Sooner Sig Ep
8/17/2006, 11:56 PM
Interesting take...this is just a part of the article on CFN:
College Football Off the Field: Ethics, Morality, Power, Rules, and Other Goodies
Amazing what will generate sufficient material for a full column in early August.
With team practices still ramping up in terms of intensity, there’s already a lightning-rod issue sweeping through the college football world: what to do about player misconduct and dirty dealings? This is an age-old issue to be sure, but whenever new wrongdoings occur, this discussion topic acquires fresh momentum. It’s worth tackling in a column because writers can wrap their minds around the issues involved: it’s not just another bit of preseason speculation on a team’s prospects; there’s little hard-news value to be found there. This is “real action,” not any kind of dress rehearsal or preliminary act.
So while the iron is hot—and before the football starts in a few weeks—let’s talk about the kinds of things happening at the University of Oklahoma… and Georgia… and Miami… and at Auburn, USC, Texas, Tennessee, and other places.
First, a few words about Bob Stoops and his handling of the OU mess.
Reaction from readers to my column on the Oklahoma situation from Aug. 3 was—as is the case with anything else in college football—unfailingly passionate on both sides. More specifically, responses divided into two clear (and familiar) categories: OU fans who were already mentally and emotionally fatigued, beaten-down and besieged by all the criticism raining down on their program; and pure outrage from the rest of the country. Amidst the fiery emotions, however, it should be noted that one critic of Stoops—and what seemed to be my overly lavish praise of Stoops’ actions in the Rhett Bomar case—made a compelling point: Dusty Dvoracek.
For all that other coaches have given players second chances after actions that shouldn’t have merited them, Dvoracek does offer a reminder that, yes, Bob Stoops has been part of the crowd. Dvoracek, the aggressive and accomplished defensive tackle for OU, was kicked off the team in 2004 after landing a “friend” in the hospital in a fight. (Ah, friendship…) In 2005, though, Stoops reinstated him. So on that score, a little bit of the shine does recede from Stoops’ overall portfolio. Point conceded.
However, with that having been said, it still bears mentioning that in the Rhett Bomar situation, Stoops acted with rare decisiveness… perhaps precisely because of his experiences with Dvoracek.
Another interesting feature of the e-mails received after last week’s Bomar column was that a number of the critical ones said that Stoops “knew of the situation four months ago,” implying that Stoops was sitting on it to protect Bomar and keep his political poker chips in hand.
This is where we have to stop and apply what I shall call the “Politics and Power Test,” otherwise known as the “Who Are We Kidding Rule.” This is very simple: in trying to determine whether shadowy politics or gut-level truthing is going on in a murky situation, just ask yourself: “Who are we kidding?” It’s a way of expressing your inner lie detector and putting on your political thinking cap. Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to sniff out fakery or honesty by looking for simple clues. In the Stoops-Bomar case, I found my simple clue: Stoops effusively praised Bomar during Big 12 Media Days the week before booting No. 7 off the team.
So, “who are we kidding?” It would be ridiculous to think that Bobby Stoops would sit on damaging information for four months, go through the motions of praising Bomar, and then dump him on August 2, just before the start of preseason practices. If Stoops was sitting on a boatload of information for four months—that would mean since April Fool’s Day (how’s that for a laugh?)--Paul Thompson would have been conspicuously more involved in quarterback drills during Spring Ball.
But he wasn’t. I therefore feel very comfortable and confident in asserting that no, Bob Stoops hasn’t been sitting on information for four months. It would insult Stoops’ intelligence—not to mention mine—to think differently. I therefore stand behind my commendation of Stoops for acting decisively.
As you can see, the “Who Are We Kidding Rule” is a great way of understanding politics and power, and how they work. Some situations are so complex that this test might not enable you to make a clear verdict, but in some cases—and this Stoops-Bomar situation is one of them—it can work wonders. For practice, you can use this on either Hillary Clinton or George Bush, and then return to the college football world. But trust me, it’s a good truth and spin detector.
But while Bob Stoops handled the Bomar situation with grace and wisdom, his dealings with Dusty Dvoracek highlight the inherent conflicts faced by college football coaches. The wrenching nature of the tensions faced by big-time coaches demands reforms in legislation and enforcement from the NCAA.
