Student Athletics as Moral Endeavor II

Part II

The first promise singles out the college’s commitment to the student. This promise takes on special urgency because often the student may only be 16 to 18 when they make the commitment. When the student athlete is the first person in their family to go to college, the college’s promise, made by the coach, to get them an education and not just a chance to play sports or become a professional athlete takes on a unique and powerful moral imperative.

The university’s obligation is doubly important because if the student athlete does not leave with a credible degree, while they will have had a marvelous four years doing what they love, but at the age of 22, their athletic career will be over and their adult life will begin. The college promises more than learning athletics, it promises learning what skills the college can offer to prepare for adult life.

If the university does not meet this promise, then the university simply exploits the passion and promise of the student athletes. In this the commentators are correct, the university must provide strong academic support for the student athletes to succeed on this onerous path.

We need to remember that colleges make these promises to any student they accept. In the case of student athletes the college requires them to compete as a condition of acceptance. The college can provide this support through regular college programs or athletic specific programs, but the school has this obligation. The college’s promise requires the university to provide several critical dimensions of support.

1)                    Coaching and personnel for training and medical care to support athletic development and achievement.

2)                   Academic and personal support to learn in the academic context and develop a personal identity beyond being an athlete.

3)                   College support requires multiple levels of resources:

1)   Five years of support to graduate plus strong summer school support. Huge numbers of regular college students now take 5-6 years to graduate. The sheer time and energy demands on college athletes means the student athletes need the extra time and summer support to have a good chance to graduate.

2)   Personnel to work with the student to ensure that he or she understands the complicated NCAA graduation progress requirements. This advice moves the student on a trajectory towards graduation but also keeps them eligible. To be honest in the early years of college, many student athletes identify primarily as athletes and getting them to study will be driven as much by their desire to stay eligible as to develop as an academic student.

3)    Help for students to navigate the tensions of taking exams and getting assignments in and working with professors when athletes must travel as part of their scholarship obligations. More than a few professors resent athletic travel interference with classroom academics, and student athletes need academic support needs to bridge the tensions.

4)  Tutoring and study tables will help students stay up with academics while spending 30-40 hours a week on athletics. Learning academically and athletically can be harsh and hard. The reality is most student athletes, even the best students, struggle during the first two years of college trying to balance this. Honestly very few freshmen, period, are truly ready for the academic demands of college life. This support bridges the critical first two years.

5)    This academic support is absolutely necessary when dealing with the athletes recruited from disadvantages backgrounds. Often student athletes from wretched urban or rural school systems need tutorial support and academic incentives to recover and stay on track as they struggle to catch up to the skills levels needed to be a self sustaining college student. Without this compensatory support at the beginning, disadvantaged student athletes will fail.

Many colleges fail student athletes at this academic nexus. College athletics becomes exploitation if schools do not support academic learning along with the athletic learning. Especially at the second level of division 1 and division 2, athletes do not get the academic support they need during the first two years. The NCAA and conferences are fighting to and must continue to push and incentivize colleges to provide academic support to address the reality of student life.

You see this failure manifest when the NCAA votes down regulations that would provide more academic and financial support for student athletes. The class based votes of the NCAA where mid-majors and lower level D1 schools vote against paying true cost of attendance or against academic reforms to avoid the costs demonstrates this moral failure.

Many NCAA officials believe that if schools are going to enjoy the benefits of intercollegiate athletics and exposure, especially those that involve recruiting underserved minority students, schools have the moral obligation to invest in the academic support required by the promise to provide the resource support for persons to flourish as students and athletes.

The pressure on this issue must never falter. Schools will funnel new resources into salaries and facilities, but it must also go to academic support. Conferences should be pushing this as a condition of membership. One of the real benefits of the new penalties for low graduation rates is that it forces schools to either recruit better prepared students or invest in better academic support for students.

In the end, however, the reality of the success or failure of the enterprise rests with the young man or woman who make the promise and face their possibilities as students of athletics, academics and life.

