For UCLA & Steve Alford, Stepping Back From Wooden's Tradition is the Only Way to Restore It

They hang like road-side warning signs.  Flapping above Nell & John Wooden Court, they warn all who would join the men’s basketball program of the unyielding standards by which members are judged. Fans who never a saw championship use them as shields to justify empty seats and golf-like game atmospheres, and everyone associated with the program uses them to explain why UCLA is different and better than everyone else when it comes to hoops.

No, UCLA’s eleven national championship banners aren’t the problem.

But they sure do symbolize it.

It all seemed so easy when John Wooden stalked the sidelines with smiles, a rolled up program and the nation’s best players in his back pocket.  Fluid, consistent and seamless, Wooden’s teams defined success for an entire era of college basketball and left everyone wondering how he made it look so easy.  And the wins and national championship banners?

Well, they stacked up like mail on vacation.

But a funny thing happened when Wooden stopped cutting down nets.  College basketball changed.  In the 38 years since Wooden hung up his kicks, college basketball went from shining beacon of amateurism to big business and NBA training ground.

Players bolting from top programs became commonplace, and four-year athletes at so-called mid-majors drove once irrelevant programs to new heights.  Parity ensued, led to more change, and it became a lot harder to stack up titles.

The change impacted programs differently, and some struggled.  The University of San Francisco Dons never regained the form they parlayed into two national titles, and other schools who used to compete literally vanished into thin air (where have you gone Idaho State?).  And while UCLA’s struggles were never that dramatic, it faced unique challenges which it still hasn’t solved.

UCLA’s primary problem is its inability to accept and recognize its shifting stature on the landscape.  Once the undisputed ruler of college basketball, UCLA has slid to a top-flight, but slightly lesser program, and the slide is equal parts ignored and anathema to UCLA supporters.

Managing Wooden’s legacy and the incumbent expectations has become a full-time job for UCLA decision-makers.  Make no mistake, UCLA has had some success since Wooden’s departure, including a stirring performance in 1995 that netted the Bruins their eleventh title.  But as the UCLA jersey’s intimidating quality diminishes over time, UCLA finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis.

Continue with Wooden as the centerpiece of the men’s basketball program, or move past the legendary coach to something fresh and new?

On the one hand, Wooden is a tremendous source of pride at UCLA.  What he accomplished on and off the court stands as a remarkable achievement, and his sayings and principles guide millions of people in their daily lives.  Wooden is the greatest coach of all time, and it’s not even close.

On the other hand, Wooden’s formidable legacy lingers over Westwood like a San Francisco fog.  It precludes relevant growth and change in a 21st century college athletic program that, like anything, must adapt or die.

Around UCLA, fans and t-shirts ask, “What Would Wooden Do?” as if it were a relevant question in building a modern day basketball power, and the historical success has forced generations of UCLA basketball coaches and players to downplay most achievement to avoid the ultimate UCLA sin—celebrating less than a national championship.

Silly phrases like, “We don’t hang Final Four banners,” seem pithy and poignant after tough Final Four losses, but given UCLA’s inability to maintain its own standards, it’s surprising that no one is asking whether this forced stoicism might be the reason players, fans and coaches don’t seem to be “having fun.”

Fans and bloggers cited the lack of joy in the program as good reason to fire Howland, and his hard style surely grated during the lean years.  But has anyone considered the toll three Final Four losses can have on a program when player after player is forced to take sedatives to avoid seeming too excited about an accomplishment that garners parades in most other cities?

I doubt it.

Don’t get me wrong, UCLA has every right to demand the highest of standards.  But whether UCLA’s Wooden-centric model is the right path to achieve them—well, that’s an open question.

While they might not recognize it, UCLA fans and administrators feel Wooden’s influence on a daily basis as it silently controls official UCLA acts like a Jedi warrior over weaker-minded beings.  Exerting constant pressure, Wooden’s legacy acts like a drug.  It feels so good to use, but it’s addictive power and side effects take a silent toll.

Yes, John Wooden was the greatest coach in the history of basketball.  But his legacy might just be the noose around the neck of modern-day UCLA basketball.

When UCLA began the national search for Ben Howland’s successor, fans and alumni clamored for the hot young coach with the style and substance to restore UCLA to something resembling the national elite.  Butler’s Brad Stevens and Virginia Commonwealth’s Shaka Smart were among the early favorites, and like any UCLA targets, they were compared to John Wooden to see how they stacked up on and off the court.

