Because of criticism McNeese got for talking to Tyrann Mathieu I feel compelled to type what I think happened when TM went to McNeese. I think he went there thinking it was just a matter of him showing up and McNeese saying "we will take you." But I don't think that happened. I think what happened when he got there is that head coach Matt Viator was non-committal and took a "we need to both make sure we really want to do this" approach.

I say that because of feedback I got from former McNeese beat reporter Gary Laney (now with GeauxNation and who goes by "McBeat" on the McNeese Delphi board as well as some others). Someone had posted an article including a quote Gary got from Coach Viator (LINK ... ate-source). The quote I saw that made me think what I think is:

quote:
Mathieu did visit McNeese State on Friday night, Cowboys coach Matt Viator told GeauxNation's Gary Laney. However, Mathieu left without a commitment.

"It's very important for both us and Tyrann to make the right decision and Tyrann agreed," Viator said. "It was a long day. We both needed to back off a bit and make the best decision. Especially him. He needs to catch his breath and make sure he makes the right decision."

After reading that I posted the following:

quote:
From the quotes McBeat got from Coach Viator I got the impression that Coach Viator did not give him the "we will take you" response he and those close to him may have expected. I think Coach Viator had a "we both really have to think about whether or not we want to do this" type of attitude.

Shortly thereafter Gary responded to my post by writing:

quote:
I think what you gathered about Matt's handling of this is pretty spot on.

Now, there's some message board stuff there and message boards contain a lot of unreliable information. But it's confirmed as a belief shared by a reporter who has a good, long standing relationship with coach Viator and who interviewed him shortly after the meeting.

This post was edited on 8/19/12 at 8:17 am