It is known that scouts hunt for college athletes, and when they find them, treat them with kid gloves, groom them for winning, not for studying. Finding the best athletes in their early teens is a treasure hunt.
When they find a winner, he is wined (proverbially, for he is under-aged) and dined to join the team. The glitter, the perks of money and girls, parties and fame, is waved in front of hungry teenage eyes. Sometimes an athlete is lifted off the sandlot, or leaves a hard life, even a criminal record, behind. He wears a team jersey, a sweater, with pride. A new man, as it should be.
Once on campus, as winners, great players prove themselves worth the courtship, and the winning coach, a hero-maker, is a god. One who turns out gods.
Player behavioral issues are swept under the rug, and few ethics violations ever make it to press. Occasionally something big will happen. A lacrosse star like George Huguely will get too drunk, and his usual disorderly conduct might escalate to the degree that in the heat of physically shaking someone (Yeardly Love, his girlfriend) he may bang her head against the wall, kill her in an early morning row. Behavior like that will make the headlines.
Shameful for those authorities who knew he had problems with alcohol, knew he could be violent, who didn't do enough to stop this. Parents send healthy young men and women off to school, trust them to the hands of authorities, rule-makers, enforcers. And across the nation alcohol education initiatives warn students about reckless behavior, alcohol related accidents.
Whether they attend or not, students who ignore rules, who are known to engage in risky behavior, need attention. Every student represents a school. Someone should have stood up to George Huguely, should have said, "You're an abusive drunk and you have a disorderly conduct record, so you don't play until you have had a successful rehab." Successful. That's a carrot at the end of the stick that works, something that might have saved Yeardley Love. And it would be the coach, the manager of the team, to initiate such an intervention.
Coach Jim Tressel of the Ohio State Buckeyes didn't have to send anyone to rehab, and his players didn't murder anyone. But he could have made a much bigger deal about the latest scandal, players selling team memorabilia to a tattoo parlor in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Tressel may have lied about it to NCAA investigators in December, knowing that some of his players sold rings and trinkets, but covering it up as isolated incidents.
He should have held his men to a higher behavioral standard, for they are not boys anymore, made them look in the mirror.
This is who you are? A memorabilia trafficker? Really?
It is an NCAA ethics violation, and large or small, lying about it, covering it up makes us think that athletic heroes don't really have to behave like everyone else. They have privilege, protection. Forget character development. What matters is winning.
It hardly sounds like something worth lying about, jeopardizing the coach's career, protecting his athletes from a slap on the wrist. We're not talking rehab. Maybe they would have had to attend an ethics seminar. Everyone might learn something.
On the sandlot, kids sell a lot worse.
And for this, for an oversight, an I forgot, a memory glitch in an investigation, the seven-time Big Ten championship coach may lose his job. Hopefully not.
A coach is supposed to be the role model, the one who turns his treasures into leaders, the motivation king. The coach is the man. And when players are errant, he knows it. People talk, he hears, his head isn't buried in the sand, and he should do something about it, yes, make it a big issue, a stink, if necessary, with his players. Not cover for them.
You found them, Coach Tressel. Everyone looks up to you, and to your team. They are much more than mere winners and losers. Anyone can win, anyone can lose. What are they doing when they're not doing that?
It's Yeardley Love, not Courtney.
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