The big mistake- wrong era

By Tony Kornheiser ~ The Washington Post

Here is the mistake that Rick Neuheisel made. It is the same mistake that George O'Leary, Jim Harrick, Larry Eustachy and Mike Price made. They were not born in the 1920s.

Had they been born in the 1920s and been coaching in the 1960s, they'd be fine.

Still coaching.

No problema.

See, 40 years ago when Bear Bryant and Woody Hayes and Adolph Rupp were college coaches, it isn't like nobody cared about gambling or slipping a player some grades or padding your academic résumé or drinking too much or carrying on in public and waking up with a strange woman in your hotel room, who happened to order $1,000 worth of room service. (Of all the bad breaks, Price ends up with a hungry stripper!) People cared about that stuff. But nobody would have found out about it. It all would have been suppressed.

It simply wouldn't have surfaced nationally. It would have been buried locally.

The only coach of the recent college Demolition Derby who actually would have gotten fired is Jan van Breda Kolff --because he failed to put a team on the field. That you can't do in any decade.

No, Jan, you never listen to the players and allow them to sit out a game.

None of these scandals would have surfaced 40 years ago, because 40 years ago there was no Internet, no all-sports radio, no 24-hour sports TV. Morality hasn't changed. But the spotlight has. It's on coaches all the time.

College coaches are Real Big Deals now. (Tell me you weren't stunned to learn Eustachy was the highest-paid state employee in Iowa! Being a basketball coach is worth more than being the governor?) Now that we live in a celebrity sports culture every little thing a coach does - and surely every big thing - is coal for the fire. There's no privacy. Nobody gets a pass. Not at a million dollars a year they don't.

So when you have a beer in your hand, and you're photographed at a party with your arm around a student (particularly a student who doesn't go to your school), that photo is up on the Internet and around the world in five minutes. And, coach, you've got some 'splaining to do.

Forty years ago this stuff wouldn't have come to light. Because there weren't all these outlets for scrutiny.

There is a "Gotcha!" mentality thriving on sports radio stations and the Internet. There are self-appointed Sports Police who roam the land dispensing vigilante justice. How else would you explain the people who watch golf all day long just waiting for some minor rule to be violated -- then call up the tournament demanding a penalty? What happened to Duffy Waldorf at Avenel was preposterous.

The one coach who I think has gotten hosed is Neuheisel. The list of grievances against Neuheisel is long. But to fire him for participating in an NCAA basketball pool is absurd.

Everybody's in NCAA pools -- including college presidents. If you fire every head coach, every assistant coach, every athletic director and every member of the athletic department who put up some money for an NCAA pool, you're not going to have anybody left in college athletics.

The boom in college sports has made them rich and famous. Now their incomes and fame have made them targets. Some would say: What goes around, comes around.