Smart played a fast-pace brand of basketball that Wooden would adore, while the boyish Stevens hailed from a small Indiana town like the coach who hung all the banners.  Check and check.

But now UCLA has announced that dark-horse Steve Alford is the guy, and we'll find out soon whether he has the fortitude, arrogance and ego to blast past Wooden’s tradition and unequivocally make UCLA his own. Because whatever you may think about UCLA, it’s clear that it won’t succeed with anyone trying to emulate Wooden. And while genuflecting to the legendary coach certainly earned Ben Howland kudos from the boosters, that kind of thinking will also spell continued disaster.

UCLA didn't need a coach who would spend the first five minutes of his interview praising Wooden, they needed one who wouldn't have even mentioned him.  And so with Steve Alford now squarely in the limelight, UCLA better hope he'll consider praising a dunk, hanging a Final Four banner in Pauley Pavilion, or telling UCLA fans that Wooden’s coaching style wouldn’t necessarily work in modern day college basketball.

It might sound sacrilegious to ask Alford to be a Wooden challenger, but that kind of evolution is precisely what UCLA needs to meets its own goals.  For 38 years since Wooden’s departure, UCLA sought a coach that kept eluding it despite what everyone around the program believed were obvious advantages.

With that in mind, now is the time for UCLA and Steve Alford to reexamine the school's entire basketball foundation and push for meaningful growth and change.

     

Alford can't be afraid to transcend Wooden, and he's got to have the guts to say that to UCLA’s face.

Alford must respect Wooden without treating him like a god, and he has to flash the strength and confidence to battle UCLA lore to make the program his own.  Where appropriate, he should step back from Wooden’s legacy with a grace that even Wooden would appreciate.

Alford needs to be humble enough to recognize that UCLA is no longer the picture of perfection, and strong and passionate enough to deliver that message to UCLA and its fans with an endnote about how he plans to make the program better for the future.

Whether Alford is that guy, I don’t know.  But if UCLA wants to be successful, he will have to be.

Bob Firpo is an attorney and freelance sports and outdoors writer.  He lives in Boise, Idaho.  Follow him @knockingitout

For Boise State, the Big East's Pyramid Scheme is no Place to Call Home

Give Boise State some credit.  The Broncos went for it.  They swung for the fences by doubling down on a conference half a world away, and they did it a time of great chaos and uncertainty.  The school showed guts.

But with the Big East and its big television dollars crumbling around them, it’s time for Boise State to recognize a risky move gone bad.  The writing is on the wall, and the Big East merry-go-round is looking like a thatched roof hut in the path of a hurricane.   

Going all-in on the Big East was like investing in the 1990’s tech bubble.  A soaring conference poised for an epic television deal, the Big East had it all.  An automatic BCS berth.  Greater television exposure.  The promise of huge dividends for years to come. 

With all that glitz, joining the party seemed like a no-brainer, and the University had the perfect cover for the otherwise risky move. 

How could anyone fault Boise State for moving to a conference on the East Coast if it meant more money?  Everyone else was doing it. 

But Boise State’s get-rich-quick endeavor covered a heap of questions with sparkling IOUs and a panicked “we-have-to-do-something” mantra.  Playing to a culture desperate for respect for its under-appreciated football program, the school lunged for money on the pretense of a fundamentally changed college-football landscape.

We were told by many that geographic rivals, fan-travel and trash-talking alumni bases versed in conference members’ traditions were no longer important.  Instead, Boise State had to bow to television dollars and a lucrative trademark called the Big East or be left for dead.

We were also told that conferences were no longer important, and that the new college football paradigm meant joining with any available good teams, channeling Cuba Gooding Jr., and shouting “Show me the money!”

But behind the false prophets shouting, “Paradigm shift, Save yourselves!” there was massive uncertainty.  The fact is, no one really understood what was happing in college football a year ago, and no one really knows what’s happening now.  Certainly no one knows what the landscape will look like in five years. 

All we know is that smaller teams desperate for the security of major conferences like the Pac 12 and the Big 10 are making lottery-style bets on change and ignoring everything that used to matter. 

Decades of solid conference growth built on fundamentals like shared interests, location, and fan travel have literally been thrown out the window for the promise of an extra dollar.   

For Boise State, the Big East move that looked so good on paper now looks like a circus—a revolving door of football and basketball teams with absolutely nothing to keep it together except paper contracts. 

