When you do things the right way for a long time you build up a little credit. So consider this a vote of confidence in Gary Pinkel even as his Missouri football program suffers through the embarrassment of way too many episodes of young men behaving badly.
Pinkel has done a lot of things right in his 10 years at Mizzou, winning a lot of football games and doing it with a tangible sense of discipline and integrity. But now within the stretch of one horrendous month, three members of his program have been arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, and his star tailback has been suspended indefinitely facing felony charges of deviate sexual assault, a mess I'm sure will prove to reek of alcohol-soaked stupidity, too. None of these unfortunate episodes has suddenly turned Missouri into some renegade football program. But you don't have to be an unrepentant haven for convicts and reprobates to set your program down a dark path.
So thankfully, Pinkel has taken the right attitude about this rash of bad behavior. On Monday when facing the media, the coach didn't act like a man with his head in the sand or act like an arrogant enabler who pretends that these legal missteps are the mere collateral costs for doing business when trying to create a consistent national football power.
Instead, he took responsibility.
"Just like a parent," he said. "A parent is responsible for their kids, no matter what they do or what they get involved with."
Too often the eventual downfall of schools and coaches is the arrogance to ignore that responsibility. Too often, particularly at programs that believe that there are shortcuts to success, the people in charge choose to cut corners or look the other way when trying to make those radical makeovers, or desperately attempting to keep a football program afloat in the Top 25.
But Pinkel said he was embarrassed by these repeated incidents and vowed to make sure the nonsense ends now. He left linebacker Will Ebner and long snapper Beau Brinkley off the two-deep roster for Saturday's season opener against Illinois. Tailback Derrick Washington, charged with the felony assault, was suspended indefinitely until his case is resolved. Pinkel says his program was built on discipline, and I happen to believe him. He's earned that trust by keeping MU football clean for the bulk of his 10 years in Columbia.
But the trouble with the life of a college football coach is that everything you build over a decade can be ruined in no time by the repeated mistakes of a few foolish young men.
Why have his players (and assistant coach Bruce Walker, who was punished internally by Pinkel) suddenly gotten themselves into these alcohol-related arrests? Pinkel better find out in a hurry if there's something developing in the culture of his program — or in the overall culture of a college town notorious for its party-all-the-time national reputation — that he needs to immediately correct before something very tragic occurs that either ruins a life or ends one.
None of us knows for sure what happened that night involving Washington, but Missouri's policy of suspending any athlete charged with a felony is the absolute right way to go. Playing college football is a privilege, not a right. So unless he clears up his name, he should not be allowed to play.
Pinkel says his program must find a way to restore the respect that he spent building over the last decade. "That's the way it should be," he said.
The true test of regaining that respect will be how high Pinkel sets the bar for Washington's possible reinstatement. A plea bargain deal shouldn't cut it. A plea bargain says "I did it, but let's make a deal."
That might work to keep Washington out of jail, but complete innocence should be the only path that gets him back in a Missouri uniform. Anything less is a compromise that Pinkel should never consider if he's truly interested in rediscovering that respect.
