Good morning my many loyal and faithful readers. I know that most of you read the New York Times on a daily basis, but for those of you dwelling in the hinterlands, I have taken this opportunity to post an article in today’s Times regarding Saint Bobby Bowden aka the head football coach at Florida State University.**************************************
“BOBBY BOWDEN FUMBLES CHANCE AT GREATER LEGACY -By Harvey Araton. Published: March 24, 2009
Presented with the opportunity to forge a legacy as a teacher with integrity, Bobby Bowden has chosen to stand for his record as a football coach.
Given a chance to take one not for the team but with the team, Bowden has opted for a common 21st-century American alibi: I’m in charge, but don’t hold me accountable for what’s going on.
The specter of losing as many as 14 victories from his grand total of 382 has moved Bowden to accuse the N.C.A.A. of “killing a flea with a hammer.” If he believes that institutional classroom cheating is an insect on the face of big-time college football, it is time for Bowden, 79, to flee Florida State.
Let me add that I have never been of the opinion that Bowden or Penn State’s Joe Paterno — three years his senior and one career victory his superior — were too old to coach or deserved to be run from their campuses by Sunday morning quarterbacks and chat room quacks. They had won too much, given too much, to their respective universities to be dismissed because their programs fell from championship-contender grace.
Bowden won nine games last season, paling next to the national championship that Florida’s Urban Meyer won, but no dadgum disgrace. The real dishonor is in how he has tried to distance himself from the involvement of nearly two dozen of his players in a cheating scandal involving a total of 61 Florida State athletes in 10 sports.
Earlier this month, the N.C.A.A.’s committee on infractions responded to Florida State’s internal investigation and admission of academic impropriety by imposing probation for four years, taking away a small number of scholarships and vacating the victories in which the offending athletes participated in the 2006 and 2007 sports seasons.
On cue, Florida State said it would appeal the vacated victories in all the sports, but anyone who can count to 383 knows why. Thanks to its president, T. K. Wetherell, a former Seminoles football player, the university has put itself in the position of appearing to value Bowden’s duel with Paterno for immortal glorification more than its academic credibility.
“To hold coaches accountable for something they had nothing to do with and didn’t know anything about, to penalize teams two years later when people have already graduated and don’t even know that they were involved, just flat-out isn’t right,” Wetherell said at a news conference last week.
In a letter to Myles Brand, the president of the N.C.A.A., Wetherell suggested the formation of a blue-ribbon panel to review the policy of vacating victories as a form of punishment — now that his university is suddenly in violation of said policy.
Before a Florida State media-relations attendant could intervene, he also went off on an emotional rant that included what The Orlando Sentinel called “an elaborate hypothetical story involving Florida quarterback Tim Tebow” meant to illustrate Wetherell’s disdain for the way the N.C.A.A. handled aspects of its ruling in the academic fraud case.
Sounds like a president who could benefit from the guiding hand of a higher authority. Too bad. When Bowden needed an explanation of the facts of administrative life, he got the common vilification of the N.C.A.A. When he needed an adviser, he got an enabler.
Wetherell’s assertion that Bowden had no knowledge of papers being written and test answers provided for athletes taking an online music course doesn’t excuse either of them. It just makes you wonder how excessive the culture of athletic entitlement at Florida State had become under their watch.
In its annual academic progress report for Football Bowl Subdivision teams that participated in bowl games last fall, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida had Florida State graduating 69 percent of its football players over a six-year period, compared with an overall student-athlete rate of 80 percent. Not bad on both accounts, but if Seminoles needed fixers to pass Culture of World Music, what was done for them in classes that involved a bit more brainpower than distinguishing the Beatles’ hits from those of the Dave Clark Five?
Now, it is quite possible that the N.C.A.A., in the final analysis, will not have the stomach to proclaim the Bowden-Paterno winner by news release. Oklahoma won a similar appeal of vacated victories in 2005. But by not challenging the vacated victories, Florida State and Bowden could have separated themselves from the operational standard in big-time college sports, which university and coach typically interpret as such:
When student-athletes screw up, they are young adults who must be accountable. When they win big, Coach deserves an upgraded contract for the job he did with his “kids.”
Paterno aside, Bowden’s field legacy was never in question, but he missed a higher calling. He could have said, “My program, my recruits, my responsibility.” He would have deserved a silver medal.”
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I only report - you decide.
Billi Pod
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