Penn State: When Coaches are more Powerful than College Presidents

The Penn State scandal continues to unfold with the Freeh Report. The report basically confirms what everyone but true believers knew, Penn State leaders strongly pushed by Head Football Coach Joe Paterno ignored the heinous moral damage to young men done by one of the assistant coaches Jerry Sandusky. More importantly they dithered about the issue, ignored its moral evil and worried more about protecting the reputation of the university and their football program than ending the abuse of children that their own imprimatur made possible.

I have written about this before and most of the clamor at the moment replicates what has already been said. The question of what the NCAA can and should do will also unfold, but I want to address another issue that is not common but also not rare in intercollegiate sports, the role of Presidents in institutional control.

Intercollegiate athletic integrity depends upon Presidential control. The entire reform movement of the last twenty years and all the major increases in student welfare and academic progress has occurred because Presidents asserted control and grabbed it away from athletic directors and coaches. The entire process depends absolutely upon individual university presidents asserting strong control at their own campuses and ensuring both compliance with regulations but also that coaches abide by some reaonsable facsimile of commitment to students as well as athletes.

The Paterno case has reflected for years one of the major cracks in this approach. Under certain conditions coaches become far more powerful than the Presidents of the University. The coaches make more money, they have more visibility, they are treated as celebrity and in many ways they embody the reputation and status of the university. Universities have whole departments devoted to telling stories that prove how their coach embodies the best of the university's values. So we have the reputation machine behind Paterno. But Paterno's power was not alone.

It is now clear that Paterno's own efforts helped paralyze the efforts of Penn State senior administrators to address the issue.

Let's look at some other cases where several factors coalesce:

• The coach has been very successful at winning games for a long period of time.
• The coach has lived through several Presidents.
• The coach has created not just immense support from fans but has cultivated strong relations with very powerful contributors and boosters.
• The coach has become a symbol of the university and woven into its marketing and reputation.
• This position means the coach is no longer accountable to anyone in the university hierarchy, only to winning and their own myth.

When these combine coaches amass immense independent power that often puts them beyond the power of the Presidents who feel trapped by boosters, contributors, media and even their boards of regents. Several other examples come to mind among them Bobby Bowden of Florida State,  Bobby Knight at Indiana, Rick Pitino at Louisville among others.

"When the season's over I'll let them know if I want to come back."79 year coach of the Florida State Seminoles Bobby Bowden informed the public who was boss two years ago. He was responding to the demand of the Jim Smith Head of the University's Board of Trustees that "Seminole Nation" had endured his failures "enough." Smith was a little more graphic, it's "sort of like you have to put your favorite dog down; you know its the right thing to do but you sure feel bad about it."

 Another member of the Board commented that she thought this was the business of the University President and Athletic Director--technically true but not likely in modern college athletics. The  University Presidents have largely lost the ability to determine celebrity and long term coach's fates. The Athletic Director and the Board of Trustees have more power but remain as paralyzed.  Just to clarify the Governor of Florida announced that he supported Bowden, considered him one of the greatest coaches of all time and wished him luck for the season. Joe Paterno, at that point another untouchable 82 year old football coach at Penn State, chimed in that Bowden should "decide what he wants to do."

When Rick Pitino decided to have sexual relations in a bar room, the President of Louisville slapped his wrist because the university depended upon its basketball team for whatever reputation it has. Bob Huggins at Cinncinnati ran through several Presidents who were helpless to stop his exploitation of student athletes and violation of rules. It took his own alcohol ruled self destruction to enable a President to get rid of him.

Jerry Tarkenian the basketball coach at UNLV put UNLV on the map. Its basketball team gained the school national presence and prime time visibility despite Tarkenian's blatant disregard for rules and graduating student athletes. At UNLV he got Chancellors fired who tried to fire him. Bobby Knight created an untouchable basketball dynasty at Indiana and the university tolerated and enabled two decades of vile and ruthless and boorish behavior from this paragon who helped cement Indiana's reputation. The phenonon is not common but so powerful that Myles Brand literally made his reputation for firing Bobby Knight as basketball coach at Indiana, but he faced outrage and demonstrations.

Hubris and success coupled with long tenure are ancient recipes for tyranny and tragedy. Men gain such prominence that others fear to remove them. As long as they win or do not do something morally horrendous, these coaches remain untouchable beyond the President's power. An iron triangle of boosters welded to coaches, welded to media welded to donors build unassailable positions that Presidents challenge at their peril.

So university Presidents tolerate or exonerate outlandish behavior like sex on bar tables, drunken driving, academic fraud and personal and public embarrassment. The University Presidents dither for fear of alienating donors, being being assaulted by the media or simply giving up huge marketing and media visibility of celebrity driven winning. The sad paradox of Paterno is that the President had been trying to get rid of him and could not.

The Greek tragedy of hubris and power ends predictably. Woody Hayes at Ohio State assaults a his own player on national TV. Arizona's great and untouchable coach Lute Olsen's  health, team and family life disintegrate while the University shuffled around trying to get him to step down with honor. Penn State has been trying to offer Joe Paterno an honorable way out for a decade, but he continued on impervious to blandishments and invulnerable with his booster, media and support. Now Penn State learns it has harbored moral evil and moral silence at its core values. 

Unable to protect accountability or dignity many Presidents wait for the final incident as in Knight, Hayes, or Huggin's implosions. Paterno represents the same sad pattern.

