’s baggage (before and after) his first stint with us. This is why they all need to go. When a staff is not pulling in the same direction, that is all on the Head Coach and his Boss.
Just my two cents.
Just my two cents.
The worst thing is Massaro still did not learn his lesson with bad contracts. After everyone in the sports world (many outside of TN) said the Stock contract is the worst in history, then we lockup an offensive coordinator for 5 years! When again, the results on the field have been on a steady decline for years. No coordinator ever gets 5 years, let alone when your HC is already on a bad contract and the team is underperforming. Why do that????
This is the real issue for me. Massaro STILL does not get it. How in the world this guy is still in charge is beyond understanding. I really hope the COVID safety issues run him out of town. He has no clue what he is doing and McPhee just lets it happen. Pathetic.
Well. Something is happening. At least for me. They lost at least one more person who clearly cared more than they do.
Or maybe Massaro is simply doing what McPhee is telling him to do. Could be a possibility. Either way, we are a $hit show.
One comment about Franklin’s description of his dust up with Stock and being the staff outcast..........,
The majority of college coaches are just aged football players. They still fight to settle their differences and act like they did in college. My Soph. year Spring game at Memphis, Blue team was coached by OC and Gray team by the DC. They split the squad pretty evenly between the 1’s and 2’s. At the end of the game, we had to break up a fight between our OC and DC at midfield over a last second field goal attempt by the DC. The OC came running and screaming across the field about “running up the score on him” and took the first swing at our DC. It was on then. My DC was a former St. Louis Cardinal linebacker.
The Head Coach came running down from the press box and ripped them a new one.
The same DC was rumored to have thrown my DB’s position coach into a wall in a staff meeting and broke a couple of ribs. He got fired the next year and my DB Coach was promoted to our new DC. Good times. 😂😂
The majority of college coaches are just aged football players. They still fight to settle their differences and act like they did in college. My Soph. year Spring game at Memphis, Blue team was coached by OC and Gray team by the DC. They split the squad pretty evenly between the 1’s and 2’s. At the end of the game, we had to break up a fight between our OC and DC at midfield over a last second field goal attempt by the DC. The OC came running and screaming across the field about “running up the score on him” and took the first swing at our DC. It was on then. My DC was a former St. Louis Cardinal linebacker.
The Head Coach came running down from the press box and ripped them a new one.
The same DC was rumored to have thrown my DB’s position coach into a wall in a staff meeting and broke a couple of ribs. He got fired the next year and my DB Coach was promoted to our new DC. Good times. 😂😂
College kids are gonna do what they please. Don’t care if its football, frats or college jobs this could have happened. Many folks have worked every day since last March so trying to draw this correlation seems irrelevant. If I had a son here in this senecio I hope they take precautions but nothing is fool proof. I’d rather focus on the programs lackluster approach to growth and absolutely piss poor fundraising efforts for the entire university. Complete and utter disappointment.
Y’all don’t know one bit about what you’re spewing. It’s pure entertainment to read, SMH, and and stupidity. Find another team to support. You won’t be missed. Go blue
Judging by the number of fans in the stands at Floyd, it seems like quite if few of them have found other thing to do on Saturdays. Nothing screams home sweet Floyd quite like an empty stadium
Yep. Senior Day and Homecoming crowds the last few years have evoked classic player quotes like, “where everybody at????” and visiting crowds from WKU and UAB match the home side and student sections if you don’t count the Band of Blue. Truth.
crposton on Wed.: "The Washington Post national news sure, but it is not really gaining any traction."
Definitely not locally. Been in vehicle since it broke and heard not one word on sports talk and nothing in The Tennessean or on TV news. Reminds me of the time that a MT BkB game was the lead on ESPN sports center and no mention on any of the local TV 10:00 sports portion of news cast. Got a feeling someone connected with MT athletics would have to shoot someone in The Murph to get any coverage. With the Titans disappointing early playoff loss, the start of the Preds season, and the clusterf--k in Knoxville there is no room for happenings in M'boro. Shows just where we are in the pecking order of the mid-state sports world.
As for FranklinRaider31's comment about players asking where the crowds are: Could this be the reason we don't appear to recruit hard locally and are more successful away from the area's media market where it's easier to imply we have more support than we have? Gotta believe many of our recruits are surprised at the lack of attendance once they hit the field for the first home game.
Definitely not locally. Been in vehicle since it broke and heard not one word on sports talk and nothing in The Tennessean or on TV news. Reminds me of the time that a MT BkB game was the lead on ESPN sports center and no mention on any of the local TV 10:00 sports portion of news cast. Got a feeling someone connected with MT athletics would have to shoot someone in The Murph to get any coverage. With the Titans disappointing early playoff loss, the start of the Preds season, and the clusterf--k in Knoxville there is no room for happenings in M'boro. Shows just where we are in the pecking order of the mid-state sports world.
As for FranklinRaider31's comment about players asking where the crowds are: Could this be the reason we don't appear to recruit hard locally and are more successful away from the area's media market where it's easier to imply we have more support than we have? Gotta believe many of our recruits are surprised at the lack of attendance once they hit the field for the first home game.
I'll be honest...I've never really understood the "You aren't a 'true fan', go find another team to support" argument.
1) If a fan is "disengaged", why? (This is something Stockstill, Massaro, and McPhee need to be asking)
2) If you run off the "disengaged" fans, your fan base is likely shrinking, not growing. And that's a problem.
3) It wreaks of "self-righteousness." It divides the 'true fans' from the pretenders.
And let's be honest, right now, MT needs all the fans it can get. It needs their $$$ to build facilities, improve existing facilities, and keep Floyd from looking like a old rusted car
Purely a theory / speculation on my part : Could one of the reasons MT struggles to recruit local talent is local players know the support from the local / MT community is dwindling?
So Stock tries to recruit a DB from Oakland High School. Recruit isn't interested because he knows how the community supports MT. So he goes elsewhere (even to another Sun Belt / C-USA school). Stock and Co get tired of being told "no" from local players so put their money / time / energy elsewhere
You know it’s a bad sign when a pandemic doesn’t significantly alter your attendance. It’s already so poor the drop isn’t that significant.
This is possible, but I would argue local support is poor at most SB/CUSA schools. As a HC, you cannot stop showing love locally. That has to remain a priority no matter how many times you hear no.
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Please, tell me what is going on
I think Franklin has pretty well confirmed the rumor I heard from a very reliable source that he, our Offensive Coordinator, was banished to an office by himself away from the staff somewhere in the bowels of the press box for most of last season.
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