Joltin’ Joe Wilhelm was my favorite teammate and best friend on my last hardball team. That was 14 summers ago and the Alachua Braves were one of the four finest franchises in the four-team Gainesville Adult Baseball League.
Joe, visiting Hawaii for the first time this week, is a graduate of the University of Florida, class of ’06, journalism. "A long and winding road to the piece of paper," he said.
When we worked in the sports department of the Gainesville Sun in the late 1990s, Steve Spurrier was still the Gators’ head ball coach.
At that time a few arrests of UF players sometimes resulted in suspensions (for The Citadel game, not the Tennessee game, of course).
But it was nothing like the 2008 Florida team, the one that, led by reigning Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, swamped Hawaii to open the season on the way to the national championship.
It was also the one that had 41 of 121 players arrested either while at UF or later (including Riley Cooper, who has other problems now).
And the one that featured Aaron Hernandez, now in a jail charged with murder, as its star tight end.
Thankfully the man the University of Hawaii hired as its new strength coach, Gary Beemer, was one of that team’s upstanding citizens.
THERE ARE many villains to aim arrows at in this unprecedented Summer of Loathe on the national sports scene, most making our little paying the Price episode at UH seem trivial. A-Rod … Braun … Cooper … Manziel … the cashier who called Drew Brees cheap for tipping inadequately on a takeout order (any tip on takeout is generous, idiot).
Take your pick, but Hernandez trumps all.
Joe said he wasn’t shocked to hear that he had found trouble. But murder charges?
"Yes, (surprised) that it was that bad," Joe said. "But he was kind of an edgy dude, that was the report from everybody."
As we talked about some of the other unsavory characters who played for the Gators (or as a recent UF student newspaper story called them, the "Incarce-Gators") in recent years, Joe and I came to the same conclusion: The head coach should be at least somewhat accountable. Joe said many UF alumni feel like Urban Meyer brought championships but left a mess.
"He’s not the first and he won’t be the last. (Fans) recognize what he brought to the program. But he didn’t handle (leaving) in the right way. His leaving encompasses everything," Joe said. "He said he’s stepping away to be with his family, and then a year later he’s back coaching again."
Then there’s the media’s role.
"Everyone was so busy trying to prove that (Tebow) wasn’t a good guy, they didn’t look at the others," said Joe, who has worked at newspapers the past 13 years. "It’s a ratings thing, too. We put certain names in a headline it means more hits, more exposure. I wouldn’t say publications aren’t considering that nowadays."
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Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783 or on Twitter as @dave_reardon.