Student Athletics as a Moral Endeavor I & II

Student Athletics as a Moral Endeavor

I remain an idealist about the reality of being a student athlete, a chastened idealist, but still committed to the ideal. The ideal of being a student athlete should have moral power and place demands on us. I believe the moral standing grows from three promises that the athlete and the university make to each other. I will discuss them in detail and their implications for both the university and the student athlete.

These promises make the education of a student athlete a moral endeavor that flows from the promises. Here are the three promises that anchor student athlete into the moral life of the university and being a student.

•  The university promises the student athlete to provide the support and resources to grow to his or her highest potential as a student of academics and athletics.
• The student promises to the university to bring his or her highest commitment, talent and energy to develop their potential as a student both academically and athletically.
• The student promises to him or herself and often their God that she or he will be true to their talent and future and use the time to mature into the best person they can become.

These promises link being a student with both academics and athletics. Students are learners, and they learn and master both academic and athletic domains.

My friend Ed Taylor the Vice Provost & Dean of Academic Affairs at University of Washington insists that education is a moral endeavor. Its morality arises from the mutual commitment by student and teacher to help the student grow into his or her potential. This involves not just mastering technical skills to survive and achieve in a job or sport. The education should develop personal attributes to help a person succeed in life. The student can grow into a person of character, belief and commitment.

I believe Ed is correct, and that the moral nature of education means that the above promises should hold true for any “student” at an educational institution. The three promises reinforce two issues that apply to education and to intercollegiate sports.

§  First, accepting a student means that the college has assessed that the accepted student can succeed.

§  Second, the institution will provide the resources and support for any accepted student to succeed.

In American higher education as many of one third of students may come in with deficits in writing or math skills. Modern universities provide numerous introductory or remedial writing and math classes to bridge the student’s needs in this area. Universities also provide counseling, health services and guidance to support career and course planning.

The other side of this moral equation addresses the responsibility of the student. Professors and colleges cannot force a student to learn. A college should provide support, teaching, knowledge and opportunity. In the end, however, the student must study for class, take advantage of counseling resources, or visit with the professor or TA. The individual student must read the books, take the time to memorize or think hard about the assignments—students make the decision to forgo other opportunities whether drinking, partying or working to master knowledge and skills offered by the university.

Many students work today to go to college and balance working 20-30 hours a week with learning in classroom. Numerous students find their true passions in extra-curricular activities, service learning or internships where they invest time energy to flourish. At its best class teaching and experiential learning reinforce each other.

College education will not stick and achievement will not occur without effort and attention by the individual student.

The second promise of the student locks this in. Students promise to the institution to bring their attention and effort to work, grow and learn. Any teacher will tell you the worst experience in teaching happens when a teacher faces a classroom where no one wants to be there and no one cares about learning what the class offers.

The second promise implies the success of a student depends upon the inner dialogue students have with themselves about what they desire to achieve, whom they aspire to become and what their conscience and God ask of them.

Now let’s go back to the moral world of the student athlete. I am well aware that the cynics and college-educated ex-student athlete TV commentators make careers out of bashing the NCAA. Usually they focus exclusively upon the less than .o5 percent of the 450,000 student athletes who might move on to 3.6 year average careers in professional sports. Leaving these ultra elite revenue sport students aside for this discussion, we need to remember that being a student athlete, period, is hard. All student athletes tread a hard road.

Student athletes gain access to colleges, often ones they might not get into on academic or experience merit, by virtue of their athletic skill. They are expected as a condition of admission to compete on behalf of a university and contribute to the university’s team athletic success. This involves at least 25-40 hours a week devoted to practice, film watching, conditioning, travel, medical work and actual competition.

The amount of work spent on athletic achievement goes up as the division rises. This is partially due to elite status but also connected to the fact that Division 1 & 2 offer scholarships, and student athletes feel a strong moral obligation to devote that time. It also reflects the reality that most student athletes are pursuing a passion. They are competing in activities they love and have mastered. The athletes want to excel and play and for 99.5%, college is the last chance they will have to play.