Paper.

To be sure, some teams are coming to the Big East.  But just as many are paying to leave, with some staying longer just to collect those exit fees.  It’s sad to say, but the Big East isn’t the solid rock of a conference many hoped for. 

It’s a pyramid scheme. 

For early entrants, the Big East’s scheme probably proved lucrative.  But for schools like Boise State, the bottom of the pyramid is proving ugly—at best, a run-down suburban ranch house far away from family and friends.  The big money is gone, and the once stylish pyramid isn’t Egyptian. 

It’s more like Las Vegas. 

Many lauded Boise State’s move to the Big East as a gutsy play with the potential to make Boise State rich.  But the fact is, Boise State is now the kid who chose his college based on which offered the most scholarship money, but never bothered to ask if the campus, people, and dorm food were any good, or even existed year to year.  

Oops.

Thankfully, Boise State can still end this chaos with a simple course change.  And if the news reports are right, they’ll do just that by selling the Big East and investing in a mutual fund like the Mountain West or an equivalent new conference. 

Those paradigm shift howlers have been telling fans that Boise State’s future hinges on a yearly money chase with pride-swallowing requests to join major conferences at every turn.  But if Boise State chooses wisely, it can realize its potential as a leading program capable of anchoring a fundamentally sound and geographically minded conference. 

At this time, and in this market, that’s the risk worth taking.

Erasing Melky Cabrera's Batting Title Just Another Baseball Cover-Up

Sleight of hand can’t fix this one.  Neither will an eraser.  Major League Baseball may have changed the rules, but fans will always remember the year the San Francisco Giants’ Melky Cabrera lead the National League in hitting while testing positive for a banned substance.

It’s too bad really, and it’s all on Cabrera.  Andrew McCutchen and Buster Posey are both more deserving of the batting title, and it would have been a great story for either to win it legitimately.  But neither performed as well as Cabrera on the field, and that’s what a batting title measures.

Baseball is a numbers driven sport long-wedded to statistics.  And while we sometimes don’t like those numbers, they never lie. 

It’s a bed-rock principle of the sport.  The integrity of the numbers as something we all watched play out on the field is one of the reasons we love the game.   

Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire hold or held prestigious homerun records, and each tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.  But for all the clamor and controversy surrounding the players, their names are still in the books. 

Their records and accolades still stand.

Baseball, Melky Cabrera and the Major League Baseball Players Union have blinders on if they think this will all go away just because Cabrera refuses to accept the trophy.  In fact, this ploy to cover-up the truth about the statistics only cements the incident in history. 

Indeed, the controversy created by Cabrera and the rule-book wizards is certain to keep this year’s batting title in people’s memories.  You might not remember who won the batting title five years ago, but five years from now you will remember when the sport tried to cover up Cabrera’s undeserved title.

I give credit to the rule-book aficionados who came up with the idea to just have Cabrera ask that certain rules not apply to him this year.  That was creative. 

It reminds me of that movie “Blades of Glory” where Will Farrell and Jon Heder play two male figure skaters banned from singles who seize upon a rule-book technicality hatched by a psycho super-fan to enter the pairs skating event at the fictional World Winter Sport Games.  Two men in pairs figure skating was an outrageously funny hook in a comedy that set out to expose the underbelly of figuring skating.

But that was comedic fiction. 

Sadly, the Cabrera rule-book technicality is real life baseball.

In truth, Cabrera put baseball in a tough position when he asked for a rule change that seemed so fair and pleasing.   It must have seemed like an irresistible drug to the sport, and I almost don’t blame the league for playing to the masses that were clamoring for a short-term fix to a messy situation. 

But at the end of the day, it was a mistake to grant a player’s request to disregard a rule—a classic example of the saying “bad facts make bad law.”

Honestly, what if other players want to ignore or change rules in the future?  Will baseball grant their requests?  And if so, when and based on what standard?

Will the it-feels-good standard apply?

Besides, forcing Cabrera to own an undeserved batting title this year would have been a sweet reminder of his crimes for the rest of time—a scarlet letter that would have lived with the player and the league as a reminder of the PED era.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Cabrera winning the batting title.  But this contrived opt-out solution hatched by Cabrera and embraced by baseball is somewhat embarrassing and doesn’t come close to penalizing the player or showing the public that baseball is finally going to take cheating seriously.

