Roy Exum
Derek Dooley, who can’t help but wince as the NCAA prepares to deal with Tennessee and the Bruce Pearl fiasco next week, proved anew why he’s the best hire in Knoxville in years when he finally spoke out about embarrassing misconduct in college athletics.
The University of Tennessee football coach spoke to reporters in Destin, Fla. this week, where he was among those attending the annual SEC meetings, and he said flatly, “I've told our coaches, if we get fired around here, it better be for losing," Dooley said.
"Just look in the last year, (Mark) Mangino, (Jim) Leavitt, (Mike) Leach, (Jim) Tressel. Phenomenal football coaches. I hope I can win the way any one of them did. But they have all been fired for something totally unrelated to winning and losing."
Tressel, of course, is the latest pillar to fall as a tawdry investigation, still on-going, has left Ohio State reeling and, while most in the coaching fraternity are careful not to speak about another coach’s woes, Derek was straight-forward in his view of college athletics’ black eye.
Let’s face it, often player problems are complex, but Dooley's stance is simple: "If there are enough things floating around you, you probably should do something. It's hard," the Vol coach said. "I always go back to parenting. Whenever I kind of get in a bind, I just try to say 'All right, if this was my son, what would I do? Would I do this? Or would I go attack it?'
"When you turn a blind eye to matters, it can lead to things you never dreamed could happen."
Today Ohio State’s Tressel knows all about that. The Buckeyes’ problems continue to mount and, from all I’ve read, I think golfing great Jack Nicklaus was dead-on when he spoke of his alma mater – and his friend Tressel – before this week’s Memorial golf tournament.
Nicklaus, maybe the most famous Ohio State athlete ever, said what Tressel did was "no different than a father trying to protect his son."
"Well, obviously, the cover-up was far worse than the act," Nicklaus said. "And once you got the cover-up, it became a situation where Jim had to say some things that weren't exactly truthful. That's where he got himself in trouble. I feel very bad for Jim. He's a nice man."
Somebody asked Nicklaus what Woody Hayes, the fabled old-school coach at Ohio State, might have done and Jack said, "I think Woody would have ended up doing exactly the same thing, but I think that maybe he wouldn't have had a news media that, no matter what happens, (it) gets on the news. That's not an indictment of anybody, it's just what it is.
"I think Woody would have protected his kids. He probably did protect his kids. Woody was a good man. I think Tressel is a good man."
Dooley said that when schools get into trouble with NCAA violations, all the others notice. "It reminds you of the responsibility of what you have and it's something I try to remind our players. It's the responsibility they have and how to represent this place because it doesn't take much for something bad to happen."
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Tennessee will take a huge delegation to next week’s NCAA hearings in Indianapolis. The Committee of Inquiry will meet Friday and Saturday but don’t expect a final verdict for about six more weeks.
Bruce Pearl and Lane Kiffin, both named in the NCAA investigation but neither affiliated with UT any longer, will testify and you can bet Pearl will have his own attorney present, trying to avoid the dreaded “show cause” sanction that essentially would keep him out of coaching after his 10 major rules violations at Tennessee.
Dooley and new basketball coach Cuonzo Martin will be in the delegation, but neither is involved in the rules violations. “I think it’s good for them to go,” athletic director Mike Hamilton said. “While it’s two days out of their life, I think it’s helpful to understand what the process is and understand this is a place you don’t want to be.”
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