Days after making national headlines in his defense of Maryland head football coach D.J. Durkin, Will Muschamp was given a chance to follow up his comments and clarify some things Monday afternoon.
Muschamp made an impassioned response to a question about Durkin, who’s on administrative leave after an ESPN report detailed a toxic culture around the program, and had this to say Monday after those comments made over the weekend.
“I was talking about D.J. Durkin., a man that I know very well, on Saturday,” Muschamp said. “I know him very well as a coach, I know him very well as a husband and I know him as a father. I find it hard to believe some of the things I read in that article about D.J. Durkin. I’ll leave it at that.”
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Durkin spent four years at Florida, serving as Muschamp’s defensive coordinator for two of those years. He served as the Gators’ interim head coach for the 2014 Birmingham Bowl before taking a defensive coordinator job at Michigan and parlaying that into a job as Maryland’s head coach.
In the ESPN article, it alleges Durkin and the head of his strength and conditioning staff verbally abusing players and pushing players too hard during conditioning drills over the summer.
The centerpiece of the story is around Jordan McNair, who was hospitalized at the end of May after showing signs of heatstroke and exhaustion during a summer workout. McNair, who played offensive line at Maryland, died June 13.
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No cause of death has been officially released, although ESPN is reporting McNair, 19, did die of heatstroke. Muschamp, who has two sons, did offer his condolences to the McNair family Monday.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the McNair family,” he said. “I can’t imagine, as a father, losing my son or a son. It is a horrific situation, tragic situation. I don’t know what else to say.”
Muschamp made national headlines with his original comments about the situation surrounding Durkin, who he worked closely with during his tenure at Florida.
He was originally asked about how he and his staff draw the line between pushing a player to get better and verbally abusing or pushing a player too hard during workouts.
After his answer to the question, Muschamp went on to say this about Durkin:
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“I know D.J. Durkin,” he said. “He is an outstanding football coach but he’s an outstanding husband and father and he treats people with respect. I will use your word: alleged article. There’s no credibility in anonymous sources. If that former staffer had any guts, why didn’t he put his name on that? I think that’s gutless. And in nay business, in any company and in any football team, especially right here in august you can find a disgruntled player that’s probably not playing. So, I think it’s a lack of journalistic integrity to print things with anonymous sources. But I know D.J. Durkin personally and I know what kind of man he is, and I know what kind of person he is. I talked with him this morning. I don’t think it’s right.”
Since ESPN’s story broke and Muschamp’s initial comments Saturday, Durkin was put on administrative leave and the university is doing an internal investigation of the ESPN allegations.
