How does that old chestnut go? “If you’re in a hole, stop digging” or something along those lines?
If that’s the case, somebody needs to take the shovel out of Stanley Williams’ hands post-haste.
Sunday night, the 2014 recruit and Georgia verbal commitment “confirmed” to a 247Sports.com website that he had taken an on-campus visit to Notre Dame over the weekend. The site, BlueandGold.com, subsequently learned that Williams had not, in fact, visited the Irish. When contacted about his spinning of a tall tale, the running back “apologized for his deceit” -- the BlueandGold‘s words -- and blamed outside pressures for his lying about the visit.
“I felt a lot of pressure to say I had went on the visit,” Williams said. “At the time I was supposed to go, but couldn’t go because of some things that I had going on.”
Hey, everybody makes mistakes and “stretches the truth” on occasion. And, if Williams had simply left it there with an apology the story, like so many others, would’ve died a slow death and waned from the public conscience. So, of course, Williams did the exact opposite of that.
Speaking to ESPN.com, Williams intimated that BlueandGold.com made up the quotes attributed to him in their article, labeling them as “incorrect” and saying “I never told anyone I was going anywhere I wouldn’t be.”
“Well, I can’t really say what they did and what they didn’t [do],” Williams said when asked from where the quotes came.
“It was just a big misunderstanding,” Williams said. “I just don’t want people to think I have a bad reputation of lying or saying where I am going and things like that. But I told them I wasn’t going to be able to make it, because I had a basketball game. When they texted me and asked if I was going, I said I was supposed to go, but some other things came up. We had a game on Saturday, and I wasn’t able to make it.”
A big misunderstanding? When you’re quoted in the original article as saying things like “The visit went great”... and “before I took the visit”... and “after taking the visit there,” it’s easy to see how those types of words could be misconstrued. It’s also easy to see why someone would apologize for false remarks that they later claimed they never actually made.
Williams was also quoted in the piece that created the original stir that “I’m definitely open to other schools right now. ... I want everyone to know that I’m open and interested.” When he spoke to ESPN.com? “Most definitely I am a Dawg,” said Williams.
Yeah, good luck to all involved.