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As if the University of Akron football program had not already had its nose ground into the dirt—OK, make that, artificial turf—a former athletic department administrator has caused the NCAA to put its foot squarely on the Zips’ neck and jump up and down like a kangaroo.

Go, Zips—straight to the NCAA hoosegow.

When I was the Akron Beacon Journal’s sports columnist, I suspect I would have been quick and unforgiving in my assessment of such malfeasance. Football has been a struggling-to-failing proposition for many years. I wrote a book with former Coach Gerry Faust that includes many of those years. I may be out of the loop now, but I know the loop of a noose is around UA’s neck.

What I am not so sure of is whether it should be. There are reasons for my vacillation.

• It is difficult to fully understand the particulars with the information available from the Beacon Journal. This is not to criticize George Thomas, who concentrates on the University of Akron among his overloaded work schedule. (The newspaper recently announced it had increased the size of its staff, which is welcome news. But let’s be honest: these are different times and the staff is still not adequate to its assignment.)
• I am in no position to ferret out the particulars and with COVID-19 on my heels in no mood and have no desire to challenge the athletic department for more information. Once, I could have and would have—with guns and ink jets blazing.
• I may be guilty of a similar offense, if on a different level and in an environment that does not have to satisfy the NCAA police but which nevertheless can be sued and hated.

For some time after I accepted a premature retirement buyout from the Beacon Journal—it seemed as if it would be the best ever offered and it was—I continued to work at odd jobs. I would share some of them but because those who actually respected me when I was an ABJ columnist—we could have met in a phone booth; I realize many younger readers don’t know what that is—would giggle and rightly poke fun at the pompous man of words brought low.

But one of the best of my “post-retirement” positions was at the University of Akron—and I can thank my predecessor in the job, Arthur Krummel, another Akron Beacon Journal exile. He not only recommended me as his successor but also helped me with the technical aspects of the job. I advised The Buchtelite, the student newspaper, which was an independent publication though the adult in the room was under the thumb of the administration and its legal system.

Because I could only advise the staff, and not tell it what to do, my success or failure (and sometimes theirs) depended on my ability to convince the student editors to listen to and take my advice seriously. Sometimes it worked; sometimes not so much. It depended on the editor.

And here is where the similarity with the athletic department’s mess comes into play. The financial help athletes receive was far more than that of student journalists. But the issue was not so different. Whether student-athletes or student-journalists, the money they received for their work—and it is work—sometimes proved insufficient. As a fall semester was about to begin, my key editor came to me and said that he could not pay his tuition because not all of his various (limited) resources—personal, university, newspaper, etc.—were available and the university bean counters wanted their pound-and-a-half of his flesh.

This was bad news for the editor and for his advisor.

We had had a running joke during the previous semester, with a different editor, that prompted the staff to take a photo of the Y-Bridge in Akron—it is very high and a favorite of those who wish to end it all—and present it to the advisor. He (I) had continually threatened that he was going to the Y-Bridge and throw himself on the mercy of the ground below, which had none.

It was a standing joke and it was funny—until it wasn’t.

If I had lost this editor, I might have actually considered throwing myself off of the Y-Bridge. So I did what any sensible advisor with his life on the line might have done. (I also loved this editor and admire him in so many ways. He felt like a son—and I have a son who was a photojournalist.) So I did the equivalent of what the associate athletic director did that prompted the recent NCAA sanctions. The difference was that no one from the NCAA was watching. They care about those who can pass and run and tackle, not those who are even better at writing about it.

I loaned my VIE (very important editor) his tuition/fees/and, who knows, maybe beer money. I had previously loaned a colleague a couple of hundred dollars not knowing whether or not I would ever get it back. But it didn’t matter. He was a friend. He needed help. I gave it. Same with the Buchtelite editor. It was a lot more money than I had lent my colleague and I didn’t know if I would ever get it back. I had come to conclusion with the colleague and then with the editor that it did not matter as much as seeing them happy and successful, which both became.

Don’t think too kindly of me. I am no self-sacrificing saint (but I am lucky to have a wife who understands this kind of thing and supports such impulses). I had my own ulterior motives, particularly in the case of my editor. Without him, I feared our whole operation might collapse and I would be taken down with it. (The administration did not view the hassles the newspaper sometimes found itself in as generously as those the athletic department might face.)

It all worked out. Both my colleague (belatedly) and my editor (in timely fashion) repaid me for my faith and money invested in them. (I am not naming either because I would not want them to be embarrassed, though they have no reason to be.) The UA athletic department’s outcome doesn’t seem to have turned out as sweetly. There’s a new athletic director. The athletes who were helped—again, particulars matter and I do not have them—were ineligible for some games, even though they signed an agreements to repay loans totaling $5,900. That’s a lesson in and about taking responsibility.

No NCAA hammer hung over my editor’s head. But he did the right thing on his own. And that was worth more to me than recouping the money that I had loaned him. I won’t forget that.