Albuquerque Journal

Rocky Learns Valuable Lesson
RICK WRIGHT Of the Journal

Rocky Long has been a head coach for a decade, but he was an assistant for two decades before that.
During those 20 years, he has said, he worked for head coaches who gave their assistants responsibility and freedom in equal measure. He also worked for head coaches who expected in-depth reports on trips to the men’s room.

Long appreciated those head coaches who let their assistants coach. He felt smothered by those who didn’t. Once he became a head coach, he vowed, he’d never be one of those guys who over-coached his assistants. He’d let them do their jobs — not without supervision, not without accountability, but without big brother dictating their every move.

On Wednesday, the NCAA, among other sanctions, stripped Long’s UNM football program of five scholarships in each of the next three years. Why? Because two of his former UNM assistants blatantly and intentionally violated NCAA rules.

Thanks for giving us enough rope to hang you with, boss.

Let me be as clear as the New Mexico sky, vintage 1950s: Long is not to blame for the NCAA violations committed by former assistants Lenny Rodriguez and Grady Stretz. Rodriguez and Stretz are.

But Long, as their thensupervisor, is the guy who’ll have to figure out how to maintain a program minus five scholarships a year — this, on the heels of accepting a $310,000 raise with the understanding that greater things are now expected from the Lobos.

Blame and responsibility are cross-referenced in the dictionary, but they’re not one and the same. “Rocky’s watch” isn’t just the timepiece on his wrist, but he’s no Sam Spade and shouldn’t have to be. If you can’t trust your assistant coaches, who can you trust?

Maybe, like Flounder in “Animal House,” Long trusted too easily.

Perhaps he still does. At a Wednesday news conference, a curiously upbeat Long refused to say his former aides had betrayed him. “Great guys that made some serious mistakes,” he said.
G
reat guys? Long knows Rodriguez and Stretz personally; I don’t. Maybe they’re a lot of fun at postseason coaches’ gatherings.

Mistakes? Unlike blame and responsibility, “mistake” and “academic fraud” are not cross-referenced in the dictionary.

Yes, Long was betrayed.

Now, he and his program must pay a stiffer price than expected. UNM had selfimposed the forfeiture of one scholarship per year, based, athletics director Paul Krebs said, on historical data from previous NCAA sanctions involving similar offenses. I was guessing three, based on the same history.

I guess Krebs and I flunked history, or maybe the professor was just a tough grader. The penalties seem severe for offenses that, in the end, didn’t benefit UNM in any way, committed by two rogue former assistants. But they are what they are.

On Wednesday, Long was asked if he’d tightened the scrutiny on his assistants. “Yeah, I’m a little more detailed with (them),” he said. “(But) I still have a lot of confidence in our assistant coaches, so much so that they do a lot of things on their own.

“… I believe in them, and I believe they do it by the rules and do it the right way.”

Of course he does, and of course he should. How else can a coaching staff function?

Yet, there’s the old Russian proverb: doverai no proverai (trust but verify).

Long, having suffered the equivalent of two illegal crack-back blocks and then being the one penalized, might want to consider assigning those men’s-room reports.

Or bugging the place.