Attention all units; BOLO for a man last seen wearing a white dress shirt, orange and green-striped tie and carries a business card with a “U” on the front of it. He’s probably been by your school or sent some of his Capo’s to “negotiate” some contracts that were under a different union already, so by the time you see this man, it may in fact be TOO LATE to save yourselves. He’s already wanted for the attempted destruction of recruiting classes and should be considered armed and dangerous with special fruit from Coral Gables known to entice even the staunchest of moral characters. This assailant has a reputation for strong-arming the strong-armed. He’s a ninja in a stork’s clothes. He is, the “G” in Golden.

You can make the case that schools like Louisville, West Virginia and Stanford are quite capable of owning their own little portions of South and Central Florida, but Al Golden is straight clearing fools off his block and expanding his empire with the same voracity of Sonny Corleone confronting Carlo for beating up on Connie.  Paul Johnson may be talking about the word commitment, but he’s probably feeling like Fredo more than Michael in terms of his “family’s” definition of commitment at the moment.

I’m envisioning the leader of the ramblin’ wreck from jaw-juh tech must be screaming the line from ‘Scarface’ when Tony confronts Frank Lopez about the Diaz Brothers. I believe you know how that one goes. Bottom line, someone’s feelings are hurt. People can say what they want to say, but Antonio Crawford just taught some of us the #1 lesson to be learned from this whole recruiting “game.” If you ain’t pimpin’, you’re gettin’ pimped and it looks like “Tonio” just took his pimp hand out and asked the folks in Atlanta, “What did the five fingers say to the face?”

Ordinarily I would be screaming from the heavens about the travesty of young men not learning the value of sticking to their word. Ordinarily I would be denouncing all of the elements that played into this particular “flip” from one ACC Coastal Division foe to the other and how the coaches, the player (and players) involved, the parents, hell even the air we breathe is to blame for this; this, this display of deceit and calculated manipulation. Whelp…not so fast my kind sirs and madams; this isn’t going to be one of those soapboxes. This actually feels like poetic justice strangely enough.  For once, those that intended to calculatingly manipulate the language of agreement and feelings of those in vulnerable positions got played like the games they coach themselves.

We talked last week about the pipeline that’s being constructed designed to flow southward from Tampa Bay to Coral Gables. We talked about said pipeline being not fully finished and in need of a few more sections. Apparently, the D.O.T. could learn some things from this crew. Apparently there isn’t one guy working while five watch recreating Hank, Boomhauer, Dale and Bill standing in the front of the driveway. Apparently, “The U” has contractors that know the art of persuasion so well that even the Hoffa Family has asked for permission to receive consultation from Golden and his Goodfellas.

This is the classic “two sides of the story” tale regarding the “game” of recruiting and we have yet to get all of the details, nor should we expect to get all of them for the simple reason that we aren’t going to actually learn anything we don’t already know; which is kids get their feelings hurt and coaches do too.  The reason Paul Johnson is upset with Antonio Crawford is the same reason that he’s happy with Anthony Harrell in my opinion.  Although the situations may be diametrical in foundation for both young men (meaning WHY they committed), Johnson wasn’t complaining when the Jesuit LB decided to flip from Wake Forest at the last second thus dishonoring a commitment he had made somewhere else to come and help the Yellow Jackets. I could be wrong, but I didn’t hear the coach pontificating on the importance of commitment then. I mean, he wasn’t turned away when he said he wanted to go to school in Atlanta instead of Winston-Salem correct? What’s so different about Antonio doing the same thing to Tech that Anthony did to Wake the previous season?

To be clear, I’m sincere when I say this isn’t an indictment on anyone. It’s just drop-dead hilarious to me at this point that we’re upset that a kid decided to HAVE THE NERVE to go to school at the University of Miami. I mean, gosh golly gee-wilikers the kid wants to play for “The U” once they realized he was one of the most underrated DB’s in the Bay Area and decided to use a little common sense and ingenuity after seeing him (Crawford) give one of their WR commits’ the business during the most important game of the season and decided if they can’t beat him, then put him on your team.

Could this have been handled slightly, and by slightly I MEAN slightly better? Absolutely.  Have there been colossal cluster bombs that make this look like the model of efficiency for recruitment? Abso-freaking-lutely. Should we expect to learn our lesson and teach our kids the virtue of honor and decency solely based off this example? Because if THIS is what constitutes the last straw in your book, then you should go see a dermatologist for the layers of skin that need repair and have become precariously thin over the years.

This scene from “As the Recruit Turns” should be tagged with the line from ‘Scarface’ in which Tony professes that he didn’t *cough* work over anybody that didn’t have it coming to them. Maybe then the rhetoric or hyperbole that’s associated with this non-story-story could be turned down slightly while the flow of production from that orange and green pipeline gets turned up to a better output than what comes from beneath the sands of Saudi Arabia. Be on the lookout though, that guy that looks like he’s a day-trader with hyperactive pituitary glands is a coyote in ‘Canes colored clothes and he’s pretty cold-blooded with his piece of steel.