In the course of time — the next few days and weeks, not months — leaders and power brokers at the University of Southern California should tend to the health and well-being of their stocked but sliding football program.
The various issues connected to the performance of USC football, and who coaches the Trojans in 2016, will need to be confronted in Los Angeles, and you can be sure we’ll discuss those various items here at TSS. Don’t worry.
First things first, though: It’s time for a person in the grip of addiction to be given the attention and care he needs.
It’s time for Steve Sarkisian to break away from football — but not because of his struggles as a coach or a leader. It’s time for Sarkisian to break away from football because his life demands it.
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The news came down on Sunday afternoon, after USC athletic director Pat Haden discovered that Sarkisian was not at practice:
Sarkisian was not at practice today. Haden then called him and said "it was very clear to me that he is not healthy."
— USC Trojans (@USC_Athletics) October 11, 2015
USC AD Pat Haden announces that Steve Sarkisian will take an "indefinite leave of absence." Clay Helton named interim head coach.
— USC Trojans (@USC_Athletics) October 11, 2015
One could choose to engage in commentary from various angles, mentioning how this situation emerges on the heels of the not-too-distant episode from August in which an intoxicated Sarkisian slurred words and uttered profanities in an appearance before USC donors. At the time, it was understandable to note that the incident reduced Sarkisian’s margin for error on the field this season, and that it didn’t reflect well on Haden himself, whose hold on power right now is (one would think) extremely tenuous.
Yet, all those issues are part of the political intrigue at Heritage Hall and the USC athletic department. They’re removed from the most important issue: making sure Steve Sarkisian finds health, balance, sobriety — all the things that are part of a full and regained life.
The inclination to cast Sarkisian’s situation in football terms is easy, but this is at its essence a human crisis right now. Sure, it’s the central task of this website — and of various pundits and bloggers — to write about football. However, this does not mean that football is inherently more important or more central to a situation in which a coach’s holistic wellness is eroded by a very personal problem.
Steve Sarkisian — battling alcoholism and struggling to find a healthy way to live — will not defeat these demons in a day or a week or even a month. After he resolved to do better in late August after his drunken incident, and USC took some modest steps to deal with the issue, we are — if not back to square one — at an even deeper crisis point than before. That, in itself, is scary and unsettling.
However, there’s something which must be added to that point.
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What’s even more disturbing about this situation is that we can be fairly sure of the following: If Sarkisian had beaten Stanford and Washington to claim an unblemished on-field record this season, plenty of college football bloggers (and that includes me, I am not happy to admit) would either not be writing about this issue or would not know about it. There wouldn’t be as much of a perceived need to either identify or solve a problem… because HEY, SHINY UNBEATEN RECORD OVER HERE!
With the internals of USC’s program in much better shape under such a scenario, Sark and Haden wouldn’t have felt nearly as much heat. Because Haden invested so much political capital in Sarkisian, it would be easier to envision a context in which Sarkisian’s public appearances were more managed and controlled, and he quietly delegated more responsibilities to his assistants. With USC at 5-0 and not 3-2, the comparative lack of attention paid to the competence of the head coach (and the amount of pressure he’s feeling on a daily basis) would have given Sark a measure of cover.
When things are bad, though, there is no place for him or Haden to hide.
This doesn’t mean Haden’s response is automatically tied to wins and losses — let’s make that clear. However, it’s hardly a controversial point that human flaws, weaknesses, illnesses, and various other manifestations of fragility are tolerated or overlooked (or both) when wins are rolling in. They’re scrutinized more and given more weight when bad losses litter the landscape.
This is all a longer way of saying that it’s easy for me to sit here and write words about the right thing to do. If USC was 5-0, I must be honest with myself in conceding that I might not be writing this very piece.
The point is clear: Instead of getting into that wins-versus-losses mindset, and allowing THAT to dictate what USC’s response should be (thereby framing the matter in football terms), this should be seen as a problem completely removed from football.
If able to look at this issue strictly in human terms, removed from football, one can then conclude that Steve Sarkisian, a person who is suffering greatly, needs to be removed from football… for reasons that have nothing to do with football.
We’ll talk more about USC’s next coach and all those football-related intrigues later.
Today, let’s emphasize the need for USC to continue a process in which Steve Sarkisian gets every last bit of therapeutic attention — not so he can return to the sidelines, but in order to return to a place where he gets his life back, and isn’t merely existing, as is the case right now.