If anything, it let’s Cabrera off the hook and clears his conscience.

If baseball, Cabrera and the Players Union were serious about doing the right thing they would have signed an agreement whereby Cabrera turns in his All-Star MVP trophy and agrees to donate 100% of his guaranteed playoff share to a charity that fights drug abuse.  The trophy is a meaningless piece of glass at this point, and it was given to Cabrera by voters who didn’t know the truth.  And as for the playoff share—well, there is simply no good reason for Cabrera to participate in post-season revenue sharing this season.

And while we’re considering one-year rules changes for the better of the game, why not change the dumbest rule ever created—the rule that gives the winner of the All-Star game home field advantage in the World Series.  Yes, force the Giants or some other National League squad to play four of seven on the road as a penalty for Cabrera’s suspension.   Of all the possible rules baseball could have changed this year, changing the All-Star rule would have been the most just.

It’s only an exhibition anyway.

Cabrera was the darling of this year’s Mid-Summer Classic, and forfeiting the National League in that game or flat changing the All-Star rule would have sent fans the kind of message baseball, Cabrera and the Player’s Union thought they were sending when they attempted this opt-out-of-the-batting-title nonsense.

Think that’s too harsh?  Okay. 

But if Cabrera is clean enough to affect the outcome of the 2012 World Series, he’s clean enough to own an undeserving batting title.

Seriously, the NFL Referee Lockout Never Threatened the League's Integrity

You want to reminisce about those bad calls, go ahead.  You want to say that the replacement refs hurt the flow of the game, fine.  But please, spare me talk about how the replacement refs undermined the integrity of the NFL.

That’s ridiculous.

Never have I heard so many people take the sport of football so seriously.  As if football was some kind of noble profession that needed to be protected, like teachers or firefighters.  As if that little trademark—now apparently called “The Shield”—was a banner for kings.

What is this, the Game of Thrones?

I know when the NFL talks to its players it tries to stress integrity and all that.  And no doubt we’ll hear more of it now that the lockout is over.  But folks, just because the NFL aspires to basic compliance with state laws and fairness doesn’t mean the league has actually achieved integrity.

The NFL is about entertainment and money.  Period.  That’s what it does well.

It’s not about integrity.  Integrity is a phony sales pitch the league came up with to convince people it was about more than just entertainment and money.

Shame on so many for embracing it. 

A jury convicted Ray Lewis of obstruction of justice and sent him to prison for his unseemly role in a fight that left two people dead.

Person of integrity?  No.  Entertaining athlete?  Yes. 

Poster-child for the NFL?  No question about it.

Other players have been involved in death to human beings (Donte Stallworth, Rae Carruth, Leonard Little), gun play (Adam Jones, Plaxico Burress), drug dealing (Jamal Lewis), sexual harassment (Ben Roethlisberger, twice), and dog fighting (Michael Vick). 

People of integrity?  Please.  Entertaining athletes?  Absolutely.

Pushed by the NFL as stars to adore?  In most cases, yes. 

In any normal workplace these folks would be fired and struggle to find employment.  But in the NFL, the pure lack of integrity that accompanies an enterprise focused solely on entertainment and money allowed many of them soft landings.   

People watched an apparently rehabilitated Michael Vick when he joined the Eagles post-prison in part because of his sordid past.  And you know what?  Fans, the NFL, the Eagles and Vick all came out winners.  

But is that integrity?

The lack of integrity doesn’t end with the players either.  Coaches cheat (Bill Belichick), shake hands too hard (Jim Schwartz and Jim Harbaugh), and punch each other (Tom Cable).  Even NFL writers spit on integrity as evidenced by their asinine decision to vote Brian Cushing the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year after he was caught cheating in his rookie year!

All that, and I’m honestly supposed to believe that the NFL replacement referees hurt the game’s integrity?

Honestly, did anyone not trying to protect the locked-out referees actually believe that?

Were you drinking?

Sure, penalties were harder to predict.  And yes, the refs cost the Packers the game.  But get over it—this was hardly an earthquake to honor and honesty.  Try not to forget that just about every person on the field in every game wanted to embarrass the replacement refs on every play.

No real ref ever had to go through that.

Players, ex-players, and ex-referees are pushing this integrity nonsense, and they’re using words like “scabs” to drive home their bloated opinions.  My advice—stop drinking their biased Kool-aid.  Smart guys and gals are not surprised to see those folks fighting the NFL owners and finding solidarity with the poor locked-out referees. 

