Big Ten's big mess: Will troubled conference ever reclaim its morality?
Ohio State has an assistant coach fired over repeated allegations of spousal abuse and a head coach on leave over what he knew and did about it. Maryland had a player sadly die after a workout and now three football staffers, plus its head coach, are on leave too.
Larry Nassar abused hundreds of women and his scandal overwhelmed Michigan State, eventually leading to the resignation of both the president and athletic director. Jerry Sandusky is never too far from mind when it comes to Penn State.
Illinois, in 2015, had its football coach fired for discouraging medical treatment, per the school. Indiana also had its football coach resign due to player abuse concerns, although he wound up on the staff at Ohio State. The Buckeyes have another massive sexual abuse scandal involving a former, and deceased, wrestling team doctor that has shifted into a who knew what, and when?
A Minnesota football sexual misconduct case resulted in multiple expulsions, the job of the head coach (for supporting the players) and a slew of lawsuits with far more questions than answers about what really happened.
Purdue didn’t even have an adequate medical care system set up for when a Michigan quarterback got injured during a game there. Rutgers went with the old-fashioned academic fraud and drug-testing scandals.
We could go on.
These are disparate incidents, each its own situation, some of them still unresolved. Putting them altogether may not be fair. Some resulted in quick dismissals, which show a proper response, although it’d be a lot better if no response was needed in the first place.
This is also not to say there is something particularly wrong with the Big Ten compared to the rest of big-time college athletics. Things happen everywhere.
Still, this has this been one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad stretch for the conference.
There was a time when Michigan players being investigated for selling their shoes would have been newsworthy. Now, in the shadow of death, abuse and rape, it’s quaint. Who could care?
Leaders and Legends are hard to find these days. In terms of good news, the Iowa Wave can take you only so far.
The Big Ten for years rationalized the on-field success of the SEC by looking down their noses at that league’s supposed compromised ethics and general wildness.
“I love speed and the SEC has great speed, especially on the defensive line, but there are appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany wrote in a 2007 statement to fans as he tried to explain away the Big Ten’s subjectively poor results in recruiting compared to the SEC.
“Winning our way requires some discipline and restraint with the recruitment process,” Delany continued. “Not every athlete fits athletically, academically or socially at every university. Fortunately, we have been able to balance our athletic and academic mission so that we can compete successfully and keep faith with our academic standards.”
Those loaded comments were regrettable then. They are ridiculous now. (Although it’s worth noting, it isn’t the players who are causing the major problems these days, it’s the highly paid adults.)
The league needs to find its bearings. There are too many good people and good athletes and good fans who deserve and should demand better from their leadership.
Instead, right now, the Big Ten is perhaps most concerned about forcing Comcast to keep its gravy-train television network on basic cable so it can rake in fees from millions of Midwestern homes that don’t even know the channel exists. The league even trotted out a new commercial with football coaches demanding fans to call their cable provider (someone should scrub D.J. Durkin from there, at least for the time being).
The Big Ten Network has really been a Big Ten Tax. There’s some quality programming and it sure has been lucrative, but has it changed the place? Did all those millions make everything become so big and so important that it also became so secretive, so isolated, so competitive that basic checks and balances, oversight and core values are lost?
It’s nice to build that huge football facility, but is that a place for the players to go, or a way to keep the rest of the university (and world) out of the head coach’s business because it might get you another victory or two?
There are no easy answers here. The questions are too massive and too important, too varied and too complex.
What’s clear is the Big Ten, and everyone else involved in college athletics, needs to examine what it is doing to prevent what keeps happening.
This isn’t about players selling shoes anymore. This isn’t about buying recruits. This isn’t even crashing motorcycles with volleyball players on the back.
This is ugly. This is dispiriting. This is everywhere.
The Big Ten has always at least said it was about more than winning. It still can be, if it really tries.
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