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<p>There you go - you just proved my point. No offer was ever made to Cech, therefore you can’t say that he really turned any offer down.</p>
<p>Now, was Cech a strong candidate, arguably the strongest? Of course! And was Harvard possibly going to give him the offer? Possibly. But that’s irrelevant. At the end of the day, no offer was made. Hence, your original statement that he “turned down Harvard’s offer” is false any way you want to look at it. You should have stopped by saying that Cech withdrew from strong contention. But, no matter how you spin it, you cannot turn down an offer that was never actually made.</p>