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Judge John's propane keeps fires burning
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Judge John has struck again.
Fire Peyton Chapman.
Cut and dried, Chapman must go.
From Lincoln.
Gone as the principal of Lincoln High, where she has failed to provide the leadership needed to keep coaches of athletic teams from behaving poorly.
We know she’s screwed up because coaches have reached the news three times in the past year for … screwing up.
Basketball coach David Adelman got busted for DUI.
The baseball coach resigned after allegedly taking players to a strip club on a road trip to San Francisco.
And now football coach Chad Carlson and an assistant, Kyle Fairfax, got busted for interfering with a police officer, who was detaining Fairfax’s brother. Fairfax apparently got maced and then arrested along with Carlson
Get rid of Chapman.
Judge John spoke very authoritatively in a column written for The Oregonian Thursday after news of Carlson and Fairfax’s arrest reached public view.
Because Lincoln High is connected to all three incidents, it means the principal hasn’t done here job and ought to be moved somewhere else in the school district, or simply let go.
Yank Peyton Chapman from her role as principal of Lincoln High.
Of course, the column never mentions Lincoln athletic director Jeff Peeler, who has more oversight of the coaches than Chapman? What about him?
How about the parents of the Lincoln boys basketball team? They have an awful lot of influence over the team, or should. They didn’t seem to have a problem with Adelman not getting reprimanded.
How about the parents of the baseball team? They were all apparently comfortable enough with the coach to send their kids on a road trip with no parental involvement at all. What about those parents? Or if a parent went along (I don’t know any of the specifics of that trip), there’s someone to question as well. “Where were you?”
Judge John breeze through those parts of Chapman’s public trial.
And, it is a trial, a public trial that challenges a community’s leadership to handle each incident on a case-by-case basis, which includes the voice provided by media outlets such at The Oregonian.
Recently, the most botched case involves Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount, who punched a Boise State player on national television after a loss in Boise, Idaho. Judge John jumped all over Blount and essentially ignited a lynch mob. University of Oregon president Richard Lariviere, athletic director and former football coach Mike Bellotti and coach Chip Kelly all reacted as quickly as possible to subdue the lynch mob by banning Blount from playing for the rest of the season, although he was allowed to keep his scholarship.
As a UO alum, I felt ashamed by the whole incident, but mostly the reaction of the university administrators in and out of the athletic department because of how swiftly they ruled on Blount’s case. It would have taken a good amount of courage to quell the community, head into their judge’s chambers and issue a decision, but that didn’t happen.
When you have a judge who reacts as swiftly as The Oregonian’s sports columnist John Canzano, you’ve got a community that’s being galvanized to ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ‘us’ or ‘them,’ ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’
Blount is an unfortunate example. Coaches - those who had direct oversight of him on the team - made him speak to the media immediately, and he took that opportunity to apologize. But he didn’t do that on national television, the same national television that shows hockey fights all the time – and showcases those fights on programs such as ESPN’s Sportscenter.
Blount screwed up and deserved retribution. But he didn’t get anything close to a fair trial that balanced his actions with the retribution. And Judge John played his role in that trial to its maximum effect within hours.
“Blount is an aimless student, who made the whole state look bad with that punch: he’s got to go.”
He’s doing it with Chapman, too.
“The Lincoln coaches have screwed up, they all have or had ‘Lincoln’ in front of ‘coach’ and Chapman is the principal: she’s got to go.”
That’s the kind of dirty laundry that television and radio and the online world depends and thrives upon.
The best way to get attention is to make someone’s blood boil. So you become a judge.
The comments that show up on Oregonlive following Judge John’s columns, especially the one regarding Blount, show a public that eats up his knee-jerk rulings, and that’s not good for the future of this state. In a poll within the Blount column, 80 percent of respondents voted to kick Blount off the team over options of one or three-game suspension or letting Kelly handle the incident internally.
If we’re going to convict public figures such as coaches or school administrators, they should at least get a fair trial, and Judge John isn’t protecting that right these days.
For more info: oregonsports.com
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