Looks like the kid has a great foundation. He made his mistakes (which IMO aren't individually that bad but the culmination of them was bad)
Anywho here it is from canessports
Since eighth grade, Sam Bruce was "the man."
His talent was obvious, and everyone let him know it. He was wooed by top college programs around the nation, each coach trying to top the other with projections of an All-American future and school records he could break.
In the end Bruce chose to become a Hurricane - his family were big Miami fans, and he always dreamed of putting on orange and green and playing in front of the hometown fans.
The reality now is that will never happen, of course. The true freshman wideout was dismissed from the team this week.
Usually a dismissal for a top recruit at a college program involves an arrest, drugs or the like.
That's not how Mark Richt runs his program.
In the end, Bruce was dismissed for several smaller types of infractions at UM that all added up.
As Bruce's mother, Tracye Wilkerson, puts it - "One drop in the bucket will fill the bucket up, and Sam had one drop too many."
Yes, this is a story about Bruce. But it's also just as much about Richt, his staff, and their expectations for players.
Bruce arrived at UM with one strike against him after a highly publicized incident in which he posed with a gun in a photo. Heck, make that two strikes.
He couldn't afford any more mistakes.
Then he broke his leg early last month, apparently while trying to dunk a basketball [he is now off crutches and doing well in rehab]. He initially told coaches it happened during a bike accident, and that didn't go over well.
"He was not totally forthcoming about how it happened," Wilkerson said. "He was afraid because he knew he was supposed to not do anything outside of football."
Coaches spoke with Sam. They spoke with mom.
There would be a zero tolerance policy for Bruce moving forward.
The drop in the bucket that eventually overflowed it and led to the dismissal? Wilkerson said it was when Bruce was late for his own rehab.
"He was warned and was late to therapy," Wilkerson said. "That was it."
Cane coaches meant what they said, and they weren't messing around. They taught Bruce a life lesson.
And, perhaps most interestingly, mom doesn't disagree with how coaches handled the situation. She gets it - she says she knows these coaches have the best intentions for her son's future and that he wasn't getting the messages they were trying to give him.
This was the only way for the message to be received loud and clear, for Sam to reset his attitude and work hard ... it's just going to be somewhere else now.
"I found the infractions to be minor, but I'm his mother so I'm going to look at it like that," Wilkerson said. "But this is Sam's shortcomings, coming into the program he knew he had to be careful. It got to the point where it was more than coach Richt and his staff wanted to deal with.
"I love coach Richt, what he's doing for the program, the direction he has it going. I wish them the best in the endeavors to come. Sam just made a series of not good decisions that put him in this situation. I sat down with Sam and explained that to him - `You know the kind of program coach Richt is going to run because he did it at Georgia, and you can't help but respect it. As a man you have to understand the mistakes you made and move forward.'"
Richt gave Bruce and his mother the news of the dismissal in his office.
Mom didn't even ask for another chance.
"No, because once you put a bad taste in a person's mouth (as Sam did with his mistakes) it takes a whole lot of peppermint to change it," Wilkerson said. "The coaches were still wonderful, loving. When I walked in coach (Ron) Dugans hugged me. It's not like they turned on a dime, turned into someone else."
She understands coaches feel this will ultimately benefit Bruce.
"I respect their decision," Wilkerson said. "They know what they're doing. It wasn't the correct fit for Sam."
Bruce will be able to finish out the semester at the school and then transfer. Wilkerson says there's no particular destination in mind right now.
"We'll search for the best options," she said. "We're just letting the dust settle. At this fork in the road for Sam he'll either be one of the best that never was, or he'll be one of the best 30 for 30s that can rank right up there with Cam Newton and Randy Moss."
Mom is betting on the latter. She recently watched the episode on Newton and sees parallels in some ways.
"He went from the hometown hero coming out of Georgia, going to Florida, getting released after the whole computer incident, going to a junior college where he had to wash his own jersey and ultimately going to Auburn and doing what he did there," she said. "Nobody can write the end to this book but Sam."
