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Recently, three Pitt football players were involved in a drug bust. On Tuesday, Paul Chryst had enough evidence and dismissed two from the football team.
Eric Williams and Drew Carswell were removed from the program and Khaynin-Mosley Smith is still on suspension.
A few important notes here. First, to fully blame Paul Chryst for this isn't reasonable in my opinion. As I mentioned in the comments of Pat's post this morning, no football coach can track an entire team and keep up with them 24/7. A basketball team would be far easier to control with only a dozen players, but in football, you're talking about 100. Sure, you can check up on them, check in with their professors to see make sure they're not half asleep in classes, etc. But there's really a limit on what they can do.
Recruiting the kids, though? That's something else entirely.
But back to Chryst - the only way we can judge him is how he reacts when problems like this happen. If Chryst was convinced they were heavily involved, then a slap on the wrist would have warranted severe criticism. But he removed them from the program and there's not much more he could have done.
The other factor is that while not stars, these guys were expected to heavily factor into Pitt's two deep rotation. Pitt can live without them, but there's no question these guys had roles to play on the team.
I don't know where we go from here. It will be interesting to see where Khaynin Mosley-Smith ends up. Is Chryst just lacking sufficient evidence on him right now or was involvement truly more limited than the other two? Time will tell.
And while I don't necessarily put this all on Chryst, he surely understands this type of stuff won't be tolerated - especially if he isn't winning. If Pitt continues hovering around .500 and more of these incidents pop up, it won't be long before he's on his way out.
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