After years of ignoring bad calls, television commentators are now laying into the replacement refs with obviously pent-up anger and citing journalistic integrity to justify the attacks.  I say, where has that hard-hitting journalism been the last thirty years? 

Journalistic integrity from the booth, ha!

Because the NFL is about entertainment and money, this replacement referee situation was probably the best thing to happen to the NFL’s bottom line in years.  Never has there been more interest.  Never more eyes glued to this league.

So while the lockout may be over, please muzzle your friends and coworkers when they start in with the integrity business.  

This was never about integrity. 

This was about entertainment and money.  And the NFL isn’t about anything more.

Bob Firpo is an attorney and freelance sports and outdoors writer.  He lives in Boise, Idaho.  Follow him @knockingitout

Luck of the Draft Should Spurn Indianapolis

Jim Irsay cleaned house. Coaches, executives, and a soon-to-be ex-quarterback thrown out with the bathwater. But divorced from the only greatness Indianapolis has ever known, Irsay and the Colts can flush one more thing down the toilet. 

The No. 1 pick.

Because Andrew Luck should sign with any team but the Colts.

Ridding itself of everything remotely tied to the outstanding success of the last decade, the Colts are irrelevant again. The things that made Indianapolis an interesting football destination a few months ago—gone in the time it took to shuck two Polians, ditch a head coach, and embarrass a future hall-of-fame quarterback. 

Left now is a crumbling 2-13 team whose owner’s penchant for name calling has even its legendary quarterback counting down the days to say good riddance. 

Who wants to be part of that?

John Elway didn’t in 1983. Eli Manning didn’t in 1998.

And Andrew Luck should follow suit.

If Irsay and the Colts had even pretended to honor their championship-year architects, maybe things would be different. But the truth is professional sports hasn’t seen the dismantling of a champion this fast since Major League Baseball’s Florida Marlins in 1997.

It’s as if Irsay was looking for an excuse to implode the franchise so he could rebuild in the rubble and take credit.

But that arrogant risk will backfire when Stanford’s Andrew Luck does to Jim Irsay what Stanford’s John Elway did to Robert Irsay, Jim’s father.

And you can’t blame the player this time.

If Peyton Manning’s a politician, Jim Irsay’s just foolish. Because only a fool would embarrass a much-loved and legendary quarterback while trying to convince an heir-apparent to sign with the team and take the legend’s spot.   

Yes the Colts have the No. 1 pick, and in a perfect world that would mean landing Luck regardless. But if this year’s super celebration of Eli Manning and the New York Giants teaches us anything, it’s that no one really cares if top talent and a well-connected franchise screw the draft and dictate who will play where.

It’s good business.

People love Eli Manning, celebrate his grit, and just about unanimously forget that he and the New York Giants fixed the 1998 draft and left the entire league crying foul. 

Because the NFL and media largely ignore that indiscretion, let me point out this obvious truth:  Andrew Luck holds the Number 1 pick, not the Indianapolis Colts.

Jim Irsay’s arrogance is one of many reasons Luck should choose the Rams, Vikings, Browns, or Redskins instead of the Colts. At least on those other teams players don’t have to walk on eggshells. 

Many are lauding Irsay and the Colts for making the difficult business decision to rebuild. But too many forget that Andrew Luck himself has a business decision to make, and it may well be inconsistent with the Colt’s planned direction.

The fact is Luck’s best decision might be to refuse the Colts and establish a winner in a different market.

Would Eli Manning and John Elway recommend anything different? 

Not likely.

More likely Manning and Elway would recommend avoiding the cloudy skies that hang over Indianapolis and looking toward more fertile football pastures in other cities. 

They’d tell Luck and his agent to at least call Dan Snyder’s Washington Redskins, the draft-pick-rich Cleveland Browns, and the slightly fed-up-with-Bradford Rams. 

It’s unseemly and unfortunate. 

But it’s the reality of a draft that the NFL refuses to police.  And fixing the draft this year makes sense for Andrew Luck.

Waiting to get drafted by the Colts, on the other hand, would be downright unlucky.

Eli Manning, Literally a Marked Man

It’s amazing how quickly we forget disgraceful opening acts.   Celebrate those whose arrogance knew no bounds on day one.  Cherish those who entered professional sports too scared to play anywhere, and too adrift to look in the mirror. 

