Some Coaches Look the Other Way When It Comes to Character

Few things can top the exuberance of the annual NCAA basketball tournament. Sixty-eight teams enter and three weeks later a champion emerges. To the delight of many Butler, a small university in Indiana, will face another less famous basketball school, Virginia Commonwealth, in a Final Four matchup. What is not to cheer about?

Unfortunately the other side of the bracket features two schools helmed by coaches who know what it means to cross the line, as in breaking the rules. University of Connecticut's head coach, Jim Calhoun, has won two national titles but more recently has been reprimanded for recruiting infractions. He will serve a three-game suspension next season for those transgressions.

UConn faces a legendary basketball powerhouse, the University of Kentucky. Its current head coach John Calipari may not have written the book on cheating in college basketball but he has certainly added a footnote--the only coach to have two Final Four appearances at two different schools (Massachusetts and Memphis) vacated due to NCAA infractions. Calipari himself was not found guilty of wrongdoing, but it strains credulity to think he did not know, or chose not to know, of the rule breaking that occurred under his watch.

Fans of such schools may say, "Every college cheats." And they may be right to a degree. Earlier this month Ohio State gave its head coach Jim Tressel a slap on the wrist after he lied to the NCAA about infractions his football players had committed.

Cheating is cheating, and when schools go along with it, they betray the trust that students put in them as institutions of higher learning. By condoning, or in the case of Kentucky, hiring a coach with a questionable past, says it's all right to cut corners. Wink, wink, nod, nod.

A good friend of mine is fond of saying, "There are no virgins in big time college athletics." He is not referring to sexual mores, but to recruiting and retention practices that schools perpetrate in order to keep athletes eligible to compete. Why? Because such athletes bring in millions to the school in revenue. It's about the money, pure and simple.

Every once in awhile a hue and cry is raised about corruption in collegiate athletics, but after the shouting dies down little is down. Sanctions may be imposed, but cheating continues at other schools.

The right thing to do is ban the cheaters. Indiana University kicked out Kelvin Sampson after he committed recruiting violations, after doing the very same at Oklahoma State University. The legendary program still has not recovered its winning ways, but it maintains its integrity. This year the University of Tennessee showed its backbone by dumping its successful, and popular, head coach Bruce Pearl after he had lied to the NCAA.

Ultimately college athletics must stand for something more than wins and losses. The responsibility to its student athletes means more that ensuring they do not cheat. It means ensuring those in positions of authority hold themselves to even higher standards of accountability.

Discipline those coaches who break the rules by banning them from the game.

John Baldoni is an internationally recognized leadership development consultant, executive coach, author, and speaker. In 2010 Top Leadership Gurus named John one of the world's top 25 leadership experts. John's newest book is 12 Steps to Power Presence: How to Assert Your Authority to Lead. (Amacom 2010). Readers are welcome to visit John's website, www.johnbaldoni.com.