The experience of achieving in an activity a person is committed to and excels at is rare and exceptional for any human beings. Harvey Perlman the Chancellor of Nebraska-Lincoln often muses that he wishes more students had the chance to be as passionate about their college activities as student athletes.

Being a student of academics and athletics at the same time takes immense effort, discipline and time management by student athletes. Student athletes know this, and all the graduation surveys reflect learning time management and self-discipline as two of the major attributes and accomplishments of student athletes. It is exhausting but these attributes undergird the student athlete’s promise:

1)        these attributes grow from the dedication to study and learn their craft as athletes and contribute to their university and team and individual desire to achieve.

2)        this self-discipline and time management enables them to study and learn in class, study homework and hand in assignments and take exams despite the time they devote to athletics.

This life and dedication of time and attention reveals the strength and importance of the two promises that student athletes make to their team/school but also to themselves and their God.  

Part II will look more closely at the first promise, the one the college makes to the student athlete.

______________________________

The first promise singles out the college’s commitment to the student. This promise takes on special urgency because often the student may only be 16 to 18 when they make the commitment. When the student athlete is the first person in their family to go to college, the college’s promise, made by the coach, to get them an education and not just a chance to play sports or become a professional athlete takes on a unique and powerful moral imperative.

The university’s obligation is doubly important because if the student athlete does not leave with a credible degree, while they will have had a marvelous four years doing what they love, but at the age of 22, their athletic career will be over and their adult life will begin. The college promises more than learning athletics, it promises learning what skills the college can offer to prepare for adult life.

If the university does not meet this promise, then the university simply exploits the passion and promise of the student athletes. In this the commentators are correct, the university must provide strong academic support for the student athletes to succeed on this onerous path.

We need to remember that colleges make these promises to any student they accept. In the case of student athletes the college requires them to compete as a condition of acceptance. The college can provide this support through regular college programs or athletic specific programs, but the school has this obligation. The college’s promise requires the university to provide several critical dimensions of support.

1)                    Coaching and personnel for training and medical care to support athletic development and achievement.

2)                   Academic and personal support to learn in the academic context and develop a personal identity beyond being an athlete.

3)                   College support requires multiple levels of resources:

1)   Five years of support to graduate plus strong summer school support. Huge numbers of regular college students now take 5-6 years to graduate. The sheer time and energy demands on college athletes means the student athletes need the extra time and summer support to have a good chance to graduate.

2)   Personnel to work with the student to ensure that he or she understands the complicated NCAA graduation progress requirements. This advice moves the student on a trajectory towards graduation but also keeps them eligible. To be honest in the early years of college, many student athletes identify primarily as athletes and getting them to study will be driven as much by their desire to stay eligible as to develop as an academic student.

3)    Help for students to navigate the tensions of taking exams and getting assignments in and working with professors when athletes must travel as part of their scholarship obligations. More than a few professors resent athletic travel interference with classroom academics, and student athletes need academic support needs to bridge the tensions.

4)  Tutoring and study tables will help students stay up with academics while spending 30-40 hours a week on athletics. Learning academically and athletically can be harsh and hard. The reality is most student athletes, even the best students, struggle during the first two years of college trying to balance this. Honestly very few freshmen, period, are truly ready for the academic demands of college life. This support bridges the critical first two years.

5)    This academic support is absolutely necessary when dealing with the athletes recruited from disadvantages backgrounds. Often student athletes from wretched urban or rural school systems need tutorial support and academic incentives to recover and stay on track as they struggle to catch up to the skills levels needed to be a self sustaining college student. Without this compensatory support at the beginning, disadvantaged student athletes will fail.

Many colleges fail student athletes at this academic nexus. College athletics becomes exploitation if schools do not support academic learning along with the athletic learning. Especially at the second level of division 1 and division 2, athletes do not get the academic support they need during the first two years. The NCAA and conferences are fighting to and must continue to push and incentivize colleges to provide academic support to address the reality of student life.

You see this failure manifest when the NCAA votes down regulations that would provide more academic and financial support for student athletes. The class based votes of the NCAA where mid-majors and lower level D1 schools vote against paying true cost of attendance or against academic reforms to avoid the costs demonstrates this moral failure.

