Should college coaches rat out rules violators?
By By Stan Torgerson / sports writer
Jan. 19, 2004
There are two ways to look at Alabama's charge that Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer allegedly ratted them out for violations of NCAA rules by Memphis booster Logan Young, who allegedly offered big money to athletes to enroll at Bama and to high school coaches for attempting to influence their decisions.
One is that no SEC school or coach should create harm to any other conference school or coach, regardless. That theory says cheating is a fact of life, everybody does it to one extent or another, and informing on a school that does is only an attempt to gain an unfair recruiting advantage.
That is the most common reaction by the alleged violating school, its fans and sometimes its officials.
When Ole Miss got in trouble a number of years ago, Rebel supporters angrily charged Mississippi State with turning them in.
Currently under investigation themselves, Bulldog alumni are, in return, blaming Ole Miss for their troubles.
The other reaction is to say that if these charges are true, and it is unlikely any coach or official would swear to a NCAA investigator they were unless his claims could be substantiated, then that school or its coach had a valid reason to blow the whistle.
And that's where the system breaks down. The fans simply don't ask whether or not their favorite school actually violated. They just assume the NCAA is investigating a pack of lies, and if it's later proven they aren't lies to the national organization's satisfaction, the non-believers fall back on the "everybody's doing it" argument.
But what if they are true and what if the opposing coach knows for a fact they are. By failing to aid the authorities, doesn't he in effect become a co-conspirator?
Let's look at it this way. You have a job in an office. You know for certain the person in charge of petty cash is taking some of that money for personal use and putting phony expense vouchers in the box to justify the shortfall. Do you or do you not have a responsibility to correct the situation, particularly if you also have access to the petty cash, the company is checking the shortage and you may be one of those investigated and possibly even prosecuted? What is your prime responsibility then, to the company or to shield your fellow employee, knowing that he or she is a thief?
You're the manager of a supermarket. You know that an employee is putting cans of food in his pocket when he leaves for the day and not paying for them. Do you just tell yourself that everybody is doing it and the company can afford the loss? Or should you find a way to catch them redhanded and fire them for what they have done?
What's the difference between athletics and business? Is cheating not cheating in both cases?
I concede that in recent discussions I had last week with others who love college athletics, the dominant reaction was that Fulmer should never have done it. It wasn't fair, it wasn't any of Tennessee's business and again, everybody else is doing it.
But let me give you a few quotes from other coaches as published in the Nov. 10 issue of The NCAA News, long before this particular story broke.
Gary Williams, head men's basketball coach, University of Maryland: "Until presidents stop hiring cheaters, until coaches start turning in guys who are cheating, until the NCAA penalizes everyone equally, nothings really going to change."
Donnie Marsh, head men's basketball coach at Florida International: "Even though the things that occured the past six months or so were isolated and not indicative of our whole profession, to not pay attention to them or not think they're significant would not be wise on our part. Perception is reality, and the perception of college coaches right now is that we are tarnished by all these scandals."
Mike Krzyzewski, head basketball coach, Duke University: "There is a certain number of problems in every profession newspaper reporters, politics, Wall Street, medicine. We don't like it but it would be naive to think we're not going to have problems. We have a standard of ethics, and the issue is, can we teach it any better than we're doing now?"
Tom Izzo, head basketball coach, Michigan State: "Our image has to be perfect in some people's minds and that's impossible. There are so many middlemen involved in the recruiting process now that it's unrealistic to think you can wave a magic wand and suddenly clean up everything. But that shouldn't excuse us from making positive changes where we can."
Aren't these coaches saying, in effect, that cheating is wrong and that the coaching profession has a responsibility to attempt to clean up the situation when or where it occurs?
And isn't it quite possible that's what Coach Fulmer was trying to do when he told the NCAA what he knew, or believed he knew, about Logan Young and his alleged payments to athletes if they would enroll at Alabama and to their high school coaches if they did?
I'll leave the answer up to you.
