Thigpen to Coastal: Reinstate Bennett

In a letter sent to WPDE news and the Coastal Carolina board of Trustees, former Coastal QB Tyler Thigpen has demanded that Coastal Carolina reinstate David Bennett.  “As of today, Coastal Carolina no longer has a NFL quarterback as a booster, fan or alumnus,” said Thigpen in the letter. Thigpen also disputed the facts given for Bennett’s firing. “Worthless excuses are being made to fire coach Bennett.  Despite claims of lower attendance and decreased revenue by the administration at the press conference to announce Coach Bennett being terminated, an article published online by The Carolina Forest Chronicle (12/15/11) show CCU’s own attendance figures are just the opposite with all time high average attendance for the 2011 season, including the 4th largest crowd in CCU football history at the ’11 season finale vs Presbyterian.”

Thigpen goes on to cite numerous problems with the university from everything to the facilities, citing high schools in the state with better facilities, to the way the athletic department is run.  He questions where the money from the beatings we took from FBS schools went.

He also calls for the Athletic Director and University President’s removal.  “For his self sacrifice, loyalty, and sheer determination to make something from nothing, Bennett deserved better than this.  For their stupidity in making an ill-found decision to replace Bennett and the manner in which they chose to do it, at the very least I think DeCenzo and Yurachek should be officially reprimanded and in my opinion as a graduate and former team captain deserve to be terminated immediately.”  Thigpen goes on to say that he will not support Coastal in anyway until this happens.

I could go on and on talking about this letter every paragraph as something that I feel needs to be commented on.  So I’m going to stop here and go into what I think this means for Coastal.

Our university appears to have made a huge mistake in firing Bennett.  Apparently, the goal was to get Steve Spurrier, Jr. and now that plan has fallen through – and the administration seems to be lost.  I do not know if there are any other big names out there that we could get, but apparently the problem is we don’t have the money to pay a big name coach.  So, now what?  When your most famous athlete says he refuses to continue to allow the university to use his likeness and wants nothing to do with the school we know we have a huge problem.  There was a post on CoastalFans.com facebook page calling for a sit-in in Decenzo’s office until Bennett was reinstated.  While that is definitely not the best way to handle this situation, it shows that Coastal is starting to lose control of the situation.  If Coastal can’t come up with a new coach that will meet the expectations they set in their press conference in the next week, maybe we should take Thigpen’s “advice” and reinstate Bennett.

You can find the rest of Thigpen’s letter by checking out our Facebook page.  Trust me – it’s a must read.