What Would John Wooden Say About Jim Boeheim and Joe Paterno?

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Thus spoke John Wooden, UCLA's acclaimed basketball coach and one of our country's most esteemed philosophers.  Wooden was our sports nation's barometer of goodness, not only on the court but off of it as well.

He taught good character of play which he felt would translate into good character in life.

Jim Boeheim of Syracuse and Joe Paterno, late of Penn State, could have and should have learned from Wooden.  These vaunted coaches who appear like demigods at their respective universities have shown no sense of what good character is all about.

The irony is that that is what they have preached.  "We build character," is a mantra at most college sports programs, and Boeheim and Paterno were two of the chief ministers of this tenet.

It was especially sad and abhorrent to see Boeheim approach his situation regarding Bernie Fine, the assistant coach who has been accused of child abuse, in the same pompous and snarky way he would a postgame press conference. 

Boeheim had the nerve, which is obviously the product of his authority and standing he has been bequeathed over the years, to smirk and joke about the situation. 

We are not talking about how many turnovers your team had, Coach.  We are not talking about how your defense played.  We are talking about a young man's life and his loss of innocence, and a crime, if it is true, that has no matching penalty.

Where is his empathy?  Where is his concern?  Where is his humanity?

Boeheim said he has not been concerned about losing his job in the 36 years he has been coaching.  What a jerk.

Coaches are not the gods we make them out to be, but they are the products of a rotten system.  They are also, as Coach Wooden knew better than anyone, teachers in the truest sense of the word.  But, they have forgotten that.

Who do Boeheim and Paterno think they are?  They are exactly who we have told them they are.

Paterno's situation is seemingly worse than Boeheim's.  Every day we learn about more terrible things done by his former coach, Jerry Sandusky.  Where was Paterno's sense of character then?

How could he look his football players in the eye and preach to them the goodness of life and the importance of good character?

“The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching,” said Coach Wooden.

Never were there truer words said when applied to the Syracuse and Penn State coaches.

Let it be known that Coach Wooden, whose words live on even in death, and the rest of the world ARE watching.