This is just bizarre…although considering how sports and social media become more and more intertwined every day, perhaps it shouldn’t seem so bizarre anymore.
Royce White, a highly recruited basketball player from Minnetonka who chose to stay home and play for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, has announced via YouTube that he is quitting the Minnesota basketball team.
White has been suspended for the entire start of the 2009 season after having an altercation with a mall security guard, and then his name later came up in a dorm theft investigation.
White maintains his innocence but says in the video that he is quitting to keep his family, Tubby Smith, and his Golden Gopher teammates from having to deal with the distractions.
To which I, and many others who have watched the video, are responding, huh?
Here it is. Watch for yourself. He doesn’t start talking until a few minutes into it.
It sounds to be like he is just a very confused kid who is frustrated at how his college career has started. And with outlets like YouTube and Twitter now available for immature and frustrated young athletes to broadcast their frustration, I imagine that we’ll see more and more things like this in the future.
According to an SI.com article on Royce White’s YouTube announcement that he is quitting, White has informed no one at the university of his supposed plans.
Something tells me that older, wiser mentors will be able to talk some sense into him and help him realize that quitting the basketball team is probably the worst thing he can do right now.
Whether White’s legal troubles are justified or not (and I don’t know his story well enough to judge one way or the other), he’s a college freshman who is obviously in need of some direction or perhaps just a little time, perspective, and maturity to deal what I’m sure has been a pretty difficult first semester on campus.
Hopefully justice is served, whatever it may be, and then White can can learn from this whole situation. Assuming that is the case, then perhaps he can actually suit up someday for Tubby and the Gophers like he was supposed to do all along.
And I guess if his basketball career never pans out as expected, White could always go into movie production or theater. He certainly seems to have a flair for the dramatic.
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