If I had serious enough pain and was that worried it might be an aggravation of a previous injury I wouldn't be looking over to the sideline asking if I should go down or not. You may not believe us, but that is what happened. I do agree that players shouldn't be individually booed - I don't have a problem with booing the coaches. The booing was for a player flopping after asking the sideline if he should or not. That is booing the strategy of flopping, not the player themselves. If I was booing the player I would be able to tell you which player it was that made me upset. I can't - that's because on that one play (the only time I personally booed) I was booing the strategy of flopping that appeared to be endorsed by the sideline. Granted I don't speak for everyone - and enough people made it personal that I felt bad about the response.
As for the "alleged" prior acts, watch this Youtube video - - this is one of the Georgia instances that I was talking about. Yours wasn't quite that obvious, but had a lot of similarities (hence the frustration of the Clemson fans). LSU did it something like 10 times against us the previous year. By the way - LSU and Georgia fans never complained about the booing in those games because they acknowledged that they were doing it. I understand that you don't believe that you did it at all, but at least half the stadium saw it differently. You have plenty of grounds for complaint on instances 2 and even more so on 3, but I'm not defending those.
I could agree with Lou_C's comments except for when we can see instances like the video above. As far as the comment about "breakneck pace," your comments are the reason that the NCAA instituted the substitution rule where defenses have the opportunity to substitute if the offense substitutes. That is fair.
I think the easy solution is that any player that comes out for an injury is out for a set amount of time or a set number of plays (greater than 1 - maybe 3-5). That would allow time for proper medical evaluation and address the "free time out" issue. If a team really wants a player back in more quickly despite an injury, then they can use a time out.
As I said before, I hope we can put this and last years incident behind us soon. I'm ok if it comes down to we think it was a flop and you don't - happens in basketball all the time. It's not going to be fun playing you guys every year if the fan bases resent each other and there is a lot of that right now. That is the part that upsets me the most. We take pride in being good hosts and we didn't meet that standard this time. You can say "get over yourselves" as much as you want, but I like the fact that we take pride in that. There are plenty of fans from other schools that view Clemson as one of their favorite road trips (minus the traffic at times). Louisville certainly felt that way. Auburn and Texas A&M too. Most FSU fans like the trip even though it is a huge rivalry. The booing apparently made it not that way for you all - that's a problem in itself. Hopefully your next trip will be better.
GO TIGERS!
Ken