Anywho here it is from canessports
Since eighth grade, Sam Bruce was "the man."
His talent was obvious, and everyone let him know it. He was wooed by top college programs around the nation, each coach trying to top the other with projections of an All-American future and school records he could break.
In the end Bruce chose to become a Hurricane - his family were big Miami fans, and he always dreamed of putting on orange and green and playing in front of the hometown fans.
The reality now is that will never happen, of course. The true freshman wideout was dismissed from the team this week.
Usually a dismissal for a top recruit at a college program involves an arrest, drugs or the like.
That's not how Mark Richt runs his program.
In the end, Bruce was dismissed for several smaller types of infractions at UM that all added up.
As Bruce's mother, Tracye Wilkerson, puts it - "One drop in the bucket will fill the bucket up, and Sam had one drop too many."
Yes, this is a story about Bruce. But it's also just as much about Richt, his staff, and their expectations for players.
Bruce arrived at UM with one strike against him after a highly publicized incident in which he posed with a gun in a photo. Heck, make that two strikes.
He couldn't afford any more mistakes.
Then he broke his leg early last month, apparently while trying to dunk a basketball [he is now off crutches and doing well in rehab]. He initially told coaches it happened during a bike accident, and that didn't go over well.
"He was not totally forthcoming about how it happened," Wilkerson said. "He was afraid because he knew he was supposed to not do anything outside of football."
Coaches spoke with Sam. They spoke with mom.
There would be a zero tolerance policy for Bruce moving forward.
The drop in the bucket that eventually overflowed it and led to the dismissal? Wilkerson said it was when Bruce was late for his own rehab.
"He was warned and was late to therapy," Wilkerson said. "That was it."
Cane coaches meant what they said, and they weren't messing around. They taught Bruce a life lesson.
And, perhaps most interestingly, mom doesn't disagree with how coaches handled the situation. She gets it - she says she knows these coaches have the best intentions for her son's future and that he wasn't getting the messages they were trying to give him.
This was the only way for the message to be received loud and clear, for Sam to reset his attitude and work hard ... it's just going to be somewhere else now.
"I found the infractions to be minor, but I'm his mother so I'm going to look at it like that," Wilkerson said. "But this is Sam's shortcomings, coming into the program he knew he had to be careful. It got to the point where it was more than coach Richt and his staff wanted to deal with.
"I love coach Richt, what he's doing for the program, the direction he has it going. I wish them the best in the endeavors to come. Sam just made a series of not good decisions that put him in this situation. I sat down with Sam and explained that to him - `You know the kind of program coach Richt is going to run because he did it at Georgia, and you can't help but respect it. As a man you have to understand the mistakes you made and move forward.'"
Richt gave Bruce and his mother the news of the dismissal in his office.
Mom didn't even ask for another chance.
"No, because once you put a bad taste in a person's mouth (as Sam did with his mistakes) it takes a whole lot of peppermint to change it," Wilkerson said. "The coaches were still wonderful, loving. When I walked in coach (Ron) Dugans hugged me. It's not like they turned on a dime, turned into someone else."
She understands coaches feel this will ultimately benefit Bruce.
"I respect their decision," Wilkerson said. "They know what they're doing. It wasn't the correct fit for Sam."
Bruce will be able to finish out the semester at the school and then transfer. Wilkerson says there's no particular destination in mind right now.
"We'll search for the best options," she said. "We're just letting the dust settle. At this fork in the road for Sam he'll either be one of the best that never was, or he'll be one of the best 30 for 30s that can rank right up there with Cam Newton and Randy Moss."
Mom is betting on the latter. She recently watched the episode on Newton and sees parallels in some ways.
"He went from the hometown hero coming out of Georgia, going to Florida, getting released after the whole computer incident, going to a junior college where he had to wash his own jersey and ultimately going to Auburn and doing what he did there," she said. "Nobody can write the end to this book but Sam."