Often Presidents simply watch and wait for the team to  team lose  cohesion and winning, waiting for the boosters to finally tire and revolt. But by then it's too late. Presidents have ceded power over the program to boosters for the next choice. They set the precedent for Presidential impotence and booster primacy. The cycle will begin again.

I do not want to downplay the moral evil at Penn State, but I do want to highlight that the denouement fits a pattern of unaccountable coaches beyond the reach of presidents. 

A little Presidential courage could avoid the tragedy and support the integrity of athletics.

Nepotism Fails in Sports

Meritocracy brutally exposes family nepotism. Modern elite sport functions as a raw meritocracy and rips apart well meaning attempts by families to hand on positions as coaches or managers. The recent firing of Vice Chairman Bill Polian, the long time mastermind for the Indianapolis Colts, may have had a lot do to with his probably overmatched son Chris whom Bill had appointed General manager. This story illustrates an oft told tale just as the leaving of Jay Paterno from Penn State now that his dad was fired demonstrates. 

We can all understand the desire of a parent to set up their child in a good position. We can understand the even deeper desire to hand on a patrimony such as a successful athletic program.  Basketball coaching legend Eddie Sutton tried to do this after many successful years at Oklahoma State. He even made it part of his contract that his son, Sean, would succeed him. Coaching legend Bob Knight did the same when he made it a condition of employment that when he retired the Texas Tech program be handed on to his assistant and son Pat.

The ruthless world of elite sports unmasks weaknesses very quickly. This world only rewards success, period. A person cannot live on another’s competence. Competitors lurk waiting for coaches to fail and to snatch their jobs. In this world of intense struggle where successors lurk in the wings, loyalty takes on inordinate importance. A head coach or General Manager desperately needs allegiance and candor. For millennia, the human solution resided in nepotism. Officials appointed  blood relatives as allies and assistants. Family values may be one of the few bonds that can withstand the caustic pressures of competition. So not only did Pere Polian hire his son, but Mike Shanahan at the Redskins hired his son Kyle to be his offensive coordinator. Don Shula had launched his son Dave’s NFL career when at Miami as Bobby Bowden did for two of his children while coach at Florida State. I could go on but you get the picture.

The parent can hide the son when he is the head coach or general manager.  A competent child or sibling can flourish as a number two or three under the parent’s or older sibling’s protection. But when the parent steps down and hands on the program, he usually hands on a good roster. The son, the inheritor, can succeed for a couple years with the talent pool and remaining ethos of the father’s system.

But elite sport reveals problems quickly. Other teams and coaches dissect tendencies, lay bare flaws, outthink or out recruit. The son cannot rely upon the father’s talent or reputation and must go it alone. At the same time he lives in the shadow of his father and the lingering question of whether he really earned the job.

So three years and Pat Knight is fired.  Three years later, Sean Sutton is fired. Gerry Tarkenian tried to hand on the Fresno State program to his son Danny, but Fresno State had enough sense to stop that, although they did hire Tarkenian to begin with.

Genes may sometimes tell, but not as often as we would like to believe. Coaching or management nepotism in sport remains a high-risk low return approach. It almost never works.

I admit anomalies exist. Joey Meyer took over DePaul from his legend father Ray Meyer and coached for 12 years to a 231-158 record and 7 NCAA tournaments. Tony Bennett took over Washington State from his father Dick after three years and lead them to the NCAA. Before the bubble could burst, he moved to Viriginia where he is rebuilding the program. I know there are other cases, but this bequest approach fails far more than succeeds.

John Thompson III, who now coaches the Georgetown team his father John Thompson brought to prominence, illuminates a different path that works far better. He went to Princeton where he succeeded as a student and player and then became an assistant coach under Pete Carroll’s tutelage. He mastered a very different system and eventually became coach at Princeton and later at Georgetown. He earned it all himself and set his own career, his own philosophy. When he arrived at Georgetown, he did not inherit but earned the job.

A related approach occurs when a child or sibling is hired on and succeeds as an assistant coach, then gets hired to move on to their own program. Given the temptation to hire family, if you have to hire family, this approach works better. Bob Stoops coached at Oklahoma and hired as his brother Mike as defensive coordinator and associate head coach. Mike later took a job at Arizona where he had mixed success. But Mike Stoops earned the shot by his own body of work and he succeeded and failed at Arizona on his own terms. Similarly, Terry Bowden started as a graduate assistant for his father at Florida State, but left to earn his own reputation at a series of small colleges and great success and failure at Auburn. He is now  at Akron. Terry Bowden may have been launched by nepotism but made his career on his own merits.

Obviously these are anecdotes but I believe they illustrate an important point. Given the role of loyalty in sport and given the lure of family, coaches will hire family and managers will hire family. It only works as a launch that enables a child or sibling to cleave their own path and prove their own worth. They earn a program by work and success, not genetics.

The final irony, of course, lies in the fact that owners can get away with nepotism more than coaches or general managers. Wins and losses harshly define success or failure for coaches. Universities or owners mercilessly fire coaches and GM’s who do not win. But owners cannot be fired. They might create a family culture that hands on culture that can endure the vicissitudes of wins/losses, like the Rooneys in Pittsburgh. Better yet they can hire competent professionals who can assemble winning teams sometimes despite the owner's family.

Nepotism may or may not work with owners, but it is fatal with coaches and general managers.