A lovely article by Dennis Dood of CBS Sports Com http://www.cbssports.com/#!/collegefootball/story/14962824/waiting-for-seriousness-of-situation-to-kick-in-for-notre-dame
The report certainly generated a lot of feeling amongst ND fans and graduates. There are those that feel like Dodds does, that not naming names, that is assigning a person responsibility for the incident is a failure. There are those, like me, who view the incident as a failure in the system, that no one person went out there intending to put Declans life at risk. They all went out to do a job, including Declan. It ended badly. The Sullivans as a family have issued the following statement. Fr. Jenkins has apologized to the Sullivan family publically and I have no doubt privately as well. He's said numerous times that the Sullivans entrusted Declan to Notre Dame and that "we" failed to keep him safe. I have no doubt that sometime in the near future that there will be a memorial scholarship given each year in Declans name. None of this of course brings back Declan. I am content that steps have been taken to correct the lax supervision and conditions that allowed this to happen. For one ND will no longer us lifts to put videographers up in the air to film practice. They have installed remote controlled cameras on fixed polls. There is no doubt some financial settlement with the Sullivans as well, but it's highly unlikely that we will ever know for sure or what amount was settled. Tragic and preventable series of bad judgements, bad information, lack of training, lead to his death. I often wonder why he agreed to go up in the first place, or when he was up there he had the ability to lower the lift and come down why didn't he? But he was a young kid who no doubt wanted to do his job and probably never considered challenging those who he worked for. This is not to put any of the blame on Declan, it was adults who were making bad judgements and mistakes.
That's about what I'd expect from Dodd. He has points, covers them in hyperbole and a few ill tempered tangents. It's a shame. It takes a way from some really good points he was trying to make. I'm no fan of how any of this Declan Sullivan tragedy has been handled at all. In my opinion, I would have cleaned house. That's just me. That being said... if you want to start calling out BCS bloats for their hypocrisy and overall lack of humanity, then you better bring more than one finger.. Which, he doesn't.
The whole issue of somebody being named and held responsible rather than the collective "we" were wrong, "we" made mistakes has been beaten to death over on NDNation. I'm on the side of collective guilt. That Dodds would jump on this is not a surprise. It's what he does.
Notre Dame was all thumbs handling this one and that's what gives the backseat drivers an open shot. In no way do I think Kelly had even the remotest involvement with this but someone had to answer for this. His (Sullivan's ) immediate supervisor would have been a logical place to start. It was a horrible accident, a gust of wind. This young man took the time to text his friends about how scary it was. Perhaps he should have just climbed down?
My reason for posting this was not to throw stones at Notre Dame, but it appalls me to see how these sportswriters spare no one, in their ability to put their thoughts out there for all to see, right or wrong. Yesterday Jack Nickalus spoke out about the issues confronting Ohio State. He went on to say that President Gee and AD Smith had to know what was going on and that Tressel is the fall guy??
I don't really disagree with you, but I'm sure that his immediate supervisor felt that if Kelly brought them out on the field his staff was going to do their job. He's one of any number of people who could have said, holy crap it's windy as hell out here I don't think we should put the lifts up today, including Kelly. In the end, to me at least, I don't think you could have placed the blame fairly on one individual it would have had to be on a number of people on the scene that day including Kelly.
There's not much to say about what Dodd wrote other than he didn't bother to read the report. It was rather lengthly and the university had a well respected individual Dr. Peter Likins oversee the investigation. Dr. Likins had been a provost at Columbia before being president at Lehigh and Arizona. He pointed out he has no connection with Notre Dame. The report wasn't a whitewash as Dodd wrote, it just wasn't the witch hunt he would have liked. Someone had to hang. Unfortunately neither they university or the IOSHA investigation was able to identify anyone who knew that conditions were unsafe. The fact is the national weather service was reporting gusts up to aprox. 30 mph at 2:46 when the decision to practice outside. (note that the gust that caused Sullivan's death was recorded at 53 mph.) The investigative report is at this link. http://nd.edu/assets/files/notre-dame-investigation-report.pdf
Don we've all had our turn in the barrel lately haven't we. BTW do you have a link for this? I curious as to why Jack would even bother to comment publically about the situation.
Terry, Here is the link for the complete story: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/sports/stories/2011/04/18/Nicklaus-on-Tressel-situation.html?sid=101
I have not posted on this previously wanting to wait instead for the details to come out in public following the completion of the investigation, but I recently had an interesting conversation with a University official - not connected with the Athletic Department - where he told me basically the same thing as Jack is suggesting.....that he believed that Tressel was taking the hit for Smith. I was never satisfied with the logic behind that and wasn't certain the guy was giving me facts or his opinion......fwiw. We will wait and see......sorry to for the hijack.....
Safety is an issue that goes further than the Head Coach. While I agree with the State findings that there were safety violations, I do not agree that the head coach has all the responsibility. No doubt this is a terrible situation and should never occur again, but in my opinion Terry is right that the blame falls on more than one head. And firing one individual is not the answer in my opinion.
Besides Dennis Dodds, David Haugh of the Chicago Trib also wrote a scathing criticism of the report. Haugh is a well known ND hater who never misses a chance to take a shot at the Irish. Ryan McGee of SI, who is a Tenn Vol graduate and also was a student videographer at Tenn has an excellent article on the report. His take is much different and more in line with my feelings. And this is straight to the point. But in the end it was a failure from everybody involved and that's why there is collective guilt instead of heads rolling and such. Another Take
Terry, add to that anti-ND group a fat, bearded sportswriter from Fort Wayne named Ben Smith, who also wrote a negative piece.
Terry, Sid, first you need to take into consideration that none of those writers, zero, have any understanding of the safety process. All they know is that something happened and in their opinion an individual needs to be held responsible and fired. In other words they are clueless. Perhaps they should be fired for being clueless. Gator Bill
You're right, Bill. I've learned from simple observation over the years that there is a definite pile-on mentality in the media. We all know that Notre Dame is a lightning rod. Very few people familiar with ND are apathetic. It seems that media types, can sense when they are going to attract attention with a negative tone in their reports, and more often than not, speaking or writing negatively about ND attracts lots of attention. That certainly is the case here. For the record, I know it's not just ND. All famous (newsworthy) programs have their turn in the barrel from time to time for at least a 3-4 day news cycle. It's our turn for this news cycle. We took over from Ohio State, and someone else is waiting in the wings to take over from us.
I agree Sid and the Gators have had our share. I hope we are not the ones waiting in the wings though. Gator Bill