"Bill Miller, a painter who played for Big Red in the 1980s, said the coach was to blame because he was too lenient with players regarding bad behavior off the field.
“There’s a set of rules that don’t apply to everybody,” he said of what he called the favoritism regarding the players. “This has been happening since the early ’80s; this is nothing new. It’s disgusting. I can’t stand it. The culture is not what it should be. It’s not clean.”
Who "wins" and who loses?
"I don’t really understand it, but I guess the basic idea is everyone will feel like a winner when the team wins. You can feel like a “champ,” even if you never threw a ball or jogged a mile in your life.
OK, so I didn’t say it made any sense. But people will do anything to believe they belong to something bigger than themselves; even if it really doesn’t have anything to do with them. They’ll crawl through the dirt on their hands and knees begging to join the crowd, all the while thinking they’re “winners,” “getting ahead,” even if it’s just all make believe that actually benefits someone else.
But I guess that’s how everything works. No one’s really free to live a full life as a fully developed human being because everything is some kind of big, crazy scam."
-15-year-old Briarwood High School student, Simon Laramie, "The STARLING Connection"