FAYETTEVILLE — Courage comes with greater rewards for less bravery these days.
Citing “the courageous leadership” of University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long firing Razorbacks Coach Bobby Petrino, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation announced two gifts to UA athletics/academics totaling $1.25 million.
One was $1 million from the foundation plus $250,000 personally from the foundation’s chairman.
Both are above and beyond generous gifts the UA appreciates from among its all-time most benevolent benefactors, and they reflect the opinions of many wishing to give what was given if they had it to give.
But “courageous leadership”?
Really?
“Courageous” used to be a treasured adjective applied more restrictively, it seems.
Like describing heroism in the military, or Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color line, or admiring so many we all know enduring so bravely despite physical and or mental obstacles.
But calling it “courageous” for a public university supervisor to fire a subordinate for defying hiring procedures, including the subordinate putting his undisclosed mistress on staff payroll above more qualified applicants while personally giving her $20,000? Not to mention the subordinate caught lying after duping the university to perpetuate that lie in a news release?
Isn’t that firing more standard procedure than courageous?
Long deserves major props for outlining the case against Petrino so thoroughly that Petrino succumbed without contesting his voided $18 million buyout. He deserves kudos for convincing most UA boosters the firing was justified.
But courageous?
Alas, in today’s terms maybe so.
That reflects poorly nationwide on administration and booster obsequiousness to the arrogance some winning football coaches are allowed until so egregious that even 10-3 and 11-2 seasons can’t save them.
Look at our universities’ skewed priorities given tales of coaches so self-important that office staff are told not to address them unless addressed first.
Universities everywhere have medical school researchers trying to find cures for the incurable. They have agriculture faculty devising plans to feed a world of increasing population and diminishing resources. So many of importance labor on so many important projects, starting with teaching the basics that are the foundation for everything academic.
Somehow these truly important folks aren’t distracted exchanging hellos with the average Joe.
Yet heaven forbid distracting in March some diva coach maybe plotting a fake punt for September.
Back in the 1980s a Razorbacks coach with character, Ken Hatfield, saw Betty Riley, the wife of former UA custodian W.L. Riley, arriving at the Broyles Center to deliver a message to her husband but suddenly take ill and faint.
Hatfield personally rushed Mrs. Riley to the hospital, waited until he was assured she was treated, and then, in that pre-cell phone era, returned to scour the grounds to find Riley. Hatfield told him, Riley recalled, “Get your butt to the hospital because I just took your wife there.”
Given that same scenario in 2012, some of today’s diva coaches likely would have demanded staffers remove the “distraction” while berating them for allowing her entrance to their football fortress.
Truly, it would be courageous if all universities henceforth demand the same humanity from their football coaches that all of us should expect from each other.
Sports, Pages 18 on 04/21/2012