But for those like Eli Manning who refused to play fair on draft day, I say it’s time to hand down a fair sentence. 

It’s time to emblazon them with scarlet letters. 

A “DD” patch for draft dodger to be worn on their jerseys in perpetuity.

A more hopeful and exciting day than the draft never existed in professional sports.  It’s a day where past hardship pays off.  Where the worst of the worst get first shot at getting better.  A day designed to ensure parity by getting the best young talent into the hands of those less fortunate.

But from time to time the opportunity for unbelievable riches and excitement isn’t enough for a young athlete.  Faced with an opportunity to show great character, the athlete falls on the sword of cowardice instead by refusing to sign with teams eligible to draft him.    

And so I say, mark him.    

Tattoo his jersey with letters befitting his conduct. 

Force him to wear a scarlet patch. 

Emblazon him with a “DD.”  Recognize him as a draft dodger.

To describe Ely Manning, J.D. Drew, and John Elway once without mention of their original sin is blameworthy.  To let them enjoy lengthy careers without remembering is tragic. 

Elway is a two-time Super Bowl cover-boy, remembered now as a hall of famer and good guy.  But he screwed NFL parity by dodging the draft with selfish indignation. 

J.D. Drew is a former all-star who has reaped millions playing baseball for many major league clubs.  But he and agent Scott Boras knifed the Phillies in the back when the team refused to pay the exorbitant sum Boras demanded.

And then there’s Eli Manning.

The NFL promotes Eli non-stop.  Fans celebrate him as a Super Bowl champ.  And the media—it falls all over itself praising Manning’s guts and grit. 

But he was a draft dodger too.  The worst of all time.  His dad and the New York Giants helping him to orchestrate the most deplorable self-promoting attack on the draft ever seen. 

Nice guys off the field, Manning, Elway and Drew should be booed on it. 

Con-artists who refused to follow their sport’s greatest tradition, these athletes dishonored the games they professed to love by cowardly hiding from sport’s competitive equalizer.

An act that more deserved punishment never existed, and a patch hits the right note.

A complete ban would be too severe.  Suspensions or fines too easy to move on from. 

But a patch—it creates all the right incentives to discourage this kind of thing in the future. 

Simplicity would be the patch’s greatest virtue.  It wouldn’t restrict play, inhibit performance, or in any way deprive the player of an opportunity to succeed on the field.  It would be fair in that respect.

But it couldn’t be hidden either. 

Photos, advertisements, and video highlights would henceforth tell the story.  The whole story.

And in leagues with more uniform restrictions then catholic grade-schools, the simple patch would serve as a stark reminder of what not to do.  A reminder of what’s expected from those with the great fortune of playing. 

The jersey’s scar would also let fans judge its importance based on their own tastes and beliefs.  A New York Giants fan might use Eli Manning’s patch as a driver to teach contract negotiations.  A San Diego Chargers or San Francisco 49ers fan might use it to teach character and honor.

In either case it would be taught.  Explained.  Discussed.

The problem with the current state of affairs is that leagues and television networks have an incentive to celebrate and promote stars for money’s sake.  And that’s understandable. 

But it too often means forced ignorance of past misconduct. Re-writing of history.  Rebranding of players from year to year based on charitable donations and book readings at local children’s hospitals.

None of that is bad, mind you, and I don’t begrudge a player the right to remake his image.  You want to donate to children’s hospitals, go do it.  That’s great.

But certain offenses can’t be remedied so easily.  And one is draft dodging.  It’s effects linger for decades.

And so while we can forgive a draft dodger and let him play, we should never forget him.  Forget what he did.  Forget what he stood for on the first day of his professional career. 

It’s only fair.  And it’s only a patch.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

A day after the disturbing details of the Penn State sex scandal rocked the nation, the nation’s sports media demanded Joe Paterno’s firing. Mostly ignored were the victims and the legality of Paterno’s actions. Commentators instead excused the Paterno-centric coverage as the natural result of Paterno’s big name, and then tore down the legend they spent decades creating.  

But the sports-media-turned-mob screwed up when it turned a story about criminal abuse into a story about a secondary actor’s morality. It doubled down by drawing moral conclusions without satisfactory information.

It’s not unfair to say the sports media raced to judge Joe Pa. A rapid one day attack, it reached a destructive crescendo by the evening news. 

