Three Florida players, defensive tackles Jay-nard Bostwick and Darious Cummings, along with wideout Demarcus Robinson, were suspended for the Gators opener against Idaho – a game that was never played due to heavy rains.
On Monday, Florida head coach Will Muschamp said that even though the game was not played, the terminated game will count for their suspensions and all three will be available to play against Eastern Michigan. Predictably, Muschamp has faced some criticism for the decision in the past few days and responded Wednesday on the SEC coaches’ teleconference.
“It’s not just about suspending players for games, OK? There’s a lot of things that go into discipline,” Muschamp said, per Inside the Gators. “It’s about altering and changing behavior, which we’ve done. I think our discipline speaks for itself and how we’ve handled our football team, OK? So it's not just about missing games. If it's about suspensions, you never have an issue, right?”
Muschamp is right that there is more to discipline than holding players out of games, but at the same time, shouldn’t part of that punishment be for those players to not be able to help the team? To me, if I did something to let my teammates down and couldn’t play – that’d be the most impactful.
“At the end of the day, it’s more than that,” Muschamp continued. “There’s a lot of things that go into those situations, a lot more than people know. And it’s very frustrating for me as a coach to have someone be critical and you don’t even have all the information.”
Again, Muschamp is right that outsiders to the program do not know the whole story. If they did and a reason was given for the suspensions (which were announced the day of the Idaho game) to begin with, the criticism may never have arose whatsoever.
For more Florida news, visit InsideTheGators.com.
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Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
From Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo Sports - Florida coach Will Muschamp defends reinstatement of players suspended for terminated Idaho game
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