Many NCAA officials believe that if schools are going to enjoy the benefits of intercollegiate athletics and exposure, especially those that involve recruiting underserved minority students, schools have the moral obligation to invest in the academic support required by the promise to provide the resource support for persons to flourish as students and athletes.

The pressure on this issue must never falter. Schools will funnel new resources into salaries and facilities, but it must also go to academic support. Conferences should be pushing this as a condition of membership. One of the real benefits of the new penalties for low graduation rates is that it forces schools to either recruit better prepared students or invest in better academic support for students.

In the end, however, the reality of the success or failure of the enterprise rests with the young man or woman who make the promise and face their possibilities as students of athletics, academics and life.

Sports Ethics: “Step Up”

“We were down. Coach told me I had to step up my game and I did.”

How many times have we heard this expression from coaches and players: step up.

I think the notion of step up carries real weight as an ethical and psychological moment in sport and represents a model to carry into professional domains.

Think about the metaphor for a moment: step up. It places the person on a step, a place, even a plateau. The notion specifies that the athlete or professional exists at a particular level of performance on an upward climb. The level may be a plateau or it may be a lower rung, does not matter. What does matter: the metaphor urgently states that the present step/level/plateau does not suffice to achieve the goal. Staying at this level, this step, means failure.

Let’s think about some classic situations where a player or coach must step up their play. I am going to use team here but this applies as much to individuals in individual sports as team competition.

• ·      Seniors or veterans have graduated, and the younger players of the team have to step up and perform at a higher level of skill and commitment.
• 
  
• ·      The team has fallen behind in a contest, and the contest verges on getting away from the team. The player must step up and perform to bring the team back from its lethargy and gain energy and focus.
• 
  
• ·      The team possesses a lead but the other team makes their expected run. The momentum seems to be shifting, and a player has to step up and stop the run.
• 
  
• ·      Players can step up when a window exists to excel to break the game open like avoiding a tackle and finding a fourth gear or making a free throw shot with time running out.
• 
  
• ·      Players are challenged to step up when a championship or playoff or chance is on the line.

All these situations differ but carry a common denominator—the existing level of performance will not work and must change. To the point of the game, the performance must rise up from its immediate level.

Step up has two related connotations. First, it might mean that a team is playing below its normal level. The below norm can occur when a team has not prepared for the challenge opponents pose. They took an opponent for granted and must literally snap out of lethargy and step up to their normal level of play. A team might be surprised or tired and is not containing the other team’s comeback. Athletes must change their emotional and mental mind set on the spot and take the game seriously. They need to respond with integrity to the challenge before them.

Second, step up suggests that just being competent or playing at the norm, even if very high, will not work. A team might be playing hard and well, but just not good enough to win. A team may have been playing very well, but the opponent is roaring back, making a run, or they opponents take the lead. This calls for exceptional performance. Exceptional does not demand the impossible but dictates that a player pull it all together and bring the absolute maximum physical, mental and emotional presence that they are capable of at this stage in their development. 

Stepping up means bursting past a performance plateau. This exceptional moment meets the test of the moment. Often players may not know they have it in them, but they achieve it. They step up.

A player can have a career game responding to the quality of the opposition or stakes of the game. They can have a break out performance or a breakout moment—they escape a tackle at a critical moment; they sack a quarterback to end a drive; they intercept a pass; they stop a run with an exceptional block or spike; they perform an extraordinary save. Each action not only personifies a great individual action but galvanizes a team. Stepping up can be contagious, and fellow teammates take heart from the action; they bear down more and give a more attention and energy. Not only does the opponent’s run stop, but momentum shifts as teammates gather up their focus and their collective performance rises.

Players on the verge of giving up recover. Coaches who started to call plays based on minimizing a loss take heart and re-infuse their play calling with risk and energy; they coach up, not down. A team comes back from behind.

Multiple players express their commitment to each other. They cheer and encourage each other. The team as a whole steps up, and the coaches respond in kind with deeper concentration and focus upon plays or the energy they convey to players.

