Here is what is so funny about the whole death threat debacle.
If you go back to McSharkfvcker's initial comments, he was just tossing off his word salad, as he has done before. Talking in cliches. Rambling.
What he said about "death threats" was very generalized, and easily could have included the "drop dead, Mac" type of comments that fans were probably yelling. He never gave specifics about whether it was e-mail, phone calls, etc. It was just some sort of vague allusion to what tends to happen when most of the fans are angry at you.
And instead of the press or the fans throwing the guy a lifeline (i.e., nobody asked Nick Saban if the press was, literally, giving poison to his players and, if so, why he hadn't reported it to the authorities), everyone in Gaytor Nation decided to freak the fvck out and act as if his words were the most literal and specific words he had ever uttered. Even though the Corch never repeated or added specifics, and instead seemed to back off (just a bit, not a lot), the Gaytor fan sharks smelled blood in the water and treated EVERYTHING as if it were a serious crime.
This reminds me of when Kellen Winslow made the "soldier" comments. Even though football coaches and players have made military metaphors for decades, suddenly KW II was saying something "outrageous" and "offensive".
The bottom line is that the UF administration and the Gaytor fans WANT to misinterpret everything that McSharkfvcker says, so that they can get rid of him. And, at this point, it has gone so far that there's really no way that even the biggest Corch supporters can justify keeping him.
Sad. I was hoping we would have him to kick around a couple of years longer.
He wasn't misinterpreted at all. He unprompted brought up death threats in response to a question about the teams performance implying that his job had been made more difficult by fans threatening his family and players. That's not a generalized statement, why would general fan misbehavior be making HIS job harder? Not to mention he clarified in his second press conference that his family had received death threats but that he hadn't reported them and didn't plan to because he felt the threats were 'manageable ' whatever that's supposed to mean. So there's no misinterpretation.
Uh, no, that's not what happened.
First, the "death threats" comment came in response to a question on whether his coaches should get credit for "hanging in there". So the question was about the ability of the coaches to be resilient to pressure, not about whether their jobs "had been made more difficult".
Second, the context under which he was making the "death threat" comment was in a rambling bit about society in general, the level of anger that is displayed, and what is happening out there "NATIONALLY". So, yes, I was actually accurate in my first statement about the vagueness of whether McSharkfvcker was trying to talk about specific threats, or the way that society (generally) responds with anger and hatred in these situations.
Finally, as for whether his "family" had received threats, and whether he reported it to the police, he made it clear in the FIRST press conference that he was not commenting further, and that he had not reported it to the police. He then repeated that in the second press conference, while trying to soften the original comments by describing the death threats as "one or two misguided remarks" and calling the Gaytor fans "passionate" and "unbelievable".
Look, I understand why the Gaytor fans want to get rid of McSharkfvcker, but let's not BS about the situation and ignore the fact that (a) his first comments were vague, and (b) he tried to soften the blow in his second set of comments. Instead, Gaytor fans are trying to turn his words into very fact-specific falsehoods that are somehow allow UF to fire him for cause.
"Here's the full context of McElwain's comments. He was asked first about how his team has continued to fight, despite the suspensions, injuries and everything else. Then he was asked this follow-up question:
Q: Don't the coaching staff, coaches, these guys deserve some credit for hanging in there?
McElwain: "Credit in this business is internal, it's never external. You know, I think ... it's ... you know a good lesson for the way things are. There's a lot of hate in this world and a lot of anger and yet it's freedom to show it. The hard part is obviously when the threats against your own players, death threats to your families, the ill will that's brought upon out there, and yet I think it's really one of those deals that really is a pretty good testament to what's going on out there nationally. A lot of angry people. In in this business we're the ones they take the shots at and that's the way it is."
Not the response I was expecting. I wasn't alone there. Here's the next snippet:
Q: Death threats?
McElwain: "Mmmhmmm."
Q: Can you expand?
"No."
McElwain was then asked if he was "shocked by the level of the vitriol."
McElwain: "No, here's the one thing. You're in the business, that's all part of it. You get it. When it's directed towards your players, when it's directed to families, wives, that kind of thing ... and yet at the same time they know what they signed up for as well. That's part of the business."
The news conference turned back to football but returned to the threats twice more. McElwain was asked if he, personally, had received a threat. He shook his head and said, "Let's move (on)."
The final question was how the threats were communicated and if they felt the need to turn them over to law enforcement.
McElwain: "Nah. It is what it is."
