By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

George O'Leary influenced more young people in the past week than in his entire coaching career of 20-plus years.

The sudden end to his five-day stint as head football coach at Notre Dame, after it was revealed that he had falsified portions of his resume years earlier, stunned the sports world and sent one of this country's most respected institutions scrambling to recover from a public relations nightmare, while the man himself stood in limbo, the remainder of his career in doubt.

One must wonder how much thought he gave to the possible consequences back in 1980 when, as a would-be assistant at Syracuse, he embellished his record of academic and athletic achievement. He might have thought to himself, "Who really cares how many games I played at New Hampshire, if I can get the job done as a coach? When game time rolls around on Saturday afternoon, does it really matter if I actually completed a master's degree in physical education?"

Apparently not, at least in the early years. The fictitious portions of O'Leary's resume followed him to every coaching stop, through a reasonably successful term as a head coach at Georgia Tech, all the way to the hallowed golden dome at Notre Dame, where an innocent attempt by a New Hampshire newspaper to print a "local boy makes good" story brought it all crashing down.

In the actual nuts and bolts of college coaching, does it really matter that he never played a down at New Hampshire or earned that degree at NYU? Of course it doesn't. Other men with no playing experience in college have been successful as coaches, even in the pros. And you certainly don't get the lion's share of your training for the sidelines in a classroom.

What does matter here is obvious. It's already been talked about and written about dozens of times in recent days, but it can't be overstated. The man lied, plain and simple. L-I-E-D.

Can he recover from this? Sure, to some extent. I'm sure that he and his family have already suffered more than they could possibly imagine, and I'm not looking to pour salt on any wounds. Aside from the public humiliation, there's the millions of dollars O'Leary has lost in future revenue, much of which was a done deal through his new Notre Dame contract. Now there's a real question of whether he will ever be a head coach again anywhere. If he coaches again in college, rival recruiters will pounce on every athlete considering a move to his school "You're going to play for O'Leary? Are you serious?"

But on the other hand, how many young men and women who witnessed this episode will think twice the next time they consider falsifying a job application, or misleading the police, or lying to a spouse? We'll never know the answer to that question.

There seems to be a constant debate in the sports world on whether athletes are role models. Well, there's no doubt about that where coaches are concerned, and they know that better than anyone. They take young men and women at a most vital time in their lives, mostly during high school and college, and impart lessons that their pupils will carry to the grave. That awesome responsibility too often gets lost in the world of the average sports fan amid life-and-death concern for wins and losses.

The O'Leary incident flies directly in the face of two principles taught over and over in this country the past 50 years the insane pursuit of money above all else, and the equally insane concept of moral relativism, climaxed a couple of years ago by a mind-boggling debate over the importance of the president of the United States lying in court.

Of course, Notre Dame's actions in response to O'Leary's indiscretion were partly motivated by a desire to cover its collective backside and save its reputation at all costs. People already wonder why this school and so many others don't check into the backgrounds of their hires a bit more thoroughly. In this case, the answer is obvious O'Leary was coming to boost the win-loss record, and never mind that he brought with him a mediocre player graduation record (for Georgia Tech, anyway) and succeeded a coach whose graduation rate of late was 100 percent. Now O'Leary and Notre Dame must live with the consequences.

But maybe this will prove that all is not lost, that there are some things still more important than money, athletic success and moral relativism. Maybe this will resurrect a wise but largely forsaken concept handed down some 3,000 years ago: "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches (Proverbs 22:1)."

[Monroe Roark can be reached at mroark@TheCitizenNews.com.]

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