A wise man once said to look forward we must look to the past for guidance and it seems to me that for college athletics, 2003 was the year of the corrupt coach. Hopefully, we can all learn from the mistakes of the powerfully ignorant in college athletics.

Students and athletes at Eastern should be thankful that the worst we may have to worry about is the possibility of a losing season in our major sports. Some institutions have head coaches who are ignorant, irresponsible and plain immoral.

Unfortunately, the carousel started and ended with a weapon involved.

The first blip on the moral radar screen was Tennessee State head basketball coach Nolan Richardson III bringing a gun to practice in attempt to threaten one of his assistants.

The strange events continued with Alabama head football coach and former Washington State leader Mike Price basically needing an egg timer to measure his stay in Tuscaloosa. Weeks after being named to control one of the most historically significant college football programs in America, Price did the logical thing any decent person who wants to keep their job longer than a New York minute would do.

Price toured the local strip joint in the area, got himself inebriated to the point where he doesn’t recall taking a woman to his hotel room and letting her order up thousands of dollars on his room service bill.

Thank God Price didn’t use the excuse: if I don’t remember it happening then it’s not a viable offense. However, he did seem shocked when the athletic director found this to be conduct unbecoming to represent the university.

Price is currently suing Sports Illustrated and was hired as a head coach at the University of Texas-El Paso, a long way figuratively and literally from Alabama.

The circle of friends continued in Price’s former state of Washington where his former school’s rival, the Washington Huskies, made a groundbreaking decision.

However, it was a decision that forced me to fill out my resignation papers at the Daily Eastern News because I’ve done this apparently evil deed as well. Former head football coach Rick Neuheisel participated in a $2,000 NCAA men’s basketball tournament pool. Now, I’ve never been in a pool with those types of figures (if that was true, mom and dad wouldn’t need to pay my tuition) but I’ve run a pool like that in March since I was 10. However, the UW president found this act and, by the way, these 55 other NCAA violations by his coaching staff a reasonable excuse for termination. Neuheisel is currently suing Washington for money and his job back. As an example for all those future coaches out there, you can get away with the cars and the money but it’s the gambling that’ll get you.

I was naive to believe this couldn’t happen in the Midwest where the rumor is morals are still high but Iowa State foiled my theory again with the fraternity antics of head basketball coach Larry Eustachy.

Eustachy got inebriated after his team lost to Missouri and attended a UM fraternity house where he hit on several co-eds. If that wasn’t enough, he topped it off by trying to save his job in announcing he is an alcoholic. Eustachy apparently has the same public relations people as President Bush because somebody told him alcoholics get to keep their jobs. Iowa State proved them wrong by terminating him very quickly.

We end the year of shame in Big 12 country with a story out of Baylor that kept getting more confusing by the day. What the NCAA does know is head basketball coach Dave Bliss may be the most evil man on the planet. When one of his players named Brian Dennehy was ruled to be missing, Bliss figured this might be a black mark for his program and instantly began to conjure up a plan that might save his job and reputation. Bliss tried to cover up alleged NCAA violations by telling assistant coaches and players to lie and say a slain player had been dealing drugs to pay for school, secretly recorded audiotapes revealed. Yes coach, because allowing a player to deal drugs is so much better than getting him killed. What kind of logic is that?

“I think the thing we want to do – and you think about this – if there’s a way we can create the perception that Pat may have been a dealer,” Bliss is heard saying on one tape. “Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little better than they are, that can save us.” Dennehy was killed by two gun shot wounds to the head and his body was found later. His apparent killer Carlton Dotson (Guess what. He was on the basketball team recruited by Dave Bliss) confessed to the murder and has now recanted.

My purpose wasn’t to smear the actions of these men and the schools they were involved with. We all make mistakes and with the exception of Bliss, they all deserve a second chance and will get one. However, coaches at universities need to look at these acts and not react with “that could never happen to me” or “not here.” They need to look themselves in the mirror and truly ask if they have a clean program. If the answer is no, they might want to do something about it before they end up on another embarrassing year for coaches.