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Love your coach enough to tell him when he's wrong
Published: 11/10/2011 6:43 PM
Last Modified: 11/10/2011 6:43 PM

The Penn State mess is a reminder that coaches can somehow accumulate way more power than they ever should be allowed to possess.

Campuses are full of little dictatorships where coaches -- certainly not all, but some -- think they can behave however they want.

--The rules don’t apply to me.

--Manners don’t apply to me. (I hear stories about college coaches who have a “don’t talk to me unless I talk to you” rule that they expect others on campus to follow).

--I can do whatever I want because I win games and it’s my program.

And they’re right because enablers allow them to be.

Remember in March when Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee was asked if he considered firing football coach Jim Tressel? Said Gee, “No, are you kidding me? Let me be very clear. I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

Was that a joke? I don’t think so. The head coach at a football factory wields more clout than a university president.

How can you get the toothpaste back in the tube?

Only two things can drain the power from a coaching tyrant (though that’s not a word I would use to describe Paterno):

1, Large-scale scandal that can’t be shoved under a rug.

2, Failure to win. It’s funny, but not really, that poor behavior is no longer considered charming or tolerable when coaches lose.

I don’t know if Bobby Bowden was ever a rascal, but he won at such a high level at Florida State that he probably could have acted as rascally as he wanted and everyone would have looked the other way.

In 2009, Bowden made the mistake of starting the season 2-3. The chairman of Florida State’s board of trustees, Jim Smith, pushed for Bowden’s departure and justified it this way: “I love Bobby Bowden, but I tell you what, I love FSU more.”

Here’s an idea: How about university presidents, athletic directors and fan bases loving their coaching icons enough to let them know they must answer to someone and -- this is big -- obey the golden rule.


Reader Comments 2 Total
Danomite Dandy Dan (last year)
That's good stuff Mr. Tramel.
RoyRogers (last year)
Excellent!
2 comments displayed


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Games People Play

Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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