Instead of bashing Coach Saban for giving a player a second chance he should have been praised.
NOW
Coach Saban should be praised for dismissing a player who failed in his conduct, on his second chance.
In both cases I think Coach Saban tried to do the right thing. (That's why I applaud him)
If you must bash... If it were your son, would you want him to have a second chance to show the world he had changed?
Taylor failed Coach Saban and our football team, by going back to his old ways. Now he pays the price.
I'm not going to bash him for giving the kid a chance, but there's another side to this ... what if it were your daughter that this guy (allegedly) committed his second offense upon?
The fact of the matter is that if this had happened at AU or UT, Alabama fans would be talking about how it was "in the culture" or that the coaches were displaying a "win-at-all-costs mentality." I know they would because it has happened a million times in the past. The uncomfortable truth about modern college football is that you have to recruit guys on the fringe of morality sometimes because they can do things other guys can't do. The fact is, if Taylor was a general student and not an athlete, no second chance would have been forthcoming. He would have been kicked out of school after the first offense and people would have applauded the university president for making campus a safer place.
In other words, I neither applaud nor condemn Saban for giving Taylor a second chance. It's business. We can dress it up in the trappings of redemption and feel-good stories, but it's business.
The only complaint I have with the way it was resolved is that I would have let the dismissal announcement come from either the AD or the president's office. But I get both sides of that argument. On one hand, they want Saban to look like the guy that let him go. I'm sure Saban was on board with it, but UA admin was the one that actually let him go as per the terms of his signing, and I would like to have seen them make the announcement as a way to establish chain of command. But that's a minor detail.