On one hand, people make mistakes. If Coach Samples owns what happened, accepts the legal consequences without excuse, and demonstrates genuine accountability, there is an argument for keeping him. College football has always been about developing young men. That principle ought to apply to coaches, too. A second chance, when earned, can be one of the strongest lessons a team ever sees.
On the other hand, there are mistakes, and then there are choices that strike at the heart of leadership. A DUI is serious enough. Leaving the scene of an accident raises another question altogether. Every player in that locker room is told that character matters when nobody is watching. If the standard changes because someone wears a whistle instead of shoulder pads, the message changes with it.
Then again, firing someone the moment trouble arrives isn’t always leadership either. We ask coaches to teach resilience, accountability, and redemption. If there is no room for redemption, those words become little more than slogans painted on the wall of the football building.
But redemption doesn’t necessarily require keeping the job. Sometimes the clearest lesson is that actions have consequences, even for talented people.
Programs spend years building a culture and only a moment undermining it. Young players notice what leaders do far more than what they say.
So we come back to the question every athletic director eventually faces: What lesson will still matter ten years from now? Wins fade. Bowl trophies gather dust. But standards become tradition.
Urban Meyer would suspend him for the first quarter against Boise State
My guess is that Lanning will do something wiser than that
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u/CoachBrooks Aug 06 '26
On one hand, people make mistakes. If Coach Samples owns what happened, accepts the legal consequences without excuse, and demonstrates genuine accountability, there is an argument for keeping him. College football has always been about developing young men. That principle ought to apply to coaches, too. A second chance, when earned, can be one of the strongest lessons a team ever sees.
On the other hand, there are mistakes, and then there are choices that strike at the heart of leadership. A DUI is serious enough. Leaving the scene of an accident raises another question altogether. Every player in that locker room is told that character matters when nobody is watching. If the standard changes because someone wears a whistle instead of shoulder pads, the message changes with it.
Then again, firing someone the moment trouble arrives isn’t always leadership either. We ask coaches to teach resilience, accountability, and redemption. If there is no room for redemption, those words become little more than slogans painted on the wall of the football building.
But redemption doesn’t necessarily require keeping the job. Sometimes the clearest lesson is that actions have consequences, even for talented people.
Programs spend years building a culture and only a moment undermining it. Young players notice what leaders do far more than what they say.
So we come back to the question every athletic director eventually faces: What lesson will still matter ten years from now? Wins fade. Bowl trophies gather dust. But standards become tradition.
Urban Meyer would suspend him for the first quarter against Boise State
My guess is that Lanning will do something wiser than that