To step up does not mean just to try harder. The player calls upon him or herself to attend more deeply, concentrate more intently and push their body and memory more powerfully. Step up involves physical and mental rising from a baseline to a higher baseline for a moment in time. It may presage a higher level of performance in the future for the player or team, but it succeeds for a moment, that is enough.

Successful stepping up expands a person’s imagination of the player he or she can become. To step up need not be a one shot moment, but a new possibility.

Penn State & the NCAA: Restorative Justice, not the Death Penalty

The NCAA Will Act on Penn State & Should Seek Restorative Justice not the Death Penalty

People are demanding the NCAA to act against Penn State for its moral horror show in the Sandusky affair. I think the NCAA will act but am not sure it should. But if it does, it should act to restore justice, not impose retribution.

The NCAA is a confederated membership nonprofit organization with complex bylaws that grant immense autonomy to campuses and conferences. It is not a state actor and schools have jealously limited its power.

The bylaws resolutely stick to issues around equal playing, sports governance, athlete welfare and amateurism. The bylaws define legal not moral requirements of membership. The academic institutions jealously guard local prerogatives and resist reforms that centralize power. Athletic directors and coaches along with the media hate NCAA enforcement. None of them want an ethics police.

Acting now against Penn State “for the good of intercollegiate sports” would involve an unprecedented assertion of power by the NCAA. The claim would be that Penn State as an institution and football team failed in their institutional control. Penn State failed but it is not clear it involved NCAA bylaws.

Here are the reasons for caution:

1.  1t is not clear any major NCAA bylaws were actually violated. The NCAA has no morals clauses; it does have clear moral ideals in its governing documents. Most “morals” violations such as sexual harassment or substance abuse remain at campus level and violate campus rules and state law. The NCAA seldom gets involved as an ethics politice unless it involves institutional dereliction and student welfare. Penn State is not about student welfare.
2.  Mark Emmert has pointed out the NCAA has no precedent, the actions are “unprecedented.” He has made clear the NCAA should not be bound by the past “normal” expectations. The NCAA issues thousands of punishments as regular administrative actions on minor violations such as practice or travel times violations. These rulings occur around complex rules to protect student athletes and ensure some fair play. Even major violations involve two separate issues.
1. they entail a clear and proven major violation such as impermissible benefits or agent contact or illegal recruiting. None of these activities remotely relate to ignoring or covering up the abuse of children by a former coach.
2.  the most serious infractions involve loss of institutional control and deliberate cover up. Penn State qualifies in spades. But it is not clear the leaders even worried whether these were NCAA violations. They were trying to protect their institution’s reputation, not hide from the NCAA.
3.  NCAA infractions investigators are not equipped to examine criminal actions and must defer to criminal investigations. NCAA personnel have neither training nor writ in these areas.
4.  The case involves hard issues of statute of limitations for most NCAA violations. The abuse probably began before 1977 (35 years ago) and Sandusky retired in 1999. He had a privileged Emeritus status for the last 13 years, but no formal employment relationship.
5.   Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant, reported seeing Sandusky sexually assaulting a boy in the shower room in 2002. From that point the Head Coach and senior university administrators, not just athletic personnel, covered up for decade. While the Freeh report makes clear a cover-up occurred, most of the time no one even bothered to think about it. If the NCAA has a case it exists here in the cover-up and institutional failure.

“Hard cases make bad law” is a basic maxim of American judiciary action. This is a very hard case that could make very bad law.

If the infractions committee or NCAA President acted now, they would appropriate a range of control over over ranges of moral/legal behavior that lie beyond their past competence or mandate. I think they will act simply because the actions are so despicable even if beyond any legal writ. It looks like the actions were “enabled or at least not stopped” in Mark Emmert’s words

The NCAA will act. Paradoxically they will act for the same reasons that drove the cover-up to protect the legitimacy and credibility of the NCAA and out of moral outrage.

The NCAA lawyers will concoct justifications based upon good of the sport or generalized duties of ethics and integrity in athletics. This logic will expand the authority of the NCAA and set huge precedents to regulate new areas.

