The late Joe Paterno, one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, preached Success with Honor as the cornerstone to building a successful college football program. That is, honor and integrity come before winning football games, and all aspects of the program are handled the right way.
It is probably safe to say that Paterno wouldn't be happy with the University of Oklahoma and its football program as of a few weeks ago when a court ordered the release of a surveillance video showing Sooner running back Joe Mixon punching a female student, Amelia Molitor, in the face inside a late-night off-campus cafe in July 2014. At the time, the incident sparked much public outcry because Mixon, a former five-star recruit, received a slap on the wrist for his actions that left Molitor with multiple bone fractures in her face. Mixon took a deal and was ultimately charged with a misdemeanor offense, ordered to serve 100 hours of community service, and suspended one year by the university, which essentially just became his redshirt freshman year with the team.
Since then, Mixon has rushed for 1,936 yards and 15 touchdowns in his Sooner career, seemingly outrunning any lingering ill-effects of the incident along with his competition. But then the video was released, and boy, it was ugly. And it re-opened a huge can of worms that the University of Oklahoma had very poorly attempted to permanently seal away two and a half years ago.
The video of the incident can be found here.
The content of the tape is quite disturbing, but what's even more disturbing is the fact that just after the incident occurred, Oklahoma head football coach Bob Stoops watched that exact tape with the university's president behind closed doors, and their decided punishment didn't involve Mixon's dismissal from the team and/or university. I reckon that punishment would have been worse had Mixon not been a highly heralded five-star recruit coming out of high school.
Naturally the aforementioned parties faced a media firestorm in the days succeeding the video's release, and rightfully so. But with the opportunity to face the elephant in the room and tackle the issue once and for all, the group stared down the barrel and completely floundered, all but relinquishing any remaining chance they had of salvaging their public image in this troubling affair.
“Two-and-a-half-years later, dismissal is really the only thing that is possible” Stoops said as he addressed the tape at a press conference days after it was released. He now claims that the punishment wasn't enough, that there's "no recovering from these anymore." It's almost as if the deciding powers at Oklahoma thought it was okay for a man to hit a woman in 2014, and now they don't. The irreversible damage from this mistake has already been done, and thus these words must be taken with a grain of salt from the man who knowingly and willingly allowed, and continues to allow, a woman-beater to be a star on his football team.
Mixon also held a presser of his own, during which he apologized profusely for his actions and echoed that it is never okay for a man to put his hands on a woman, despite the fact that he said it "felt like a dude had just hit me" when questioned by police about the incident. Amelia Molitor must have one heck of a slap, because Mixon has the make and build of an NFL running back, though it's uncertain how that potential avenue will be affected for him.
Yikes. Just yikes, all around. How do you allow something like this to happen? I feel like if this happened at a school that didn't have such a rich, blue-blood football tradition as Oklahoma, there would be more clamor about Stoops' job. Oklahoma certainly isn't getting a dinner invitation from any Women's Advocates any time soon, and why would they? I'm even convinced they believe they did nothing in the wrong in their handling of all this, that these public apologies are simply the school's way of saying "We're sorry we got caught being terrible people."
The university is hanging Amelia Molitor out to dry in all this. They don't care about her broken face or what her life may be like now that she's received so much publicity. No, they picked winning football games over her. Moreover, they picked winning football games over morality, and that would be grounds for dismissal at many other schools.
Bob Stoops is lucky he's at Oklahoma. Joe Mixon is lucky he's at Oklahoma. Oklahoma is lucky that they can get away with being Oklahoma -- that is, enabling success with dishonor -- or they could very easily find themselves without their prized head coach and once sure NFL-bound star running back. Won't stop me from thinking they're running a joke of a program down there in Norman.
