After first-year head coach Bo Schembechler had engineered the greatest upset in modern day college football -- Michigan's 24-12 victory in 1969 over Woody Hayes' No. 1 ranked and superhuman Ohio State Buckeyes -- the soon-to-become iconic coach suffered a heart attack. It was just days before Michigan was set to play in the Rose Bowl.
40 years later, the eerily similar details are emerging of Florida coach Urban Meyer's rush for help after experiencing all the familiar symptoms of a heart attack after his Gators dropped the SEC Championship game to Nick Saban and Alabama.
A few weeks later, we're talking about Texas Tech coach Mike Leach and the decision he made to place one Adam James, a high-profile player and the prodigy of a revered name in college football, in an electrical closet as 'treatment' for a mild concussion. Now the coach wants us to believe that he thought that idea to be of sound judgment. He also cites the words of two position coaches (whom he hired) and a handful of scholarship players (whom he picked) to justify his belief that Adam James is the lazy cancer, the guilty party, and Leach is the victim. At least, this was his statement last night after he unsuccessfully tried to wrangle a court hearing to overturn a suspension and said the school leaders who gave him a 12.5 million-dollar contract less than year ago are liars. Not surprisingly, he was subsequently fired.
And these are just the headlines, mind you, which begs the question: Is the pressure associated with the pursuit to win in major college football so great that it kills? Is the stress so great that it places your life in danger, as might be the case with Urban Meyer. Does the pressure to validate multi-million dollar contracts kill the common sense application that naturally would suppress the idea of putting someone's son or daughter in an electrical closet as 'treatment' for a mild concussion?
And what is to be made of Meyer's apparent burning desire to return after his brush with death? That in itself ought to be a strong warning sign that the bar is set so high with absurd expectations, we're willing to watch a man subject himself and his family to his potential demise before he turns 50 just so long as he beats Georgia, Tennessee, LSU and Alabama again in the same season.
In 1999 I was a season-ticket holder to Michigan State University's home games. That season, the Spartans defeated Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame before edging Florida on New Year's Day. If I had said that before the season started, you might have told me Michigan State would be national champions. MSU finished ranked 7th (final AP poll), and not only was it not good enough for a top five ranking, it didn't win the Big Ten, and it wasn't enough to please MSU's fan base. The grumbling drove Nick Saban, a man who always has one foot out the door anyway, off to the next great job at LSU, which seems like 10 jobs ago for Mr. Mover & Shaker.
I love college football for all the things it is. The emotion is real, because 95% of the student-athletes at the powerhouse programs, much less the bottom-dwellers, never play football after college again. The offenses are usually different compared to the stale, just one-flavor-to-savor pro set offense run identically by every NFL team. And then there's Idaho versus Bowling Green, Boise State versus Oklahoma or Appalachian State stunning Michigan, the upsets and games we remember because they were genuine and compelling, and that appeals to all of us who tire of the constant suspicion and skepticism required to be successful in our busy lives.
But death is real, too. Passion to return to a profession ready to kill you is real. Stupidity in the pursuit of winning is real. College football has a real problem, but will it take something even more dire, like death too soon for a coach or athlete, to solve it?
Regards...
~T.C. Cameron is a three-sport official who writes for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. He's the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries and Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, both from Arcadia Publishing.
Comments