Shooting the Messenger

Two incidents involving the sports media this week show how misguided that anger over revelations of transgressions can be on the part of players and coaches.

Easily the most appalling of the two incidents came in Commerce. Several Texas A&M Commerce football players removed copies of the university's daily from racks around campus because they revealed that some players had been arrested on drug charges. That in and of itself is kind of petty, and when you consider that most college publications (like many alternative weeklies) are available free of charge, the act could be considered, at worst, recklessly immature.

But the most egregious result of the incident was the reaction of head coach Guy Morriss. Not only did Morriss not elect to discipline those allegedly involved (who stand charged of petty theft and vandalism), but he actively applauded what his players did, saying it helped unity and team-building.

You have some of your players get arrested on drug charges, and when it gets reported publicly, you think it's OK for their teammates to stifle this information in the name of team-building? What's next coach, encouraging stealing candy from kids on Halloween as a harmless exercise in bonding? Where do you draw the line? Car theft? Date rape?

Was that the problem at Baylor, Guy? You went 18-40 there because you didn't have enough irresponsible thugs on your roster? Maybe a few more misdemeanors might have meant a Big 12 championship.

The other media-related incident is a little funnier. PGA train wreck John Daly "outed" a reporter from the Jacksonville Times-Union (a paper which, like the Globe-News, is owned by Morris Communications) for writing a story regarding Daly's various suspensions and warnings by the PGA Tour regarding his behavior. Never mind that it was public record, Daly also decided to make the writer's number public, somehow procuring his cell phone number and tweeting it to the world.

It's hard to imagine what Daly was trying to hide, since his life has been an open book long before Tiger Woods bimbo of the week revelations. Is this just a desperate grab for attention to promote his reality show on the Golf Channel? We already know more about Daly than we need to, so his resenting somebody digging up some dirt on him seems silly.

But unlike A&M Commerce, at least it doesn't seem criminal.