Riley Wallace stood up. Literally. Figuratively. Heroically.
It happened Tuesday in Honolulu during a news conference in which football coach Bob Wagner, winning coach who had led the Rainbows to their only two bowl appearances during his nine-year reign, was fired by athletic director Hugh Yoshida.Wallace, Hawaii's longtime basketball coach, seethed as Yoshida explained Wagner had been fired because his team had put together successive losing seasons and attendance at Aloha Stadium was flagging. Finally, Wallace could not hold his tongue or his temper.
Wallace angrily wondered whether won-lost records were the only criteria for keeping a job at the school.
"I was called in last year, and they said I didn't have a good year . . ." Wallace said despite Yoshida's fervent pleas for Wallace to pipe down. "And I was told attendance didn't mean anything. And wins and losses didn't mean anything. It was graduation rates and whether or not we were bringing in good people. Now I want to know where our support is going to come from."
This is what all college coaches want to say, but they won't, or they can't. Maybe he won't have a job tomorrow - one Hawaii official approached Wallace at the Wagner firing and said, "You want to make this a two-for-one deal?" - but it doesn't really matter. Wallace, who can't take it anymore, has said his piece and told the skewed world of college sports what it so desperately needs to hear.
"Eighteen years ago, I stood on that stage," Wallace said by phone Thursday, referring to his firing at Centenary after less than two years as head coach. "They fired me, pulled me right off the floor in the middle of practice in a program that had been going well. And I was never given a reason . . . ever. When they fired me, I had a 3-month-old baby and a 3-year-old kid. My world had come to an end.
"Then, when I saw Bob (Wagner) up there and heard them talking about declining attendance and money when all the presidents across the country talk about graduation rates and having good people in the program, I'd heard enough. What we need, nationwide, is a push for more job security for coaches."
School presidents say they want to be high-minded, to graduate kids and produce solid student-athletes. In most cases, that is a sham. College sports are a multimillion-dollar business proposition where the bottom line is winning and maintaining the athletic department budget.
Wagner didn't have much on-field success the past few years - he is at a recruiting disadvantage because he can't take at-risk athletes - and attendance at the Aloha Bowl was dwindling. He also graduated 77 percent of his players, one of the highest rates in the nation, and kept them out of trouble.
"They talk out of one side of their mouths that winning is not everything," Wallace said. "But it is . . . We should be graduating kids and bringing in the best people we can. But sometimes you don't win with those people. What do they really want? If you don't win, it comes at a very high price to people's jobs and lives."
The bottom line is this: Colleges must decide what they want from sports. Do they want the teams to be extensions of the university and part of the academic mission? Or do they want to go big-time, pack 70,000 into the stadium on Saturday, compete for a national title?
"I think (Wallace) is getting tired of the hypocrisy . . ." Wagner told a Honolulu newspaper. ". . . Are we an apple or an orange? It keeps changing day after day."
Too many coaches, many of whom aren't blessed with much security, are caught in the middle. It was Wagner at Hawaii. It was Ray Goff at Georgia.
Goff, who lost his tailback and quarterback early this season, still managed a winning season in Athens, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't the kind of record his predecessor, Vince Dooley, amassed during his reign. Problem was, Goff was playing under different rules than Dooley. Goff was recruiting at a school that had raised the academic standards after years of academic horror stories under Dooley.
Too many good people are trying to do things the right way, and they are being rewarded with pink slips.
"I'm glad I spoke up," Wallace said. "It may cost me my job. If it does, so be it."
Bob Kravitz writes for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.