Let’s face it: college football coaches are in a position where making the right moral and ethical decisions can also lead to lower winning percentages and, by extension, the loss of their jobs. The dirty little rotten secret of all this is that in Corporate America, the same principle is applied all the time, but when company stock value skyrockets on Wall Street after tens of thousands of people get their walking papers, not a peep is heard. There’s no outrage about the capitalist system. But in college football, oh, the noise is deafening when a coach keeps a suspect player (pun not intended) to win some more ballgames. Say what you want about Bobby Bowden’s ethics down in Tallahassee, but the college football icon has always been refreshingly honest about his leniency with some borderline characters. Bowden has forthrightly, unflinchingly and repeatedly asserted the cutthroat nature of college football as a beast of a business. And when you consider how football coaching has buttered the bread of the large and increasing Bowden family unit over the past three decades, there’s more than a little legitimacy to Bowden’s comments.
It’s useful to use Bobby Bowden as a central figure in discussions about coaching ethics and morality because no one—after meeting him in person—could possibly view him as anything but a sincere, earnest, well-meaning human being who tries to live out his faith, just like any other religious person would. Bowden puts this larger set of interlocking issues into perspective because some people could easily perceive that Bowden’s principles, while perhaps being sincerely held, are conveniently tossed aside when a football game is needing to be won. Well, it’s easy to make that finite a judgment, but as we all know, life isn’t that simple—this world doesn’t come so readily packaged or neatly wrapped.
Whether the coach is Bowden or Bob Stoops or Jim Tressel or Phil Fulmer or Pete Carroll, the ultimate reality about coaches is that they’re good and decent men in a cutthroat profession that forces them to make near-impossible choices. No college coach—with the possible exception of Bob Knight (and even he has a track record of graduating players while also inspiring the fiercest loyalty from many of his greatest players, such as Isiah Thomas and Quinn Buckner)—succeeds without winning the respect of his players, a testament to the fact that coaches must necessarily connect with young people in a positive way in order to be successful. Coaches are good people; it’s the decisions they make that are difficult, and it’s time to say it as plainly as possible: the conflicts of interest are too great to allow coaches to continue to be the decision makers in these kinds of situations. The NCAA—if it were smart—would institute mandated penalties for a laundry list of offenses. Lengthy and informed discussion would have to precede any decisions, but the effort should be made. Taking these decisions out of the coach’s hands would be welcome news to a fraternity of men who got into coaching because they loved football, not because they liked monitoring the police blotter or chatting with school compliance officers or lawyers gathered in the athletic director’s office.
College Football Off the Field: Ethics, Morality, Power, Rules, and Other Goodies
Amazing what will generate sufficient material for a full column in early August.
With team practices still ramping up in terms of intensity, there’s already a lightning-rod issue sweeping through the college football world: what to do about player misconduct and dirty dealings? This is an age-old issue to be sure, but whenever new wrongdoings occur, this discussion topic acquires fresh momentum. It’s worth tackling in a column because writers can wrap their minds around the issues involved: it’s not just another bit of preseason speculation on a team’s prospects; there’s little hard-news value to be found there. This is “real action,” not any kind of dress rehearsal or preliminary act.
So while the iron is hot—and before the football starts in a few weeks—let’s talk about the kinds of things happening at the University of Oklahoma… and Georgia… and Miami… and at Auburn, USC, Texas, Tennessee, and other places.
First, a few words about Bob Stoops and his handling of the OU mess.
Reaction from readers to my column on the Oklahoma situation from Aug. 3 was—as is the case with anything else in college football—unfailingly passionate on both sides. More specifically, responses divided into two clear (and familiar) categories: OU fans who were already mentally and emotionally fatigued, beaten-down and besieged by all the criticism raining down on their program; and pure outrage from the rest of the country. Amidst the fiery emotions, however, it should be noted that one critic of Stoops—and what seemed to be my overly lavish praise of Stoops’ actions in the Rhett Bomar case—made a compelling point: Dusty Dvoracek.
For all that other coaches have given players second chances after actions that shouldn’t have merited them, Dvoracek does offer a reminder that, yes, Bob Stoops has been part of the crowd. Dvoracek, the aggressive and accomplished defensive tackle for OU, was kicked off the team in 2004 after landing a “friend” in the hospital in a fight. (Ah, friendship…) In 2005, though, Stoops reinstated him. So on that score, a little bit of the shine does recede from Stoops’ overall portfolio. Point conceded.
However, with that having been said, it still bears mentioning that in the Rhett Bomar situation, Stoops acted with rare decisiveness… perhaps precisely because of his experiences with Dvoracek.
