Amid Iowa turmoil, Ferentz seems safe for now
The family apparently didn't contact the police until November but that's not the point. Rape victims don't always go directly to the police because of the humiliation. The point is the meeting should have never happened, especially when the mother later said the family was encouraged to handle the situation on an "informal" basis. Isn't that code for keeping the cops out of it?
An athletic department having any influence in this sort of situation is unpardonable. A coach's job is to put the best players on the field to win football games, not counsel a family through an unspeakable tragedy that might have been caused by his players. Predictably, things did not go well for the alleged victim after her situation became public. Her mother contends the woman was ridiculed by not only some football players on campus but by her teammates and coach.
The situation got uglier recently when the Iowa City Press-Citizen published two letters written to the university by the mother. After the meeting, the mother wrote that Iowa officials said they would handle the situation "swiftly and effectively" if it remained in-house. A more "formal" process, the family was told, would lead to "a long, arduous process."
More code for, "Let's keep this thing from going public."
Ferentz is a good man and coach. He is not part of some vast conspiracy, but he and Barta should have been taken out of the loop in this case. Coaches and ADs should be out of the punishment process for all but the most minor legal transgressions by their athletes. A coach's best interests are not necessarily those of the victims.
"The biggest story is how we give control to athletic departments without thinking," said Jon Ericson, the former provost at Drake University. Ericson founded The Drake Group, a faculty coalition fighting academic corruption.
"If my daughter is raped by a band member, I don't sit down with the band director to find out what to do. The old story is we give people control over us, we don't take it."
There is some sordid history here. Former Iowa basketball star Pierre Pierce was hit with two separate sexual abuse charges earlier this decade. After the first he was allowed to take a redshirt year while completing a year of probation and community service.
Post-Pierce, a university committee recommended that no department be allowed to investigate its own staff or students. Somehow, though, in this case Iowa athletic officials were allowed to have contact with the victim to pursue a resolution. In the past few days, Mason has rightly pledged that the athletic department will no longer be involved in investigations of alleged sexual assaults.
Camp starts in a couple of days. That will deflect some of the attention away from this depressing situation and onto the depressing situation of Iowa football. Ferentz hasn't won more than seven games since 2004.
"I'm no stranger to unpopularity," said Ferentz, who opened 2-18 at Iowa in 1999-2000. "We've had moments that were similar."
On the field. Off the field? That's another sad angle to this story. I can't help but think this would be less of a controversy if Ferentz was coming off a 10-2 season instead of a 6-6 finish in 2007.
The crime doesn't seem to matter: Football wins trump ethics every time.
