College Sports, Tim Whitehead and Jim Treschel

Much of the time college sports can appear to be a cesspool of corruption, fraud and unethical behavior. The more money is to be made from a college sport the worse the situation is so College football and basketball are of course the worst.

The first issue in College Basketball is the fact that any pretense of academics is a farce. One year and out ( and players stop attending classes in the second semester) make them nothing more than revenue producing employees. The money that is generated from these players are incredible. The NCAA tournament itself bring money in buckets to schools and conferences. Coaches are paid in the millions of dollars. If you follow the money paid to coaches, schools, conferences and eventually players when they go pro it is, simply put, too much to be controlled by the NCAA in an ethical way.

Does anyone remember the schools whose wins are vacated after the fact. Of course not. People should not be forced to attend college. On the other hand if some coaches take these one and done players and others do not you have the equivalent of the steroid situation in baseball. If some do and you do not your ability to compete diminishes.

I love sports. It has always been that some athletes are not going to make it through college. The vision we have a kid working for a scholarship so he can go to college and get an education is obsolete. Most of these pro player wannabees now use college only a stepping stone to an attempt at professional sports.

Some say the schools make so money off the athletes that it is not right for the players to not be compensated. For me however I think a recognition has to be made of the fact that these schools provide a platform that allows these kids to go pro. I believe that a player who takes a scholarship, in a zero sum game this means that another student does not get a scholarship, should sign a contract that states that out of their first professional contract they will pay the full cost of room/board and tuition for a non athletic scholarship student. Some will say the University makes enough money from these kids and perhaps that is true but somehow someone not affiliated with the dirt of college athletics and the swampland of money should gain.

Jim Treschel the Coach of Ohio State football evidently knew long before it was exposed that his players were selling jerseys and other swag and making money on the side. When his players were suspended for 5 games ( next season) not the upcoming Bowl game Jim did not admit he knew then that they had been doing this. In the last couple of weeks we find he did. The University has now suspended him for 2 games in an attempt to ward of further NCAA snooping. Of course the question could be asked why the Coach would get a two game suspension when he knew what the athletes, the people his to mentor and be responsible for were doing. Perhaps he should get... five games as well.

I am not sure Coach Jim is totally to blame. Perhaps the University officials knew and wished to cover it up. In short nothing would surprise me. What I do know is that College Sports are rife with corruption and fraud.

Jim Calhoun'a allegations, Rick Pitino's extortion, and most of all John Callipari the wandering minstrel of NCAA violations show us that it is some of the highest profile coaches who have the most trouble. Reggie Bush, O J Mayo ( USC is evidently not having an easy time of it ) and this years NBA MVP in waiting Derrick Rose at Memphis show that some of the best young athletes are involved in this.

Perhaps letting players go pro right out of high school is the answer. At least then we remove this pretense and perhaps players in college might be more likely to be there for the right reason and money paid is for services not under the table.

Then we have Tim Whitehead at Maine. I realize of course that College Hockey compared to basketball and football is like comparing Bangor High School basketball to one of these schools high school teams that play on ESPN showcases. They are in different worlds.

I have defended Tim Whitehead before and am not going to go through the whole spiel again. My feeling are well known. The bile and hate that I am seeing spewed on websites, facebook and the BDN comment sites diminishes us all. I will say this. I had a conversation with Coach a few years ago about a player from Eastern Canada that after his freshman year had gone professional. I do not know is he has met with the success he hoped to, what I do remember is the Coach told me that he talked to him and told him he might only bet better in College and going an getting an education is never a bad thing. The sense that I got was that in the end Coach wanted to win and would have liked to had the player return, but that his first thought was for the kids well being and future be it in hockey or not.

Clearly he is going to struggle to be a successful coach if he keeps up that ridiculous attitude.

What is success. We all want the program to do well. I enjoy going to the games and a win is more fun than a loss. There are other measurements however. We forget that most of these kids will not play professional hockey and that many of them will graduate and be good members of society thanks in part to scholarships received and lesson taught in and out of the classroom at UMaine.

Tim Whitehead or a championship and then a potential scandal. I loved Shawn Walsh, I thought he was fun and he built this program and one can say in retrospect that his excesses were the product of overambition and not greed. I still prefer Whitehead's world. We teach our kids that there is more to life than winning and losing. Do we remember that?