Inside Information

[outlaw4]

Seriously. The mood people were in coming off the prior season combined with info like that? You'd have had people who believed it vs those who didn't. It could have been a meltdown of biblical proportions.

And to think I ordered all of these T-shirts for nothing!

[ATTACH]31162[/ATTACH]

You would think that if those rumors were out there, it would had been all over PFT.

[Upper Deck West End Zone]

It actually makes sense that a so-called Panthers insider would not know anything but be willing to spout off anyway. I played golf with Mark Richardson just before the 1-15 season and I got four hours of "we have a great coaching staff...one of the best...I think we'll have a great year...the roster is solid..."

[Mr. Scot]

Guess it starts at the top

What brought it back to my mind was a recent conversation with the other fellow who was in on the discussion. He brought up our former colleague and I said "remember that load of garbage he threw at us about the Panthers?" He remembered, and we both laughed.

It both boggles my mind and amuses me to think about it now. Had he continued to work with us, we certainly would have given him as much crap as we possibly could have for spreading the BS he did.

And for the record, the guy doing the shoveling wasn't a Panther fan. He followed the Bears.

[AKPantherFan]

Given what actually took place, I don't see the point in ever posting any of this...

Moral of the story: never trust a lawyer.

its called entertainment

[MadHatter]

Last year about this time, I had a co-worker tell me that over the weekend he'd played golf with a lawyer that worked for the Panthers. During that golf game, this lawyer had been quite chatty and spilled a boatload of inside info about the Panthers, all of which my co-worker was more than happy to share with me and another fellow, also a Panther fan.

The info he shared was huge, and shocking.

After hearing, I took some time to question whether or not I should share it online. I asked one or two people who would have access to inside info whether they thought it was credible, but in the end they could "neither confirm nor deny".

Thus, it was pretty much up to me whether I wanted to 'break the story' or just sit on it. And in the end, I chose to keep it to myself. Now, one year later, I've decided to post it, and I'll leave it to those who read to decide whether I made the right decision or not.

Here's what my co-worker told me:

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- John Fox had sold his house in Charlotte. Word from the Richardsons was that anything less than a Super Bowl win and he was gone. Fox had looked at the prospects, realized this year was probably his last and was prepared to move on.

- Regardless of whether the season was a success or not, Marty Hurney would be gone the following offseason. The Richardson's were tired of him, and he was going to be asked to resign. If he refused, he'd be fired.

- Discussions had already occurred with Bill Cowher. He knew he was the heir apparent, and it was only a matter of time before he took over as either GM or, more likely, coach and GM.

- On the health front, Jake Delhomme was not recovering well from Tommy John surgery at all. He could barely throw the ball 20 yards, and anything beyond that? Forget it.

- Even worse news for Jonathan Stewart. There were complications resulting from his college injury that were so bad he might never play a single down for the Panthers, or anyone else.

- As to Julius Peppers, the team wasn't happy about his prior year's performance, so in response they'd put him on HGH :eek:

- And what of the camp fight between Steve Smith and Ken Lucas? turns out, per my co-worker, that it was all the fault of Lucas. Seems Ken had grown tired of being constantly burned by Smith in practice, and thus he deliberately goaded Smith into losing his temper and punching him.

- Happily, it wasn't all negative. On the bright side, 2008 was set to be Dwayne Jarrett's breakout year. In practice, Jarrett was proving to be an even better receiver than Steve Smith. By midseason, and maybe sooner, he'd be starting opposite Smith. Jarrett might even wind up having more catches on the season.

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All of this, per my co-worker, directly from a lawyer who worked closely with the Panthers, around this time last year.

Inside information :sosp:

Just for the record, this particular co-worker was fired just a few weeks later. His story was that he'd gotten himself fired deliberately because he was tired of working there and wanted to move on to somewhere he could make more money.

Well, he was right that John Fox did have his house on the market in Ballantyne. My boss bought his house. However, the reason it was on the market is because he was building a bigger one in Quail Hollow.