At this point, we have no reliable way of knowing if Dohrmann and Evans actually committed the journalistic no-nos that they are being accused of. To be honest, it seems more realistic that the cited former players simply didn't realize the scope of what they were involving themselves in when they agreed to be interviewed, and I have no problem with that.
As this firestorm continues to unwind though (the second segment was released today), some of the backlash directed at Dohrmann and Evans' has centered on their motivations for beginning the inquiry in the first place. The most succinct and visible instance has come from an unusual -- but really not that unlikely -- source:
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| The first and only time that T. Boone Pickens -- oil king, television personality and Oklahoma State booster -- will appear on this blog |
This, I feel no small amount of shame in admitting, is the more interesting question. I also think it's one that merits a consideration of the recent history of investigations into wrongdoing in college football.
With the near-constant turnover of college football rosters and -- increasingly -- coaching staffs, it's very hard for anyone to catch any of these programs actively doing anything wrong. In fact, this might be the closest we're going to ever come. For one, Les Miles is still among the college ranks, which is more than can be said for the other big-name NCAA investigations of the past several years. History has shown that these things take time to unfold and the college game is inherently uncooperative over such large swaths of time. If this is the high-water mark of NCAA action taken against a coach -- a combination of the most brazen violations with a clear and readily-punishable perpetrator -- it remains to be seen if that will actually amount to anything. Even given the involvement of a household name like Miles', the emerging sentiment is that it still looks like there's going to be very little that the NCAA can do about it.
So what's the point of writing pieces like the SI report? Does the unlikelihood of meaningful recourse mean that investigative reporting simply doesn't have a place in college football? These questions are where we are starting to get to the core of the journalistic issues involved in this episode, and where I have to address the uncomfortable feeling I got when I read the SI report for the first time.
There's something inherently unpalatable about witnessing someone being accused of something. While we accept enforcement and uphold it as necessary, there is also an instinctual tendency to scrutinize the accuser's motives, and I think that's a good thing. It seems to me that the case for the SI report being for the greater good of the game is pretty strong -- the rules should be enforced and offenders held accountable -- but in the back of my mind I realize that this need should be balanced out by the necessity of preventing the game from deteriorating into an ongoing public search for cheaters.
The accusation that Pickens and others are making is that this report is a little bit too much a witch hunt and not enough a well-intentioned act of honest journalism. Given the facts, I disagree with that opinion, but I had to sit and think it all out before I realized that I disagree.
When Bryan asked me to contribute to this blog, he was clear in saying that we weren't going to let this turn into a forum to throw out accusations -- baseless or otherwise. I think that's an important point, and one that I need to consciously remind myself of from time to time. The fallout from the SI report has shown me that I am not the only one who has to do this, because -- at the end of the day -- our goal is to improve the games which we write about, not to destroy them.
Photos courtesy of ESPN and Twitter
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