Dumb coaches take over the news
By By Stan Torgerson / sports columnist
May 5, 2003
Sometimes in covering news, everything that can, should or must be written in a story has been written.
That, it seems to me, is the situation with the transgressions of Mike Price. What else can or should be said? What he did was beyond dumb. It was stupid. It ruined his image and severely damaged that of the University of Alabama, even more so because of the many things that have happened to the once proud Crimson Tide football program over the past four years.
So enough already about Price and his dilly-dallying. He is not the first nor, I'm afraid, will he be the last. There's nothing more to sayexcept perhaps this.
Years ago when coaches or players got out of line the media knew it just as well as they know it today. But there was a different relationship between newspaper sports writers and athletic departments than there is today. Each city had only one or two papers, the beat reporters were, in effect, part of the family and the unwritten law was do not air the family's dirty linen in public.
One of the most prominent coaches in this league was beyond just being an alcoholic. He was a drunk. When Ole Miss played at his school and the athletic department had a night before get-together for the writers and radio broadcasters, I saw him literally carried out under his armpits several times. We talked about it. We joked about it. But the writers didn't write about it and the broadcasters never talked about it on the air. His teams won, and they won big. The "family" protected him as long as was possible, then finally retired him.
There was a basketball coach who had a gambling problem. Not a bet-on-games gambling problem but a card-playing gambling problem. In truth, he was the best gin rummy player I've ever seen but there's always someone who is better. After he was replaced a number of years ago, he went into card playing full time, lost everything he owned and has never truly made a comeback. But we knew he had a problem when he was still in athletics and said nothing.
There have been several SEC coaches who liked ladies more than their wives or the rules of conduct would allow. You never heard or read about them, although it was common knowledge with the writers who covered their teams.
What has changed is television. Poor television, getting the blame once more. I love it, make my living in it, but it has changed the ways of the world. The problem is television is highly competitive, competitive to all other media and they to it, including others like itself. If there is a sniff of a story someone, newspaper writer or television anchor, will drop all else and dig and dig until he or she finds the rumors to be true or false. They have no family allegiance, nor should they have. They see themselves as responsible only to their readers or listeners and that is as it should be. The Mike Prices of this world will always eventually be exposed, warts and all. So will the Larry Eustachys of Iowa State when they party with coeds, kissing them on the cheek and being kissed in return in front of a newspaper or TV camera. It was not Eustachy's private business. It's the State of Iowa's business too, because he is a public employee.
The same is true of the players. Years ago when kids got in trouble the discipline was applied behind closed doors, not publically. I remember when coach Billy Kinard at Ole Miss caught one of his players smoking pot. Kinard was shocked, hurt and angry. He came down hard on the kid but you didn't read about it in the papers. Today it would be page one in the sports section as are fights, DUI arrests, academic shortfalls and all the other errors in conduct or responsibility young men and young women are heir to.
We see it politically every week. Not personal misdeeds, you understand, but public policy and how decisions are arrived at. Many political leaders would like nothing better than to keep their doors closed. Whether the public realizes it or not, the open meetings laws are the best protection they have against bossism, crony deals and dishonesty in government.
And whether sports fans realize it or not, sports writers and sports broadcasters are key players, hand in hand with honest and sincere administrators who believe in keeping standards high in college athletics.
As Dr. Robert Khayat, chancellor of the University of Mississippi said in a recent interview published in this space, "Ours is a one strike university. Break the rules of conduct here and there are no second chances."
Mike Price discovered it is the policy at the University of Alabama as well.
