Should athletes have it their way?

Oberlin athletes pout a lot. The latest pouters to step up to the plate are Oberlin baseball players. Most players believe that baseball coach Todd Mooney is absolutely horrible. According to them, Mooney has no people skills, prioritizes football over baseball and has no respect for his players.

The overarching questions are bigger than baseball or Todd Mooney. Should Oberlin athletes, like Burger King, have it their way? Will Oberlin administration make the financial commitment to getting and maintaining competent coaching staffs?

Many athletes at Division I and II schools don't have the option of pouting or petitioning an athletic department about the removal of a coach. They eat and digest whatever the coach prepares. If a player or team doesn't like a coach, the player or team changes, not the other way around. Division I and II athletes are paid to play, not pout. Pouting can often lead to one being dropped from scholarship.

Nevertheless, Division I and II athletes supposedly don't have the work load and extra activities that typical Oberlin athletes have to juggle. Perhaps though, it would help if Oberlin athletics and the baseball team in general, toughened up a little bit. Maybe the loose energy of the Oberlin athletes who complain and sign petitions to oust coaches could be better used in their respective sport.

Winning programs have discipline, attitude and love at their base. These are seeds planted by coaches. All Oberlin coaches, even Todd Mooney, undoubtedly try to plant these seeds in their teams. But Oberlin coaches are in a precarious position.

First, coaches must coach players who pay, in some form, $28,000. $28,000 a year has its privileges. And this privilege is deepened when coaches themselves are underpaid and overworked.

Secondly, most coaches step into programs that have no recent history of winning. Oberlin's athletic expectations are quite low and the department is perpetually trying to ward not only complacency, but intense mediocrity.

Lastly, Oberlin coaches must effectively deal with student athletes who are part of Oberlin's history of student nonconformity and unconditional questioning/ challenging of authority.

How do you negotiate these three variables and mesh them with discipline, attitude and strategy? Oberlin coaches are paid to do just that. This is the historical and professional context in which these coaches have stepped. If they can't get a workable grasp of these realities, they're not bad coaches. They're just probably not right for Oberlin. Sad, but true.

No one can say who's right or wrong in the baseball team flap. Of course, baseball players deserve a coach whose major concern is baseball and baseball players. But Mooney also deserves a chance to get better. All of this perhaps inconsequential because at a school like Oberlin, Todd Mooney must change if he is going to continue to coach baseball. The faces of players might change, but many of their concerns will remain. Again, $28,000 a year has it's privileges and without willing players, coaches and coaching are meaningless.