Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                          Ich bin ein Richt supporter

                                                                           Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 6, 2015

            Hey, ya’ll, I’ve had my picture made with him, too.  But so did every other member of the Georgia House of Representative’s Retirement Committee.  Yessir, University of Georgia Coach Mark Richt appeared before the committee to argue for a retirement plan for assistant coaches throughout the state, not just for those at UGA.

            The year was 2003, so the young coach was still fairly new to Georgia.  I was impressed by his concern for his lieutenants.  For the hour or so he spent with the committee, plus the extra half- hour the committee members spent fawning over him and taking pictures, Richt appeared untouched by all of the attention.  In fact, he seemed uncomfortable with his celebrity. 

            Unassuming, unfazed, with not an ounce of  self-importance, the coach eloquently stated his case to the Retirement Committee and then kindly tolerated our fawning.

            I love the guy.  But since football is the tail that wags the dog of so called higher education (“Higher than what?” columnist George Will is now asking.), and since Richt is a $4 million plus man, his boss has a right to expect $4 million results and to delineate what those results are to be.

            But so do bill-footing taxpayers who believe college football has become the be-all and end-all of college life.  Even if college athletic budgets contribute to non-athletic, academic departments, the average college student probably doesn’t know it.  He or she only knows that from the office of the college president on down the line, the football program is the supreme value.

            It’s all a male thing, of course, and it’s casting a shadow over intellectual pursuits … you know, the pursuit of learning and human advancement, of research, history, law, language, science, the arts, mathematics, and all of those other old-fashioned subjects that most certainly did excite college students back in the day.  Back when football didn’t wag education, when five months of the school year were not spent anticipating the weekend game, playing it, and then arguing about it until Tuesday.

One reason I admire Coach Richt is that from all accounts he has sought to raise up men, not just football players. He loves the game for what it can produce, which when taught properly, can produce men.  He hasn’t leaned toward the legendary Bear Bryant whose fabled remark was “My players are athletes first and students second.” 

And for that he paid a price, unfairly so.  A 145-51 record isn’t good enough?  How many other great coaches produced a national champion within 15 years as Richt was expected to do?  Bear Bryant didn’t; it took him 17.  Tom Osborne didn’t; he needed 22.  Joe Paterno, like Bryant, took 17. Lou Holtz labored 19 years for the dream, and Bobby Bowden, Richt’s mentor, took 18 years.

But that was then and this is now.  Longfellow’s line, “Learn to labor and to wait,” isn’t good enough for today’s athletic directors.  Or fans or alumni.  Instant gratification infected all of us some time ago.

While a coach’s boss has the right to fire him, exercising that right isn’t necessarily the wise or right thing to do.  The boss man may have been responding in part to those who think Richt didn’t snort and stomp and wave his arms enough on the sidelines.  But very few of the nation’s greatest coaches have conducted themselves in that manner.  

I have often faulted Richt for his leniency with his athletes’ off campus conduct.  Too often he was too forgiving.  But his record remains, the testimony of his athletes is compelling, and his commitment to coaching and winning is unquestionable.  By the time of this writing, Coach Richt may have made a decision about his future.  Whatever that decision is, I only hope that at some college, some day, some more young men can be around him and learn about character.  Fundraising and glad-handing for UGA will not make this man happy.  He’s a coach.  As a classroom teacher, I owe much to so many coaches like him.

On June 26 of 1963 in West Berlin, President John Kennedy uttered what is probably his second most memorable sentence.  Aiming his words at the Soviets who were responsible for the divided city, Kennedy declared in German, “I am a Berliner.”  Though the dividing wall didn’t come down for a quarter century, the initial step was taken.

Citizens who believe coaches should still build men as well as win trophies need to assert, “Ich bin ein Richt supporter,” thereby declaring that if college football is not supposed to educate and grow men, it doesn’t belong in an educational institution.

Dinosaur thinking, I know.  But what a need exists for it.

Roger Hines

12/2/15