Florida State in many ways has had a difficult year. Their football season could have been better, they lost the soccer title match to USC (Fight On! :)), and they are now hit with a huge PR nightmare in football. Why? It was reported that at least two dozen athletes (just in football) will not be able to play in the Music City Bowl game against Kentucky due to being involved in an academic cheating scandal. Here is one of the statements that Coach Bobby Bowden had about the situation at FSU and making up for the large number of ineligible players:
“Naturally we’re having to make a lot of adjustments. We’ve got some guys who will be playing positions they haven’t played before.”
This is interesting– this quote focuses on the game– but what about this academic PR crisis? It seems to me that Coach Bowden is only focusing on the game, but not on what happened to make this situation a total crisis for FSU. I am sorry, but I think that Coach Bowden needs to realize that this situation goes beyond the Music City Bowl Game. Sure, it is going to be hard for them to win without having 22 players on the team, but the key is the impact that this is going to have on the reputation, image, and future recruiting for the university. What are people going to say about FSU as a program? The image that they are portraying to the media and various publics is a university that is overcome with many PR crises involving their athletes in academic situations.
Plus, this is going to impact the university as a whole from students to professors to administrators. Each time they are presenting at a conference or interviewing jobs, people might look at this situation and ask themselves– if this happens in the FSU athletic department, what does that say about the overall academic structure of the university?
This PR nightmare isn’t going to go away overnight, and Coach Bowden needs to realize that this isn’t just going to impact his football game, but his player’s futures as well. Student-athletes are at universities to get an education, and by cheating– they are hurting themselves and severely impacting their future. I believe that FSU needs to address this situation immediately and make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. This is just my opinion.
I hope you all have a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen 🙂
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