Gary Pinkel: Suspension Will Serve Notice That Coaches Must Set Higher Standards

If only The Wire would do one last season on the state of college football.

The latest chapter in this tumultuous season of college football centers around Missouri's head coach Gary Pinkel, who was arrested on Wednesday evening for a suspected DWI. To Missouri's credit, they have handled the issue swiftly and appropriately:

Sadly, this is not a new issue at Missouri, as Dave Matter of the Columbia Daily Tribune notes:

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Pinkel’s arrest comes a year after his program dealt with several DWI incidents, including the arrest of offensive line Coach Bruce Walker. Linebacker Will Ebner and long snapper Beau Brinkley also were arrested for DWI. Ebner pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served two days in jail. Brinkley was charged with excessive blood-alcohol content and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

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Enough is enough. It's time the head coaches of our institutions to set a higher standard for the kids they lead on a daily basis. It's time they acted with the utmost responsibility instead of covering things up. It's time they went beyond their legal obligations and met their moral ones. It's time they focused less on wins and losses and more on the development of the kids they lead, both as football players and people.

We're all culpable in allowing college sports to become less about college and more about sports, which in the process has made sports less about the athletes and more about money. Cold, capitalistic logic suggests that it's time we cut a piece of the pie for the product—er, I'm sorry, I meant to say the athletes—that make this business possible.

The ideological take is that we reemphasize the collegiate experience as the time young people should be focusing on personal and intellectual growth rather than looking at their college years as a training program for the NFL. Maybe Penn State should have cancelled their games for the rest of the year; perhaps that would have reminded everyone a thing or two about priorities.

I'm not sure if either of the above are the right answers, but I know this—coaches have the ability to set a high standard for their players. They have the opportunity to help them grow as men. They have the responsibility to teach and guide them, and the platform from which to do so.

Gary Pinkel is only the latest—and public—example of a coach failing to set the right example. But he should have done better.

College sports needs to do better.