By Austin Metz
Editor in Chief
With the recent news of Ohio State’s football coach Jim Tressel being suspended for five games for knowingly lying to investigators about players receiving improper benefits, a question must be asked. Are college coaches setting the correct example to our men and women of tomorrow?
While Jim Tressel is the most recent coach to be caught up in a scandel, there are others that have come before him. University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari is the former basketball coach of the University of Massachusetts and the University of Memphis.
While known widely for his recruiting of such great players as Marcus Camby, Derek Rose and John Wall, Calipari is also know for the disastrous state of he leaves programs when moving on.
Before leaving the University of Massachusetts to go to Memphis, Calipari and the school were forced to forfeit a season’s worth of wins and the trip to the Final Four because a player on his team was paid $28,000 by an agent.
Why did he leave Memphis to go to Kentucky? He left the University of Memphis right at the time when allegations were coming down about the team helping a player cheat on the SAT and having paid an associate of the team $2,000 to travel with the team to away games.
Calipari’s punishment? A slap on the wrist and the loss of some wins from his record but he was still able to move on and currently coaches at one of the top basketball programs in the nation.
Then there is Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl who was suspended for the first eight conference games of this past season for violating recruiting rules and then turning around and lying about them.
The list just keeps going. Lane Kiffen, who now coach’s at the University of Southern California, was according to the USA Today cited by the NCAA for the failure to monitor his coaches and student hostesses who made improper recruiting contacts.
The list of coaches who have been involved in such issues is quickly becoming the who’s who of college sports coaches. Jim Calhoun, Tom Izzo, Rich Rodriguez, Jim Tressel, Bruce Pearl, Mike Leach, Mark Richt and John Calipari to name a few.
While some of these coaches committed secondary infractions and have been adequately punished, others have simply been dodging the punishments they deserve by jumping to the next big school that will allow them to coach even with such troubled pasts.
All of these men are supposed to be the examples our men and women want to follow. The question then becomes, what must be done?
If players are being asked to meet high academic and athletic standards, then it’s time coaches do the same. College’s don’t seem to be willing to sacrifice a few victory’s in order to create an environment we can all be proud of at our college’s and universities.
This is not fair and needs to be considered by the NCAA. The reason these violations are being done is because of the coach and they should be held accountable no matter how cowardly they are. Bring the punishment down on those who deserve it like the coach’s not the college’s who are being left to deal with someone else’s spilled milk.
