FAYETTEVILLE - A “Second Thoughts” item in Monday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette evoked another thought how little college athletics cares to learn from the past, although it is allegedly a part of institutions teaching those entrusted with the future.
Athletic departments, including the University of Arkansas’ operating in a national trend of increasing lock down, appear oblivious to the price Penn State is paying for public university athletic departments operating like private, secretive domains.
Until the most horrific scandal in college athletics history unraveled Penn State, Joe Paterno’s unchallenged reign had “Happy Valley” fancying itself astride college athletics’ highest moral ground.
This “Second Thoughts” item certainly doesn’t rank with retired defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky operating unfettered as a child molester at Penn State, but it’s disturbing nonetheless.
The item, headlined “Dress Code,” concerned Ohio State football players, under the direction of Coach Urban Meyer, yelling at observers of their practice because they chanced to wear blue shirts perhaps shading the color of Ohio State archival Michigan.
These weren’t Michigan shirts, which understandably would draw ire as garments of disrespect, but blue like most have somewhere in their wardrobe, particularly NFL scouts’ wardrobes since so many NFL teams include blue in their colors.
It seems Meyer, coming off an undefeated first season, feels empowered to prescribe a dress code for those attending the practices of his public university’s apparently privately operated football team.
Blue is forbidden, and reportedly derided by his large, well-muscled players apparently cast like junior high bullies tormenting a new kid for his attire.
Had those yelled at in blue been media or “pointy-headed professors,” a segment beyond Buckeyes boosters probably would applaud. But these were NFL scouts for gosh sakes, the ones holding keys to those Buckeyes with future NFL draft hopes.
Several scouts reportedly were hacked, terming the situation “embarrassing” and “not something that needed to happen.”
It was not only inappropriate but nonsensical, like if those from businesses who come to campus to interview prospective interns were ordered by the chancellor to change their attire to match school colors.
Of course it’s embarrassing and shouldn’t have happened.
Just like the Cotton Bowl, whose officials always have been Arkansas’ best friends in the bowl business, shouldn’t have been subjected to former Razorbacks Coach Bobby Petrino and his minions who were allowed to be so routinely rude leading into and after the Hogs’ 2011 Cotton Bowl victory over Kansas State that some connected to the Cotton Bowl privately confessed that they never wished to see Arkansas again.
Winning football games is great, but it should not be so great that colleges swap common decency for thuggish behavior.
“Thug” is how Gordon Gee, the silly, bow-tied former Ohio State president, referred to Bret Bielema, the former Wisconsin coach who was hired by Arkansas.
Well, if Gee - who later apologized to Bielema and said that his “thug” remarks were groundless - once deemed Bielema a thug, what must he think of the last Ohio State coach he hired?
He probably thinks just swell of him and believes Meyer, anointed with undefeated authority, can tell all Ohioans what to wear.
Sports, Pages 16 on 08/28/2013