UT has fired JT today, after 23 years of leading the Vols. The AD gave the reason as "gross misconduct."
www.swiminfo.com has the story.
JT has coached Melvin Stewart, Jeremy Linn, Tripp Schwenk and others to olympic medals in his yeas as a coach.
Look, he was a great swimmer back in the day, but now he is an adult who allegedly tried to solicit sex from teenage boys on the internet. This is neither sad nor tragic. It is despicable.
Alexander Dale Oen's death, on the hand, truly is a tragedy.
Written like somebody who knows nothing about the man in question. You're missing the point where he was a great coach and an inspiration to a LOT of swimmers. It is absolutely a tragedy for swimming that one of the sport's great coaches goes down in flames like this. It's a bigger tragedy to the UT swimming program. And it is a personal tragedy for JT that his career ended up this way. The man had achieved much and this is a tremendous fall from grace.
I think your characterization of the allegations are way off base.
KPD Investigator Richard Giammarino, a financial-crimes specialist, and ICAC investigators worked the case for the next four months but determined the evidence wouldn't support criminal charges.
"The allegations have been ruled unfounded," KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk said Friday.
Yeah, it appears he abused drugs and did some stuff on the internet he shouldn't have. And it sounds like he got close to the line on actually doing some bad stuff. But I take some heart in the fact that he never actually crossed the line. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been fired, but let's not paint the man as some sort of despicable human being. I haven't seen anything yet to say that he's anything more than a tragic one.
Comparing the JT debacle to Dale Oen is spurious. They can both be, and both are, tragedies in their own ways.
It's a beautiful day. It's great to be alive.
Look, he was a great swimmer back in the day, but now he is an adult who allegedly tried to solicit sex from teenage boys on the internet. This is neither sad nor tragic. It is despicable.
Alexander Dale Oen's death, on the hand, truly is a tragedy.
Written like somebody who knows nothing about the man in question. You're missing the point where he was a great coach and an inspiration to a LOT of swimmers. It is absolutely a tragedy for swimming that one of the sport's great coaches goes down in flames like this. It's a bigger tragedy to the UT swimming program. And it is a personal tragedy for JT that his career ended up this way. The man had achieved much and this is a tremendous fall from grace.
I think your characterization of the allegations are way off base.
KPD Investigator Richard Giammarino, a financial-crimes specialist, and ICAC investigators worked the case for the next four months but determined the evidence wouldn't support criminal charges.
"The allegations have been ruled unfounded," KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk said Friday.
Yeah, it appears he abused drugs and did some stuff on the internet he shouldn't have. And it sounds like he got close to the line on actually doing some bad stuff. But I take some heart in the fact that he never actually crossed the line. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been fired, but let's not paint the man as some sort of despicable human being. I haven't seen anything yet to say that he's anything more than a tragic one.
Comparing the JT debacle to Dale Oen is spurious. They can both be, and both are, tragedies in their own ways.
It's a beautiful day. It's great to be alive.
