Football and life: Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Are more major-college head football coaches afraid of their university presidents or vice versa?

That, of course, depends on how much winning the coaches have done.

Don't you wonder if the power that's bestowed on a person - any person - involved in collegiate sports is unhealthy? Don't you wonder why certain coaches are given that power in a public institution?

If you get told you're the king or queen often enough for long enough, how do you stop yourself from acting like one? If countless people tell you for years that you are a great person and your team is deeply important to them, how do keep that in some sort of perspective?

It would be idiotic to compare the Penn State horrors involving former football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky to any “run-of-the-mill” scandal that has involved college athletics. But one thing is similar. When a cover-up of any known or suspected illegal or unethical activity occurs in a university sports program, it's usually because people are more interested in protecting their empires than doing the right thing.

Joe Paterno's specific role and thought-process ... who's to comprehend this? He had to have known something was rotten with Sandusky well before 2002. Sandusky was 55 and a highly praised defensive coordinator, and suddenly he retires in 1999? A year after Penn State police and local law enforcement investigated an allegation he had engaged in inappropriate and perhaps sexual conduct with a boy in the football facility's showers?

Did Paterno not go to the police in 2002 after an eyewitness told him of a similar situation involving Sandusky in the same showers because he bizarrely didn't grasp the seriousness of the matter, because he thought informing his athletic director really was a sufficient response, because he didn't want the story going public to humiliate him and his program? Who's to know right now? Who's to ever know?

But let's take any tenured high-profile coach. It's not hard to figure out why they start to get a notion they are beyond reproach. The whopping salaries and perks, which few of us can really identify with, are just the start. Imagine being virtually unable to go out in public without being asked for an autograph or to pose for a photo. What would that make you think about yourself?

Imagine getting an endless stream of mail and email from people saying how much you mean to them, how proud they are to call you their coach. Imagine people drawing meaning from your every word, laughing extra-hard at your every quip.

We always want and crave heroes, someone to point to as bright lights in a world that can seem dim. Maybe because of slogging through that world and the mundane things that can grind us down, we feel a need to have someone to fit our description of heroic. The trouble is, those heroes are always fallible.

How could any person not get their ego bloated and their perspective bent after years of being godded up? You really have to credit any and high-profile people who remain grounded and keep their senses of right and wrong intact. And their senses of humor.

There are times when the public does remind coaches at state schools that they are state employees, not state bosses. For some reason, it almost always happens after defeats instead of victories.