[Florida State University President T.K. Wetherell] should tell the whole world what an absolute shame it would be if [Coach] Bobby [Bowden’s]’s iconic career is tainted because of the malfeasance of others. He should point out how unfair it would be for Bobby’s reputation to be disgraced because some nameless, faceless tutors helped FSU football players cheat in an online music course.
This kind of statement, from Mike Bianchi in the Boston Herald, upsets UD.
There’s an elemental unfairness in dismissing FSU’s tutors as nameless and faceless. They have names; they have faces. They’re human beings, and they deserve to be recognized for their part in the nation’s largest cheating scandal.
But what Bianchi also overlooks is that they were only little cogs in the big cheating machine that is Florida State University.
Why make it appear they acted alone? No one group of people can create an entire university devoted to academic violations on behalf of sport. There’s the music course’s professor, a notoriously negligent instructor whose course had served FSU athletes well for decades until something went tragically awry. There’s the university’s board of trustees, willing to do their part to keep everyone stupid and unethical. There’s the university’s coaching staff who recruited the players. And of course there’s Wetherell himself, who continues to preside over a massive joke at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.
Give credit where it’s due, says University Diaries.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:30AM
A couple of years ago, there was a fire on an aircraft carrier that did substantial amounts of damage and injured several sailors. The fire was caused by a sailor smoking in a paint locker, totally against regulations and common sense.
The captain of the ship wasn’t the one doing the smoking, and he certainly never told anybody that it was OK to do so. But he lost his job.
Maybe university sports programs could use some Navy-style accountability.
September 11th, 2009 at 1:44PM
Same story at the University of Illinois. After the admissions scandal, a new board of trustees has approved a new admissions policy, as if the fault lay with the admissions officers, when in fact they tried to resist the meddling and corruption from above.
The faculty, courageous as usual, has said nothing, except for 48 highly paid people who wrote a letter defending the party guilty of short-changing hundreds of applicants.
The faculty senate has delayed a vote on the matter until Monday. I wonder how they will vote: make a strong recommendation that the guilty parties be fired? decide that they want to give the new trustees a chance to make a determination?
September 12th, 2009 at 10:50AM
The defense is all the more misguided because, as I understand it, Bowden hasn’t really done hands-on coaching for years. He oversees the program in which the problems have arisen; that’s his job, and the failures are his responsibility. He’s been hanging on to set the record for coaching wins, and he’s stayed too long — a common human failing, and human tragedy.
On the other hand, his rival, Joe Paterno, has run his program so as to contribute to the long-term improvement of Penn State; whereas FSU, once considered the best university in Florida, has lost ground during Bowden’s tenure.
He’s not winning this one.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:21PM
[…] retire and all and they wanna protect his win record and all… Journos are pissed too — Mike Bianchi says it’s not fair to hurt the coach just because “some nameless, faceless tutors […]
July 14th, 2015 at 6:39AM
[…] State University has a decade of cheating scandals, sports scandals, sports-related financial scandals, and football player assaults behind […]