Mercy is hard to find in our high society

Sporting News, The, May 15, 1995 by Mitch Albom

One false move. That's all you get now. One false move and they chop your head off, leave you hanging upside down in the spotlight, too bad, seeya, thanks for joining us in The Public Life. A good man lost his job last week, he may never coach again, all for a mistake that is made a thousand times every day all over this country. Gary Moeller's crime was not getting drunk and making a fool of himself -- heck, they'd have to fire half the football people in America for that.

His crime was getting caught in the spotlight and seeing his story dissected like a high school lab rat.

Shame on them, shame on every one at Michigan who let this hurricane of publicity blow them away from what they owed a good employee of 24 years -- a chance to redeem himself.

And shame on us, every one of us in this business who grabbed those audio tapes of a drunken Moeller swearing at police, cursing at his wife, begging for forgiveness, and threw them right into the airwaves and headlines. What purpose did that serve -- except make it impossible for the man to ever work again? He never accused the police of harassment. He never denied being drunk. We pasted him, lambasted him, then said how sorry we felt for him.

The American spotlight.

One false move.

"Doesn't Moeller deserve a second chance?" someone asked Joe Roberson, Michigan's athletic director, once he had announced Moeller's "resignation" following the coach's recent arrest for disorderly conduct at a suburban Detroit restaurant.

"Second chances are somewhat dependent on the circumstances that lost you your first chance," Roberson said. "In my view, given what has happened, it would have been quite difficult for Gary to have been an effective leader of the team."

Congratulations, Michigan. The law needed another week just to arraign Moeller; you had already sentenced him.

One false move.

Roberson's feeling was that, after the magnitude of this story, Moeller would have had a hard time addressing future players about the dangers of bad habits. Roberson -- and the school -- felt that Moeller's drunken curses and pushing a cop cost him his credibility in the homes of future recruits, especially when the mothers asked, "Will you take care of my son?"

Well. Maybe, Joe. Don't be so quick to dismiss the healing power of time, and the short memory of the American public. We live in a country where the current mayor of Washington, D.C., was busted for drugs the first time he had that job. Teddy Kennedy is frequently parodied as a drunken windbag, yet is still one of the most powerful politicians in America.

And need anyone be reminded that Bill McCartney, one of the coaches who was so enthusiastically tossed out as a replacement for Moeller, saw his daughter impregnated by two of his Colorado football players -- yet managed to hold onto his job the whole time, perhaps because he was steering toward a national championship?

Is Michigan so blinded by one-way dignity that it can't see the hypocrisy of a sport that accepts millions of dollars from beer companies, yet tosses a coach after one drunken incident?

And it was one drunken incident. Let's not forget that here. The feeding frenzy over Moeller may make it feel like he committed 30 crimes, but he didn't. One night. One incident. First offense. That's it. Moeller has no history of alcohol problems, no history of arrests, no history of bad behavior in public. He didn't kill anyone. Didn't hurt anyone. Didn't involve any of his players.

A word here about the "terrible" things Moeller said while intoxicated. How many good things have you heard from a drunken man's mouth? You gain nothing from examining his statements. Moeller told Roberson he doesn't even remember that night. Anyone who has ever had too much liquor at a New Year's Eve party can attest to that feeling.

Would you have liked a tape on yourself then? Would you want a tape recorder rolling in your bedroom when you and your spouse have a fight -- and then hear it all over TV?

This public gorging on Moeller's embarrassment was disgusting and completely unnecessary. What kind of society have we become when police automatically tape their arrests -- to protect themselves from lawsuits -- then release the tapes to the media because of the Freedom of Information Act?

So many laws to protect our rights.

Then why does this feel so wrong?

And it is. Wrong. We all seem to know it. Yet nobody wants to do anything about it. Roberson is a good man, and he offered Moeller a good package; but he didn't save him, he seemed to feel he couldn't. And the rest of us? We shake our heads and cluck our tongues and say "too bad he didn't drink at home."

Shame on them, shame on us. Let every university board member who's never had too many martinis step forward. Let every provost and professor who's never yelled something vicious at his mate step forward, too. Let every reporter, anchor and talk-show host, every would-be hero and wannabe public figure who never did anything wrong, never argued with a cop, never got a little too loud in a bar, never did a single thing he'd like to have back, come forward right now, raise your hand.