Stop idolizing coaches

With the removal of the Joe Paterno statue from its pedestal outside Beaver Stadium Sunday morning, the tarnished legacy of the once-revered coach absorbed perhaps its final blow.

But it’s not the pedestal that supported the statue we should be concerned with. We should be concerned with the pedestal Paterno The Man stood on.

Paterno became such a powerful figure that when former President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley — all of whom held a position superior to Paterno’s — proposed a plan to report former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s alleged child sex abuse to the Pennsylvania Department of Child Welfare, Paterno persuaded them not to.

When the football coach of a university has more sway than the president, we have a problem. A big problem.

Americans seem obsessed with finding heroes in sports and turning them into superhuman figures incapable of wrongdoing. Fire a shot against that coach’s character and a cult of blindly loyal followers will find you and assassinate your character.  

I have a suggestion for people who refuse to accept that coaches are like any other person and have flaws: STOP.

The sooner we start treating coaches — and, for that matter, sports stars in general — as ordinary people with extraordinary abilities and nothing more, the sooner we can prevent the kingmaking of coaches and scandals that often follow.

To be fair, no one, save Paterno and the inner circle of former Penn State administrators, could have seen the Penn State scandal coming. Paterno had long been hailed as a coach of high moral standing, a coach who did things “the right way,” a coach who cared about more than just winning.

I hate the fact that we were wrong. But in the grand scheme of things, I’m not too surprised. Supply any man with the kind of power Paterno had as Supreme Ruler of the Nittany Lions, and something is bound to go wrong.

We all share responsibility for turning these ordinary men into gods. When there is a good story, fans and the media latch on and milk it like there is no tomorrow.

Paterno was that good story and a beacon of light in a sport rampant with coaches who will do anything to win.

My only question for those who look at coaches through rose-colored lenses and build them up as moral zealots is, Why?

We have to realize that a coach’s primary goal is to win. No matter how much good they do off the field, which Paterno did quite a bit of, they are people just like you and me. They have a job to do, and sometimes they let the desire to win guide their decision making.

Winning is fun for everyone involved. No one can question the legacy of Joe Paterno The Coach, who won more games than any coach in history.

We can, however, question Joe Paterno The Man. Joe Paterno The Coach and Joe Paterno The Man are two different beings. That goes for every coach and
every athlete.

If you’re looking for a hero, try a firefighter. Or a soldier. Or maybe a surgeon. But not a coach.

Was anybody really surprised when former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel was fired for turning a blind eye to his Buckeye players receiving improper benefits? He did the same thing at his previous job, when he was head coach at Youngstown State.

This is the same Jim Tressel who was admired for his “integrity” by former Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy.

Tressel built the perfect image — a highly religious, sweater vest-wearing, crime-fighting, puppy-adopting saint — to appear incorruptible in the eyes of fans, boosters and his superiors.

Like anything, though, we can’t accept the surface image of a coach at face value. They have an agenda and enormous pressure to accomplish everything on it.

Take a coach that is sure to stir up passionate emotions among Hoosier
fans: Bob Knight.

When Knight was fired in September 2000, students marched in anger, some displaying banners reading, “Bob Knight is God.”

If he’s God, then he’s not a benevolent one. He won three national championships with Indiana, but that does not make it okay to choke a player in practice, grab and lecture a student for greeting him the wrong way or stuff a fan in a garbage can out of anger.

I challenge you to find any industry in which that sort of behavior would not lead
to a firing.

Knight was a tremendous coach but was out of control. He had to go.

No one is immune from following the rules and acting professionally, least of
all coaches.

If they make a mistake, so be it. They are human and will suffer consequences for their wrongdoings like everybody else.

We always want our coaches to win, and we can only hope they do it the right way. Still, they’re not to be idolized.

Doing so is a massive disservice to the real heroes in our lives.