Lots of publicity today about an exchange between the woman in charge of student conduct and Pateno with the university taking Paterno's side. Apparently she felt that football players should be subject to the student disciplinary process and Paterno believed that he should be able to handle those issues within the program.
Now deferring to the football coach is standard procedure at a lot of schools, not at CU as we have seen over the last few years, so this isn't that big a deal. To an extent there is some reason in that in Billy Smith or Jane Roberts from Smalltown Colorado get in trouble for drinking in a dorm it doesn't hit the newspapers like it does for an athlete in a revenue sport. I think there has to be a reasonable balance in place.
What makes it interesting though is that just as we saw in the Barnett situation the buzzards are circling over the power of the athletic department. Now is the time when people from all directions in the university are going to try to claim power and exert authority over things that they would never even think of if the program was not in the fisheye lens of the national media. Things that would have been viewed neutrally or even in favor of the AD will now be slanted against them and lots of people are going to get their pound of flesh before this is all over.
In the end, I don't see how they come out of this without at the minimum the athletic program being put under the oversight of representatives of the academic and financial segments of the university.
Now deferring to the football coach is standard procedure at a lot of schools, not at CU as we have seen over the last few years, so this isn't that big a deal. To an extent there is some reason in that in Billy Smith or Jane Roberts from Smalltown Colorado get in trouble for drinking in a dorm it doesn't hit the newspapers like it does for an athlete in a revenue sport. I think there has to be a reasonable balance in place.
What makes it interesting though is that just as we saw in the Barnett situation the buzzards are circling over the power of the athletic department. Now is the time when people from all directions in the university are going to try to claim power and exert authority over things that they would never even think of if the program was not in the fisheye lens of the national media. Things that would have been viewed neutrally or even in favor of the AD will now be slanted against them and lots of people are going to get their pound of flesh before this is all over.
In the end, I don't see how they come out of this without at the minimum the athletic program being put under the oversight of representatives of the academic and financial segments of the university.