George O'Leary, Dan Issel, and Bobby Knight deserve to have a few beers together and tell their tales. What a week it has been!
O'Leary's entire coaching career was brought down by a tiny resume fib which had been lurking for 30 years in a file cabinet. Issel slung verbal garbage with a low-life fan and found out that the word "Mexican" is itself a slur. No word yet on whether "Canadian," "German" or "Polynesian" has made this list. And Knight was dragged back into the national headlines because a gym manager in Houston got his feelings hurt and called a TV station to cry about it.
Does anybody else out there think that our sports world is suffocating in the utterly trivial?
{INSERT_RELATED}Issel's mistake was stooping to the drunken level of so called fans who make coach-baiting an Olympic caliber sport. It's pretty silly to think that the fact he called the fan a "piece of sh*t" was not an issue. The nationality modifier of "Mexican" was what tipped him into the realm of Adolf Hitler according to media pundits. The Nuggets created a sonic boom with the speed at which they handed down a four game suspension (without pay, a loss of $112,000). Issel did the requisite podium tearletting, and groups who felt aggrieved by the slur naturally called for Issel's firing.
Textbook political correctness from start to finish. Don't we all feel better now?
I dared to ask the silly questions of a man in search of common sense.
Like, what if the gentlemen was, indeed, Mexican? Can factual correctness trump political correctness? If he was Venezuelan instead, does the slur still apply? What if it was a white guy wearing a black mock turtleneck (I'm visualizing Mike Myers' "Dieter" of SNL fame)? Would a "shut up you drunken German pile of Hitler-loving monkey crap" blast from Issel warrant the same fine? Suppose the guy was actually from Holland?
Better yet, what if Issel had called him a "Hispanic-American piece of sh*t?" Politically correct label, but a dicey intent. Tough call, tough call. I simply don't own the piece of moral high ground from which to mete out correct punishment.
But no matter what, I hope Issel's coaching resume is squeaky clean. God forbid he should have an incorrect date on his internship at West Valley Junior High. Because it turns out that George O'Leary's impeccable seven-year tenure at Georgia Tech (52-33, four straight bowls, the NCAA's most prolific offense in 1999 with Heisman runner-up Joe Hamilton, no scandals, no probation) couldn't withstand the unfortunate fact that he lied about his playing career and academic credentials.
So let's get this straight.
A sitting president can lie under oath and ask his immediate subordinates to perjure themselves in his defense. All this while attempting to cover up a disgusting, wholly immoral violation of his marital vows with an intern young enough to be his own daughter. It was not a tryst with a waitress 30 years ago when he was just married, it was a current and direct abuse of the most powerful office in the world. Adding contempt to dishonesty, this President wags his finger in front of the country on TV, repeating his lie for the world to see.
He got to keep his job.
Meanwhile, George O'Leary's resume contains a fib about earning letters on a football team that nobody has ever seen play on TV, and a masters degree that never was and he's out the door in 48 hours.
How many letters you earned as a player ranks about 73rd on a list of qualifications for a D-I head coaching job. Right behind: "Do you own a clipboard and whistle?"
And before: "Have you ever seen the movie 'Rudy?'"
Cris Carter used to shove fistfuls of drugs up his snout. Bygones, I suppose, because he's now one the league's most hyped stars, appearing in all kinds of promos. Players can be recovering alcoholics, but apparently lying is terminal.
Can you imagine the kind of fact checking going on right now amongst college football coaches with their resumes? You don't think O'Leary is the only guy in the biz who "bumped himself up to varsity" somewhere along the line, do you?
The O'Leary resignation has set a deadly new standard in the industry. If you have some fluff on your sheet, how do you discreetly remove it without triggering an investigation? Do we need an amnesty day for all coaches, college and pro? Come clean with your lies, and all is forgiven. Oh, the stuff we might find! Headline: "Bill Parcells Never Completed Culinary School As Claimed, Despite Wishes to Cook the Meal, AND Shop For the Groceries."
If Notre Dame used any common sense, they would have held a press conference to announce:
"Apparently Coach O'Leary did not complete the course work for his masters degree as indicated on his resume some 30 years ago. We at Notre Dame are proud to provide continuing graduate study in that very field. Coach O'Leary, in addition to bringing back a winning tradition to Notre Dame football, will be held to completing that degree of his." The dean of the school then enters stage right with a stack of books in hand, strides to the mic and announces: "Coach, class starts January 4th, we look forward to seeing you there!" Assembled crowd erupts in laughter. The Irish get to keep a qualified and respected man, O'Leary gets to keep his dignity and his professional life, but with a well deserved moment of national "tsk tsk" for his ancient fibbery.
Instead, an institution with no clean closets itself (witness the Kim Dunbar probation, their gluttonous NBC TV contract, and the "honorable" act this fall of firing a coach with FOUR years left on his contract) cloaks itself in phony righteousness. O'Leary talked about "embarassing the University of Notre Dame." Please, Oregon State did that last year in the Fiesta Bowl 41-9. That's part of the reason you got the job in the first place!
As for his unearned letters at New Hampshire (a.k.a: The Florida State of the Northeast), this is like the lies you tell a girl in order to get her phone number. In business, everybody knows that a resume is the drink in the bar, the interview is a first date. Lying a little to get a second look is called "working it" in my book. Lying a lot (i.e. "No really, I do fly F-15's on the weekend for the CIA") may get a phone number, but you'll quickly flame out with her trying to sustain such fantasy.
In the daily battle of "common sense vs. sports hysteria," common sense is getting routed like the Cincinnati Bengals in a meaningless Week 15 game.
{INSERT_RELATED}Look at the Bobby Knight incident. Basically, the janitor at the Compaq Center in Houston claimed Bobby Knight used bad words and challenged him to a fight over a confrontation regarding the size of the facility's locker rooms. The story gets run by every sports media outlet in the country, based solely on this guy's claim. No second source, no eyewitnesses, not even a videotape.
And this is considered "news?" Are there any independent thinkers in the editorial departments who stop to say, "I'm not running this garbage, even it does involve Bobby Knight." The ESPN Radio morning show of "Mike and Mike" breathlessly exclaimed that "we will try to speak with (this janitor, his name doesn't deserve mention) to get his side of the story later this morning!"
And this was at 6:45 a.m. Such pressing issues to start the sports week.
Less than 24 hours later, the janitor had issued a written apology to Knight, and was barred from speaking about the incident any further. Funny isn't it, that his apology was buried in the NCAA Hoops section of CBS Sportsline on Monday night, but the initial claim was front page on Monday morning.
Journalistic balance, anybody?
How about a touch of common sense? It's the human quality that essentially says: "yeah, but. ..."
As in, "yeah, we could make a big deal about this, but does it really matter?"
Steve is a native Washingtonian and has worked in sports talk radio for the last 11 years. He worked at WTEM in 1993 anchoring Team Tickers before he took a full time job with national radio network One-on-One Sports.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Steve has worked for WFNZ in Charlotte where his afternoon show was named "Best Radio Show." Steve continues to serve as a sports personality for WLZR in Milwaukee and does fill-in hosting for Fox Sports Radio.