The NCAA will also act because people fear that that if they don't, no one else will. They cannot rely on Penn State.

This is a school whose idea of restitution is to paint out halos over Paterno’s head and redo their bathrooms!! They finally will take the statue down. Come on! Everyone who can be fired has been, and the Regents should resign and have started but what else do we expect. Sandusky has gone to jail and other will be tried. Penn State will not fall on its sword.

The senior administrators of Penn State and their coach failed to exercise moral integrity and act against immoral and illegal behavior. They worried more about their institution and careers than the victims. This is the crux of the NCAA case of not exercising institutional control over actions occurring by non-university employees that administrators missed and ignored when revealed.

These are real criminal and civil crimes and moral failures. But it is not clear they violate NCAA bylaws.

Let’s assume the NCAA will act with a newly developed warrant asserting new powers and authority based upon moral integrity of institutional systems. Let's assume they act through Presidential action from the Board and bypass the infractions committee. Now let us assume that the program does not have a history of violations or probation that would point to long-term lack of institutional control. Multiple probations also point to an inability or unwillingness to gain control of rogue coaches, rogue agents, rogue players or rogue boosters like. At Penn State no extant history of violations or institutional hostility manifests. However the NCAA acts it must do so in a way that achieves its moral ends but also avoids Penn State litigation that might challenge this extension of power.

NCAA President Mark Emmert point out this is unprecedented and NCAA precedent is not much help. I mean OK, telling a school you can’t go to a bowl game for three years or you lose 25% of your scholarships—these are serious NCAA penalties, yet they feel like a pea-shooters against a whale.

No bowl games? Fewer scholarships?  Versus 35 years of sexual abuse of children under the protective banner or Penn State or ten years of covert denial and cover-up with no remorse?

I know people are screaming for the death penalty, but to what end? The program gained no competitive advantage, violated no major rules, did not abuse student welfare, cheat on exams, not graduate students or play fast and loose with agents. It has no prior history. All the conditions under which the death penalty has been used do not comport. The death penalty would also open the NCAA ups to serious legal challenges which neither it nor Penn State want. 

I want to strongly support another approach that others have floated. Do not use the death penalty. Limit bowls or scholarship reduction if you want, but to act to connect to the moral nature of the crime.

Don’t focus upon retribution. The NCAA should aim for restorative justice.

Take the profits from football for the next five years, or take a high mandated percentage so that other sports will survive. Require Penn State to fund an independent national foundation dedicated to preventative education of child abuse. Put this money to good use. Create a real independent nonprofit foundation and have it dedicated to working with colleges and high school to provide strong education and support to stop this plague.

NCAA action will ultimately rest upon moral claims, not bylaw violations. The NCAA response should be informed by restorative justice, not retribution. Protect future victims from the depredations Penn State fostered.

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.

The Sandusky Verdict and the Limits of Team Culture

The guilty verdict on Jerry Sandusky for 45 counts of child abuse confirms what we all knew. It also confirms Sandusky’s invincible denial and rationalizations that matches the patterns of most abusers. But Sandusky’s now legally established guilt only reinforces the institutional moral lessons about how dangerous team culture can be to moral integrity.

High achievement in professional fields including sports usually requires successful teams. Sports teams exemplify this reality but it lives in any team at any level of public or private sector. It ranges from the immensity of the Manhattan Project to snow removal. Yet, as Sandusky’s case shows, the dynamics of high achieving teams can lead teams to deny, tolerate or hide immense moral evil in the name of the team.

First, every team produces imbedded authority. At the simplest level members internalize values and commitments to each other. This commitment to each other reinforces and circles back on a commitment to achieve a common purpose. Team members self-censor and do not violate team norms.

Second, internalizing norms proceeds hand in hand with deferring to authority and leaders. Successful sports teams understand that execution depends upon deference to coaches, who recruit team members, socialize them and can cut them for not meeting expectations. In college and high school, the power of coaches to determine the moral and behavioral expectations of players is immense. This is reinforced by the player’s commitments to a common goal.

