Kirby Smart after UGA won its second national championship this year. Credit: Tony Walsh/UGAAA.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MARCH 7, 2023 | Winning isn’t everything.
Try to tell that to a follower of top sports teams, however. You’ll get scorn and laughed at from mad-dog fans of the Universities of Georgia and Alabama, and other sports teams, high school, college and pro.
Don’t they tell you: “We’re number one!” so often that it sounds like a litany?
Some Georgia fans have been known to bark after hollering “We’re number one!”
We bring this up as we hear reports that University of Georgia football team members and staff were wildly driving in the wee hours of the morning when two people were killed in an auto accident. Now reports say that there were two vehicles involved, that they were racing at 104 mph, and one car was driven by a football player.
When such incidents happen, the burden of fault lies with the University, its officials from the president on down, and certainly with the key coaches of these athletes. For they have not set up a system where the student-athletes are closely held accountable for their actions, allowing students to play on the athletic field, some getting little of a real education, and often embarrassing the university with their antics. Many fail to graduate from college, though by showing their skills in sports at the college field, many go on to professional careers and make big money.
What the universities need to instill, and many do not, is strict disciplining of its student-athletes. If they can’t conform to basic rules in and out of class, the school should not allow them to promote their skills on the gridiron. Simply kick them off the team. They are not worthy of being associated with the college.
But no. This never happens. The universities themselves, the coaches, and of course the alumni and fans, are caught up in the swell of big-time and big-money college sports. They ignore common sense and propriety and push the school’s athletic teams to seek victory at every turn, and the worst part, at any cost.
So we have students running amuck, caught for stealing, or causing a ruckus at a party, or violating curfew, or roughing up someone. What happens? Slaps on the wrists is about all. There is little discipline enforced. By ignoring these escapades, more unruly conduct abounds.
In the recent case in Athens, it was not only heavy intoxication, driving an automobile recklessly, street racing, but apparently baiting another driver to get engaged in similar disruption. And two are dead.
We have heard little except silence from the university, and especially from Coach Kirby Smart. Their silence injures the reputation of the university,
No college team should give scholarships to bullying, burly ruffian athletes who are undisciplined. That’s not protecting the status of your university. If colleges sign these athletes, they have the responsibility to mold them for the future by training and enforcing strict rules, so that they are a credit to the institution.
Coach Kirby Smart: these young athletes are your responsibility. Train them, but discipline and guide them, and admit problems when they happen. Bring your athletes to the next level of success so that you can all be proud of their maturity and their achievements.
Winning isn’t everything.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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