Derek Dooley denies Bryce Brown a release to play for Kansas State

Act like a man and you’ll come out ok in the end.

For instance, Douglas apparently wanted out of Knoxville to clear up his personal issues, hence the “8-hour drive” restriction.

Stephens was probably up front and Dooley cut him loose.

Lamaison I don’t think was, left campus, said he wouldn’t be back, and still has no release.

If we can learn anything from these situations, I think it’s that CDD will definitely teach these athletes some lessons in responsibility whether or not they’re needed.

“although I’m not convinced…”

As in, perhaps Dooley was harder on Brown because of his talent

Earn your scholarship, earn your release.

I don’t think Dooley would have a problem releasing someone like in the case of Tyler Smith or even Brandon Warren.

A petulant child with too many voices in his ear is one thing, a serious, documented family tragedy is another.

A reinforcement of the action /consequence idea that he seems to be focused on. Basically, if you’re going to pout your way to leaving the program, don’t expect the program to make things any easier on you in the process. An analogy might be like trying to get a letter of recommendation from a former employee. It’s always easier to get one when you worked hard to the end and left a good impression.

Excellent post.

And it rubs me the wrong way that Dooley lied to the media about the meeting, even if it was only temporarily. I don’t need him or want him to tell us everything that goes on behind closed doors, but I at least expect what he says to be true.

It’s making a point to a degree, but it’s also consistent with what he’s done with other transfer requests, using the qualifications mentioned above in the comments (commitment to the program, value to the team, how the player handled the situation).

We’ve had five transfer requests since Dooley took over. He released Todd Campbell (WR) and Nick Stephens, who was thought to be in the mix to start at QB. He granted a conditional release (has to play eight hours outside Knoxville) to Aaron Douglas, our freshman All-American left tackle. He did not release Bryce Brown or Nick Lamaison, a juco transfer QB. He’s treated each situation in a unique way (because each situation is) but overall been consistent to his guidelines for transferring.

What was said in all these meetings between Dooley and the Browns? Also, what in Dooley’s history caused him to come up with these guidelines for transfer requests? This isn’t a system that sprung up out of the blue, and I doubt it’s one he had to worry much about at LaTech. That gets me back to his time with Saban at LSU: what did Dooley learn about player/school relationships then?

I’m far from settled on it myself, and bobo very eloquently stated the problems as well. I’ve tried looking at the most positive spins to see what logic makes the most sense, but it’s not easy to understand the decision independent of any emotional context (which is what Dooley claims he’s doing).

At least that’s what I’ve been told by someone who’s been reliable in the past. That unreported fact sheds a bit of light on the situation, but even with it, I’m sure it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Bottom line, Dooley has all of the facts (or at least more than we do), and he’s made a decision. We can second guess him based on our more limited understanding of things — that’s what we do — and we can talk about perception because that’s extremely important.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that Dooley has said — perhaps more accurately, led us to believe — that he didn’t meet with Brown, but Brown’s dad is saying they did meet and Dooley told him not to talk about it. Dooley may have been lawyering the statements a little bit, saying only that they hadn’t met in his office and Brown hadn’t looked him in the eye and asked for a release or something tortuously parsed like that, but the perception is that either Dooley or Brown’s dad is lying about the meeting, and Dooley can’t afford to be perceived as having lied right now, what with his emphasis on changing the culture, character education, and telling the kids that he’s going to have to win their trust.