Punt This Stuff

For thousands of years humans have used sports as a stage to teach values to young people, as a platform to forge prized physical and mental skills and as a relatively safe place to work off the natural aggressions of citizens, most of them spectators. Alas, as Americans consume a year-end surfeit of food and football, we have less than glorious examples of all this and worse. The new year should bring security crackdowns at rowdy pro games and self-examination at sports-crazy colleges.

First consider George O’Leary, the Georgia Tech football coach hastily named coach at the University of Notre Dame, which had hastily fired its previous coach for insufficient winning. December is, after all, a decisive time not just for what seems hourly bowl games but for player recruiting.

O’Leary’s resume impressed Athletic Director Kevin White, who called him “ideally suited to become a part of Notre Dame.” That resume said O’Leary had won three varsity letters at that noted football powerhouse, the University of New Hampshire, and collected a master’s degree from New York University. Neither claim was true.

After only five days, the man who would teach today’s young men to become tomorrow’s leaders through school sports resigned from the storied football program that didn’t do its homework.

Anyone who’s ever volunteered even once to referee a game sympathizes with Terry McAulay. He’s not a volunteer, but like fellow National Football League refs, he’s part-time. There he was, giving the Browns a crucial first down inside Jacksonville’s 10-yard line with under two minutes in a tight, playoff-deciding game. But wait. On further review and without public explanation McAulay ruled that wasn’t a first down two plays ago. Jacksonville would be allowed to run out the clock to win. Some 70,000 Clevelanders booed. Scores lobbed debris at the field, prompting McAulay to end the game (though the last 48 seconds were played later). Lake Erie’s infamously piercing waterfront cold and the perceived theft of a game are not excuses for such embarrassing fan activities, surely encouraged by lucrative beer sales. Team management initially missed its opportunity to denounce the rowdies. Then, 24 hours later, New Orleans’ fans became copycat trashers. Lousy behavior and poor communications all around.

May this long week of games create new opportunities for fans, coaches and team owners to remember the youngsters always watching and always learning from adult behavior--and act accordingly.