FAYETTEVILLE -- Periodically on a message board, sports talk radio or the office water cooler, you will hear some Razorbacks fan clamoring for "whatever it takes" to win a national championship.
That's hardly an Arkansas monopoly. You would hear similar clamoring coast to coast from some zealous booster on behalf of any college fielding a football t or basketball team.
More from WholeHogSports
http://www.wholehog…">Like Arkansas before, scandal threatens Baylor season
For awhile, Baylor University will sober sensibilities that "whatever it takes" should never be accepted by any college president, coach, player, alum, prominent booster or even casual fan.
It has been proven by the Baylor scandal costing football coach Art Briles his job despite the last five years of success, and the reassigning of former Baylor President Ken Starr, that it can include looking the other way at rape.
It should make everyone pause and ponder at what college athletics has sometimes become vs. what it is supposed to be. It is so impersonal and unabashedly big business that its bigwigs routinely refer to it as a "brand."
Even more than violating the law, violating basic human decency in the quest for a championship and the accompanying money, opulence and attention should be a cost that no school would ever risk bearing, especially one alleging its foremost purpose is to educate.
Yet, it has happened repeatedly in college athletics. According to the Philadelphia-based law firm of Pepper Hamilton, it happened on the Baylor campus in Waco, Texas.
Pepper Hamilton was commissioned to investigate what Baylor botched, ignored or worse.
The report cited one case that Baylor administrators "constituted retaliation against a complainant for reporting sexual assault."
That Baylor glanced the other way at rape while led by Starr, the special prosecutor who pursued President Bill Clinton's alleged sexual indiscretion as grounds for impeachment, has some reveling in the irony.
There was some similar irony expressed when Penn State and its successful coach, Joe Paterno, unraveled in scandal.
However, any irony regarding Penn State's plight vanished when the horrors inflicted on young boys by former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky came to light.
The victims at Baylor are the story, not reviewing the partisan pros and cons of Starr prosecuting President Clinton.
Whatever his fault, Starr wasn't alone in "the fundamental failure" that Pepper Hamilton reported of Baylor's multi-layered malfeasance.
It originated, Pepper Hamilton confirmed, with a football program that "reinforced an overall perception that football was above the rules."
Above the rules and willing to allow whatever it takes to keep winning games.
If what happened at Baylor don't make everyone realize that "whatever it takes" is a path not to be taken, then it seems nothing will.
Sports on 05/28/2016