I hope Thanksgiving was wonderful for everyone. I’m grateful that this week was a relaxing holiday rather than a football game to cover—it’s the first time in my memory that this has happened.
That doesn’t mean we’ll cut corners on the mailbag, which is, hey, getting quite intriguing at this point. This week’s questions were excellent in number. I made an effort to visit as many as I could.
First of all, don’t believe everything you read out there. To wit, left tackle Christian Darrisaw’s response to message board chatter that he was opting out:
The mood of a team is tough to tell in a normal year. This season isn’t any easier to figure out. We’re not around this team at all, and Zoom conferences only tell you so much. Of course guys like James Mitchell, Divine Deablo and Brock Hoffman are going to be polished with the media by saying this is still a team that’s together, which is exactly what they did Tuesday.
But although that might be the forward-facing stance of the team, there’s always stuff going on behind the scenes. Already, receiver Elijah Bowick entered the transfer portal. It was revealed he was also serving a suspension when he did so. There are plenty of rumblings about more than just that going on. We’ll see if that’s just online chatter run amok or something rooted in reality.
For what it’s worth, Justin Fuente said there haven’t been more discussions about opt-outs right now than normal, though I find that hard to believe given the current circumstances. Not only is the team trying to pull out of a skid on the field, which leads to a lot of discontent, but there’s a buy-in factor that’s unusual this year, specifically with the pandemic. Tech’s players had Thursday and Friday off. Many of them went home for Thanksgiving. The school is going to remote learning for the rest of the semester afterward. I’m sure some guys on the fence about the season or the program have to ask themselves if it’s worth it to even come back to keep going through these COVID-19 protocols in a lost season.