Teams commit to a mission. This does not require committing to each other, but grows into this on the field and practice. Goal commitment obliges players to get along in practice, the locker room and on the field.

Teammates learn as a matter of course to “live with” the idiosyncrasies and even grossness of other players or coaches. Everyone has idiosyncrasies from the way their sweat smells or how they fart to their behavior off field or dating habits. Players and teammates school themselves to get along with this. They may make jokes about it, but they stuff it for the mission of winning.

These differences can be obvious like race, ethnicity or geography or very personal. It might involve player’s life off field and how they treat partners or their gender preferences. Fellow players will tolerate or simply ignore differences and problems with players who may be jerks or violent or assholes as long as it does not enter the locker room or impact performance. Teammates shrug, “it’s just Manny being Manny,” but they often will not socialize with the idiots.

This goes doubly for coaches and authority figures. The coaches may scream, yell and even abuse players, but they possess huge authority and often grudging respect if they “know their shit.” 

School or club coaches often turn teams into almost family units with care and attention lavished on their players. In college many players were recruited and courted by a coach as well as and developed by a coach.  Even then, on the road players can see coaches misbehaving sometimes, either drinking, womanizing or violating team norms. They may dislike it and resent it, but they will put up with it and keep it silent for the team.

In these tight knit groups, peer authority and identity can be so strong that people can literally miss what they see or reinterpret what they see. Social psychology research is replete with cases where individuals will stifle their own moral initiative under peer pressure or literally realign what they saw to bring into line their perceptions with their beliefs.

This is how Sandusky could get away with his abuse for so long. His actions may seem weird and strange, but if it happens enough, it normalizes his deviance. So bringing along teenage “guests” to practice or road games where the “guests” sleep in his room becomes just “Jerry being Jerry.”

It took a lot of moral courage, maybe all he had, for Mike McQueary to acknowledge to himself that he really did see the coach who recruited and trained him and worked with him raping a young boy in the shower. I imagine his whole body and mind screamed to deny or reinterpret whatever he saw.

But McQueary did see it and fought the temptation to ignore or reinterpret it. He reported it to his revered coach, Joe Paterno, a man who could have ended it all in a microsecond if he had listened or acted. Mike McQueary may not have done enough but he did what most team members cannot do. He reported evil; he snitched; he had the level of self-honesty to see the truth. His testimony at the trial provided independent adult corroboration for the sordid remembrances of the young men who had to dredge up painful and conflicted memories of Sandusky’s embraces.

Penn State is desperately working to eliminate the scandal and rewrite history. The stadium will not be renamed after Paterno, not for lack of trying. The school is tenderly approaching the victims about settlements. They painted out Jerry Sandusky from the famous mural with Penn State players and coaches, rather like 1984. Now they have replaced the blanked out portrait of Sandusky with a leader in the fight against child abuse.

But rewriting history will not be enough here. If new CNN reports are accurate, then the athletic Director Mike Curry and the Vice President Gary Shultz actually planned to report the incident as required by law. But a discussion with Paterno changed the Vice President’s mind. According to CNN, his email stated, he decided to talk to Sandusky and limit his access. "This is a more humane and upfront way to handle this.” They essentially did nothing. Sandusky continued to use Penn State facilities, continued to be free to abuse and continued to use his Penn State status to legitimize his cultivation and grooming of young victims.

One final point, most teams develop a no snitch rule. Not snitching lies deep in any committed group identity; it exists as strongly as “I’ve got your back.” No snitching makes perfect sense because team members do not want to reveal the strategies, skills or training that give a team its identity and strengths. Not snitching prevents opponents from knowing a team’s weaknesses or fissures.

I have watched investigations of teams where a fight had occurred at a party and thirty team members saw the fight. Some tried to break it up, others urged people on, but under investigation no one saw it and no one would reveal a word about not only about who started it but also who fought, period. A wall of denial faced team and department leaders trying to figure it out.  Teams stand together even to hide the bad.

Combine no snitch with the denial and culture of living with the gross stuff, and Sandusky’s actions reveal writ large the horrible mutations that the good of teams can produce.