From the Director



Dr. Daniel Wueste

 Welcome to the latest issue of RIE’s Issues and Perspectives.  I invite you to explore and enjoy the articles and links below.  I also want to share a few thoughts about what a recent high profile resignation suggests are competing axioms of winning, on the one hand, and integrity on the other.

Ohio State’s head football coach Jim Tressel, the most successful coach for Ohio since Woody Hayes, resigned on Monday May 30.   Like Hayes, who was fired in 1978 after hitting a Clemson player during the Gator Bowl, Tressel leaves the program at Ohio under a cloud.  His resignation followed six months of questions and pressure regarding NCAA rules violations, including several players swapping athletic memorabilia for tattoos and marijuana.   There are other serious allegations about cars and cash, for example, some reaching back to his days at Youngstown State University (also in Ohio).   Perhaps the most damaging thing was the exploded cover up effort: Tressel had originally claimed to be ignorant of the acts of the players—he remarked that it was a shame that the players had not paid attention to the “little sensor” that tells them what is right and wrong—only to be called out by a Yahoo news story that revealed he had known about what the players were doing since April 2010!  As Sports Illustrated put it in an extensive investigative piece, “By ignoring his own "little sensor" and failing to be forthcoming, Tressel protected key players from being ruled ineligible for much of the 2010 season, in which the Buckeyes were a popular pick to reach the BCS championship game. (They ended up going 12-1.)” According to the Sports Illustrated report such “failure to disclose potential violations is considered one of the NCAA's cardinal sins and almost always leads to a coach's dismissal or resignation.”  The SI story ends by citing “an axiom of big-time college football," that, the story indicates, “Jim Tressel…heeded for years: You do whatever it takes to win.” 

Sadly, this axiom has much broader application than college football.  It’s pernicious in all of its applications, but especially so when, as in the case of Mr. Tressel, it is embraced in practice while one presents a face to the public that suggests just the opposite, i.e., that one is a man of integrity who listens to his “little sensor.”

Some lessons are taught using words; some with words “on stage,” as it were, through acts or practices that paint a picture.  The painting of such a picture may be intentional or unintentional.  Tressel’s taking ten minutes of “quiet time” before practice for players “to read about virtues such as humility, faith and gratitude,” (supra, Sports Illustrated), appears to have been just one part, a rather effective one, as it happens, of an elaborate charade.  At any rate, that’s a likely and reasonable interpretation given the length of time his shenanigans were going on.   His supporters are likely to say this was sincere, but duplicity on this scale seems to rule such a move out of court.  Lessons are also taught through actions and, in general, actions speak louder than words, especially if they are uncovered (i.e., if they emerge from failed efforts to cover them up); in such a case, we learn much about a person’s true character because the face we have been seeing turns out to be a false face put forward in a campaign of deception.

The lessons Tressel seemed to be teaching led to his being thought “senatorial,” a paragon of virtue and integrity, which was good press for him and for Ohio State.  However, it now appears that this was a sham.  The lessons that were being taught to those who saw the show but knew what was going on behind the scenes undermine the very notion of integrity.  Sadly, according to Sports Illustrated, such knowledge—as well as an attitude of acceptance—about what was going on was widespread.  The lessons that were being taught:

• Say what you need to say to get, or to get away with, what you want; integrity is only for show; it’s a useful ruse that can help you get what you want.
• For all practical purposes, the surface (appearance) is everything; hypocrisy is a strategic move.
• Avoid taking responsibility.  What you should do is work to create and preserve plausible deniability.  While you’re doing that, don’t forget to suggest that responsibility lies elsewhere.  You’ll need to do that aggressively, if your claim not to have known fails.
• Life is a game.
• Respect is merely a good word for a sound bite: as when Tressel said that his “teams play as hard as we can play" but also "respect as hard as we can respect,” (Ibid.); there’s nothing more to it, for example, it does not require you to honor the expectations of others, even when those expectations were created by your words and actions.
• Winning/success is about fame and stuff: there’s no element of honor in this and we need not worry about legitimate pride in our accomplishments.

These ideas are false and dangerous.  We need to forcefully and consistently reject them.  That means, among other things, that we dare not become apologists for men like Tressel, even though their teams (or businesses, for example) are winners. 

A biblically inspired song lyric from my youth came to mind as I read the Sports Illustrated story: “What does it avail a man to gain a fortune and lose his soul?” (Jim Messina, “Golden Ribbons”; Mark 8:36).  This is a rhetorical question, of course.  What it asserts is the opposite of the axiom Tressel heeded for years; I should say that it is a basic axiom of ethics.