[quote]ccardill wrote:
Chris,
Here is Charlie’s response to the above:
Two different stories.
First: Chris asked me to write an update on the drugs issue not long ago. I decided that, as I won’t write about it on my own site, I shouldn’t write about it elsewhere any longer.
Second: I was not invited to respond to the Staley situation at the time and this was my first opportunity, for which I’m grateful. Anyone is free to look up the piece and check out lectures I’ve done over the years (some are on tape) to draw their own conclusions.
[/quote]
That first part is true. He doesn’t want to write about drug stuff anymore, at least not in full articles.
The second part, well, I did ask him, so we’re at a “he said, he said” thing again. It was a phone conversation from several years ago, so I understand if he forgot.
He wanted us to pull an article by Staley. I asked him to instead write something, a rebuttal or whatever he wanted, and we’d publish it in our Reader Mail section we had at the time. Then he screamed a lot and mentioned lawyers.
I told him that his issue seemed to be with Staley and not us. We hung up on okay terms as I remember, but haven’t spoken since. He never sued, never sent a rebuttal, and we never took down the Staley article.
I always enjoyed talking with Charlie on the phone, not counting the screaming part. He’d call me up and throw these while government conspiracy theories at me. He was really paranoid about that kind of thing. I just listened to him because all I could think was, “Holy cow, I’m on the phone with Charlie Francis!”
I still think Speed Trap is one of the best sports books ever written. Francis was and always will be the “Rocket Scientist” of sports training. (That was the title of my interview with him.)
But, he’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist, thinks everyone is out to get him or rips him off (and I’m sure many do) and he doesn’t play well with other coaches. His style of arguing against other experts is to basically grossly simplify what they say, than attack that watered down version instead of the real statement. I think this is sort of a “straw man” method.
I don’t think Charlie is a bad guy though. Generally speaking, most Internet drama is not the result of the coaches but their hangers-on and sycophants. These “me too’s” from either camp get overheated about stuff while in real life the actual coaches talk on the phone, get along okay and have a sense of respect for each other even if they don’t agree on every point.
That may not be true here, but in most cases it’s the “entourages” that live for the soap opera drama and not the “stars” themselves.