I am confused about Yeti's line of thinking here:
Having a relationship with a vendor = inappropriate relationship = sexual assault?
Coaches can't have private relationships without it being inappropriate? Gt can potentially be humiliated by a relationship that Damon Stoudamire had 5 years before being Gt employee? Yeah, I don't get it.
The cutting edge of any of this is sexual assault. Was there sexual assault? The rest is merely tasteless gossipy fluff.
As I understand it… and I am frequently wrong, ask my wife….
Rampant speculation follows…
The progression of events in the Mel Tucker deal is the problem. Tucker is using a “but he did it too” defense in a desperate attempt to get his contract bought out.
There are obvious differences between Tucker and Stoudamire, particularly that the tucker complaint was brought by the woman who was victimized and CDS victimized no one.
Tucker claimed it was a relationship and it was all consensual, making the complaint a classic “he said, she said.”
MSU responded by saying basically, we don’t care one way or another if it was consensual, the relationship was wrong and is grounds for dismissal.
Tucker is responding by saying exactly what you’ve laid out above; unless the assault is proven, there should be no issue with a person having a private relationship. He went on to point to CDS as an example.
As others have said above, there is little chance (based on what we know so far) that anything will come back to CDS, but now that he is named in this garbage, it has to be dealt with. It is a distraction and a cloud we sure as heck don’t need.
The real issue is that Tucker had an ENORMOUS contract and he hasn’t been succeeding at a level to justify it. The cynic in me says that if he were winning games, MSU may have done more due diligence on the assault claim. Regardless of that hypothetical, Tucker WASNT winning and it seems like MSU was looking for “cause” to get rid of him.
At the end of the day, Tucker wants his millions and MSU doesn’t want to pay the millions. With this much money on the line, it will get ugly and its unfortunate that we’ve been drawn into it, even if we on the distant periphery of it.