Florida fan criticizes Muschamp, praises Miles after injury
Florida wide receiver Latroy Pittman was seriously injured Saturday night against LSU. Pittman took a shot to the back of the head, and he was motionless for several minutes on the field and was eventually carted off the field.
Thankfully, Pittman is okay, and he was released from the hospital.
But one Florida fan Kyle Morgan was really impressed with the way Les Miles and LSU reacted to the injury, and he took to Facebook to let his thoughts be known, via NOLA.com:
“So tonight one of our players was gravely injured in the last minute of the game. I hope Latroy Pittman turns out to be fine or recovers speedily.
“But now I have to stop and thank Les Miles and the LSU Tigers. As some are aware, LSU tends to be seen as rougher around the edges than is normal in the SEC. However, their class in the last minute of the game proved exactly why they deserved to win. Upon Latroy’s injury, they removed their helmets and knelt in respect for a fallen player. They clapped when their own injured player got up but remained on their knees with helmets off since ours was still being strapped onto the board to be carted off.
“On our sideline, exactly six of our more than 70 players knelt. Undoubtedly these learned their decency not from Will Muschamp but from their old high school head coaches, since Muschamp took the opportunity to huddle his defense and in typical fashion, yell at them.
“Almost 7 minutes passed before it occurred to him that he may need to go check on the boy the Pittman family entrusted to his care. Of course, Will couldn’t be bothered to talk to Latroy. No, he simply walked up, poked a trainer on the shoulder, asked her a question and jogged away.
“LSU continued exhibiting the kind of well-led honor that any decent coach would instill in his players by approaching Latroy once he was on the cart and expressing their sympathies. Indeed after two dozen LSU players had done so a few Gators broke ranks and showed they could learn from a good example by doing the same.
“So I would like to thank Les Miles for improving the lives of roughly a dozen Gators more in five minutes than Will Muschamp had done in YEARS.
“We lost again. We turned the ball over a lot and stuck with a QB who lacks improvement again. We got tired made bad mistakes on defense late again, and relied on desperation plays to keep it close again.
“But more importantly we responded to our fellow man going down by ignoring him and using his injury as a long timeout to yell at defenders who just watched a friend, roommate, teammate get hurt.
“Fire Will Muschamp, Jeremy Foley. If not for being a bad head coach who can’t win enough games, then do it for the better reason. Fire him for failing to be a leader of men. Fire him because he lacks the respect for an injured player that over 80,000 other people possessed in that stadium. Fire him because he’s a bad human being.
“Thank you again Les Miles and the LSU Tigers. I hope one day we might again contribute to the class of the SEC. You helped our young men learn about class tonight. Your fans should be proud of you. I’m proud to have seen you and your 70+ men. Good game and goodnight.”
Photo credit to Christopher Smith, who sent the photo in via email.
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