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Gene Wojciechowski: Lane Kiffin Is A Weasle
While this is completely true, the larger issue is that college sports is now full of scumbag coaches (and I use the term coach lightly). Over the past decade we’ve seen the emergence of a new brand of college coach: one who is less educator and more self-promoter; those that were once great recruiters have been replaced by enticers.
Loyalty is tied to how much blind respect and money you are provided as the team “leader.” If things go poorly you simply jump ship, usually walking away with unearned millions. When things are good, you leverage it to gain more power as The Enticer, or more often the case, use it to increase your national profile by moving on up.
If and when you’ve established yourself as a success, you now have another avenue: The Pros. If things go really poorly and the NCAA is personally breathing down your neck (which takes a lot given how much corruption goes on without investigation or consequence, especially in major programs), you can go work for an organization in which teaching, mentoring, and tradition building are secondary to a lifestyle of excess and entertainment.
The problem seems to be that more coaches than not today don’t understand what it means to be a professional, and don’t know what it means to be leaders of young men and women. This generation of 30-something, ego maniacs that we still hold in the same breath as true coaches have stepped all over an already fragile college athletic system to advance their own careers. But I have to wonder, what career would these people have if there weren’t college sports to facilitate them? Most of them seem like the kind of people that would either cheat their way to the top elsewhere or end up at the bottom faking a set of skills they ultimately only half possess.
The Lane Kiffins and John Caliparis may end up winners at their respective programs, but their long terms success is completely personal - and usually at the expense of those they leave behind in their failures - students, athletes, fans, institutions. It’s really starting to take away from the games I once loved, and I can’t help but wonder when this country will start holding the system - in its multiple facets - accountable.
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