Another interesting feature of the e-mails received after last week’s Bomar column was that a number of the critical ones said that Stoops “knew of the situation four months ago,” implying that Stoops was sitting on it to protect Bomar and keep his political poker chips in hand.
This is where we have to stop and apply what I shall call the “Politics and Power Test,” otherwise known as the “Who Are We Kidding Rule.” This is very simple: in trying to determine whether shadowy politics or gut-level truthing is going on in a murky situation, just ask yourself: “Who are we kidding?” It’s a way of expressing your inner lie detector and putting on your political thinking cap. Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to sniff out fakery or honesty by looking for simple clues. In the Stoops-Bomar case, I found my simple clue: Stoops effusively praised Bomar during Big 12 Media Days the week before booting No. 7 off the team.
So, “who are we kidding?” It would be ridiculous to think that Bobby Stoops would sit on damaging information for four months, go through the motions of praising Bomar, and then dump him on August 2, just before the start of preseason practices. If Stoops was sitting on a boatload of information for four months—that would mean since April Fool’s Day (how’s that for a laugh?)--Paul Thompson would have been conspicuously more involved in quarterback drills during Spring Ball.
But he wasn’t. I therefore feel very comfortable and confident in asserting that no, Bob Stoops hasn’t been sitting on information for four months. It would insult Stoops’ intelligence—not to mention mine—to think differently. I therefore stand behind my commendation of Stoops for acting decisively.
As you can see, the “Who Are We Kidding Rule” is a great way of understanding politics and power, and how they work. Some situations are so complex that this test might not enable you to make a clear verdict, but in some cases—and this Stoops-Bomar situation is one of them—it can work wonders. For practice, you can use this on either Hillary Clinton or George Bush, and then return to the college football world. But trust me, it’s a good truth and spin detector.
But while Bob Stoops handled the Bomar situation with grace and wisdom, his dealings with Dusty Dvoracek highlight the inherent conflicts faced by college football coaches. The wrenching nature of the tensions faced by big-time coaches demands reforms in legislation and enforcement from the NCAA.
Let’s face it: college football coaches are in a position where making the right moral and ethical decisions can also lead to lower winning percentages and, by extension, the loss of their jobs. The dirty little rotten secret of all this is that in Corporate America, the same principle is applied all the time, but when company stock value skyrockets on Wall Street after tens of thousands of people get their walking papers, not a peep is heard. There’s no outrage about the capitalist system. But in college football, oh, the noise is deafening when a coach keeps a suspect player (pun not intended) to win some more ballgames. Say what you want about Bobby Bowden’s ethics down in Tallahassee, but the college football icon has always been refreshingly honest about his leniency with some borderline characters. Bowden has forthrightly, unflinchingly and repeatedly asserted the cutthroat nature of college football as a beast of a business. And when you consider how football coaching has buttered the bread of the large and increasing Bowden family unit over the past three decades, there’s more than a little legitimacy to Bowden’s comments.
It’s useful to use Bobby Bowden as a central figure in discussions about coaching ethics and morality because no one—after meeting him in person—could possibly view him as anything but a sincere, earnest, well-meaning human being who tries to live out his faith, just like any other religious person would. Bowden puts this larger set of interlocking issues into perspective because some people could easily perceive that Bowden’s principles, while perhaps being sincerely held, are conveniently tossed aside when a football game is needing to be won. Well, it’s easy to make that finite a judgment, but as we all know, life isn’t that simple—this world doesn’t come so readily packaged or neatly wrapped.
Whether the coach is Bowden or Bob Stoops or Jim Tressel or Phil Fulmer or Pete Carroll, the ultimate reality about coaches is that they’re good and decent men in a cutthroat profession that forces them to make near-impossible choices. No college coach—with the possible exception of Bob Knight (and even he has a track record of graduating players while also inspiring the fiercest loyalty from many of his greatest players, such as Isiah Thomas and Quinn Buckner)—succeeds without winning the respect of his players, a testament to the fact that coaches must necessarily connect with young people in a positive way in order to be successful. Coaches are good people; it’s the decisions they make that are difficult, and it’s time to say it as plainly as possible: the conflicts of interest are too great to allow coaches to continue to be the decision makers in these kinds of situations. The NCAA—if it were smart—would institute mandated penalties for a laundry list of offenses. Lengthy and informed discussion would have to precede any decisions, but the effort should be made. Taking these decisions out of the coach’s hands would be welcome news to a fraternity of men who got into coaching because they loved football, not because they liked monitoring the police blotter or chatting with school compliance officers or lawyers gathered in the athletic director’s office.