The later in the day a Paterno opinion was published or aired, the more defiant and indignant were its contents. The cautious opinions of the morning turned strident and broad by the afternoon. Each raised the moral bar. By the end of the day, some on the airwaves publicly opined Paterno’s actions were worse than Sandusky’s.

But the sports media buried a quiet and uncomfortable truth when it built a moral case against Paterno. It didn’t have all the facts. Much of what Paterno knew and when he knew it was a gaping mystery.

In a normal case this would have ended the Paterno story. But this story was never normal. 

Instead of waiting for more information, the sports media took the extraordinary measure of brushing aside the lack of data regarding Paterno. Employing classic straw man tactics, the media created arguments designed to make the information that was available enough to indict. 

It was as if the sports media wanted to go no place it had ever gone before, or perhaps felt it had to. The outrage was based on the questionable premise that morality changes for each person.

We were told, for instance, that Paterno should be held to a higher moral standard because he held himself out to be an ethical person. Or because he was a leader of men. Or because he was the true king of Penn State. Therefore, he could be judged more harshly than others.

These arguments allowed many in the sports media to ignore the deep rooted question in all of us: What would we have done confronted with a similar situation at our work? 

Of course nuanced and complicated stories don’t enrage, sell copy, or entertain. So in fueling the story for immediate blast-off, the sports media also developed a simplified narrative. 

Out of the spotlight were the real-life villains, into it the famous person. Pliable moral law swapped for real law. Speed and opinion trumped precision and fact.

A failure in important ways, it was also shining success. 

We often forget that the sports media’s job is to entertain, cultivate listeners, and make money. This is especially true of outlets like ESPN whose ultimate goal is to keep eyeballs and ear drums tuned-in to its stories at all costs, and who can’t afford to be on the wrong side of public opinion. The Paterno coverage satisfied this objective.

So when the Pennsylvania police commissioner charging Sandusky went off script to open the moral case on Paterno, you almost couldn’t blame the sports media for taking the bait. 

It was a good business decision.

But Paterno’s job turned out to be the cost of entertaining.

It’s fair to ask how high that cost actually was, and some could contend it was pretty low. But it’s just as likely that the costs were high. 

It’s just not often that someone is fired for doing no more than the law requires. And that’s a good thing.

Our nation’s laws are based in part on moral codes. But they also smooth out moral variability and demand factual showings before a violation may be proved. Those are bed-rock principles of criminal justice.

Which is why Penn State’s Board of Trustees originally gave no reason for firing Paterno. They couldn’t say he was fired for not reporting up the chain as the law required, because Paterno did that. He followed the law we normally care about. And they couldn’t say he was fired for refusing to do more than the law required because such justification was both legally suspect and factually questionable then and now. 

So in a display that was equal parts understandable and blameworthy, Penn State’s Board said nothing.

Until now.

Caving to local pressure the board finally explained the firing Thursday, noting that it fired Paterno because he “could not be expected to continue to effectively perform his duties,” and because “it was in the best interests of the University to make an immediate change.”     

But the Penn State Board’s tardy explanation only confirms what we knew already. It fired Paterno because an impossibly emotional story about kids created such moral outrage that university administrators had to act.

Don’t entirely blame the university. At its core it is made up of people, and people are imperfect. People want to protect their jobs. People want to be moral and be remembered as such.

At the same time, Penn State wasted a teachable moment by doing what the uneducated nation asked it to do. We all knew critical missing information existed. But on the strength of the sports media’s moral rabblerousing, Penn State’s Board couldn’t resist swinging the axe.

Now, months after the story broke, the sport’s media is still asking, “What if it was your child?” to drive home moral points and opinions. That is a fair and understandable sentiment, and a question that should be asked.

But it’s unnerving that no one is asking another question as well: What if you were fired because of public outrage based on strikingly incomplete information? 

Would you understand?

Strip away the arguments premised on the higher moral standard to which Paterno should be held and ask yourself whether this kind of firing is a good idea. 

Should gays or lesbians be fired because their superiors or the public find it immoral? What about members of unpopular religions? 

Should you be fired for supporting or rallying against abortion?

In answering these questions, fight the urge to look for laws that might require certain answers. No one provided that courtesy to Paterno.

Nearly a decade ago, the news media trumpeted what seemed like a guarantee that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq. But news reporters later ate crow for moving too fast and for blindly following a consensus opinion.

It’s possible that what Paterno knew and when he knew it could turn out to be the sports media’s version of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. That’s the risk you take when you follow.