Commentary: Coaches’ indiscretions shouldn’t be ranked

Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic have a nice morning show on ESPN/WING-AM (1410) radio. The banter over what they eat for breakfast is a little much, but you can’t argue sports every second of the day.

A few days ago, however, even breakfast talk would have been better. Mike & Mike were trying to figure out which sports figure committed the greatest indiscretion.

Before I snapped to another station, the winner appeared to be former Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy for drinking with sorority sisters (and kissing them) on campus over Rick Pitino’s getting drunk, having relations with a woman who wasn’t his wife and paying for her alleged abortion.

Wasn’t there someone in the studio who could have reached out and slapped the double Mikes?

Drinking with students while trying to be a leader of other students certainly was an indiscretion that shouldn’t have been ignored, and Iowa State was happy to part with Eustachy. I’m not one who believes a mistake should be met by that punishment, but I wasn’t in an uproar over it, either.

Pitino has, apparently, met no penalty, and I’m not advocating one. But if I were the Louisville president, I’d sure like to be at the first meeting of the Cardinals in the fall to find out what Pitino says to his players.

“Hi, I’m the adult in the room and I’m going to teach you guys how to be men?”

Let’s not fire Pitino. After all, he won 31 games last year. But let’s stop the parsing indiscretions of grown men who should know better and are our alleged leaders. We should rank teams and players, not indiscretions.

Say what both those coaches did was inappropriate and leave it at that.

About the Author