Friending Students

More on the teacher-student relationship from USATODAY. The story is more of a wrap-up of recent news and legislation, and if you haven't been following some of the cases a good starting point. We at Northwestern State addressed the use of social media for teachers in our social media guidelines. The essence of it: understand the power relationship. In a policy sense, we encourage all faculty to account for how they will employ social media in their syllabus and know they are not suppose to use open social media platforms for discussions or contact with students that may impact FERPA.

Dramatic Social Media Claims

Today's required reading is from All Twitter, and is an infographic touting the rise of the digital media as primary news source. No surprise here for believers, but the sourcing on the numbers is not exactly deep research. If you want to start an argument, it's a nice place to begin. As you'd expect, dramatic numbers. Over 50% of people get their breaking news via social media. Can I have a parse there? Look, I'm all about Arizona's AD breaking his hires on Twitter -- very empowering. How much of that received info via social media was a Facebook post of a traditional media outlet? This is the point where I have some concern -- if a reporter uses social tools to break a story then follows in the traditional format of the legacy media he works for, is that considered the "new" or the "old" in this presentation? A little j-school leavening might be needed on this graphic -- like burying the lead at the bottom of the graphic: almost 50% report breaking news was false on social media.

Do On-Line Student Sections Still Use Face Paint?

While you are worrying about how you are going to pay for that new football center or maintain your payrolls, take a little shuddering thought walk down an American academic future in which The Long Tail catches up with education. Two recent essays on a dystopian future.

First is Heather MacDonald looking at the Great Courses model of delivering courses on-line.

The next is from Wired magazine about The Stanford Experiment, and the immediate reality of free learning and classes of 100,000 students.

It begs the question - what happens to all the American local culture roles of the U.S. university when things go on-line. While the obvious is the athletic department disappears into best case scenario minor league or semi-pro sports based around the local community, the impacts are much broader. Who will provide the arts and entertainment? Who stocks the library and intellectual resources?

Most of all, what becomes of "college towns" when the local plant - the university with its hundreds or thousands of white collar high salary jobs - closes?

Happy Tax Day.

The Revolution is Networked

For a glimpse on the political side of the impact of the networked media, I highly recommend Michael Moran's op-ed piece which ran in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette today. I'm sure you can find it in other non-pay wall places like Slate. There the original title was Short Waves to Flash Mobs.

The gist of Moran's thesis is social media - to use his words - coupled with the cell phone created a revolution which allows the individual to organize and oppose state power in ways unimaginable in the past.  He sees it as a real change in the world.

A key passage to illustrate:

As a historical milestone, the digital revolution is profound. Even World War I, which spelled doom for absolute monarchies from Germany to Russia to the Ottoman Empire, did less to empower average citizens than Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry and Apple did—not to mention Facebook, Twitter, Google and the legions of young activists determined to put all that power to use. After all, those early 20th-century monarchies simply gave way to new elites—industrialists, military men and left-wing ideologues, most of whom employed the same levers to control their populations as their royal predecessors: police forces, censorship, assassinations of troublemakers, bans on political gatherings, and when useful, beatings, torture and death. Even shutting down the internet, which the security services in Syria, Libya and Egypt all tried at various stages of those uprisings, cannot prevent determined cyber-dissidents from organizing.

For a historian who likes to point out that we rarely have anything new in human history - that we do repeat ourselves or see things as unique and novel due to presentism or fashion amnesia - Moran makes a hard to digest point. Is this really a revolution, or just a new version of an old trend?

I've argued for some time that we stand at a fundamental change moment - that at no time in human history has the barriers to mass communication been lower.  Not even since movable type - you still need a significant capital outlay. All you need is a library card to borrow the infrastructure you need, you don't even need to have the computer anymore.

Moran takes a different step by saying that cell phones are that change agent rather and social media is the follow on.

I'll contend it is the networking of all rather than just the social media that is the key.  Moran points out when totalitarian regimes have tried to shut down the Internet to end dissident organizing, new alternatives pop up using the same kind of tools.

In other words, DARPA's original concept succeeded. You really can't shut down the Internet - it survives all sorts of levels of attack.

It's not Facebook or Twitter - it is the ability to create point to point and one to many communication on the fly by various means that is the heart of the change.

Yes They Can Get Your Texts

Among all the text content released yesterday evening by the University of Arkansas, this image is the one you need to take to your administrators, your coaches, your policy makers and to note for yourself.

In the exchange, Bobby Petrino is asking one of his staffers if the actual texts, not just the phone numbers contacted, can be retrieved or would be subject to Arkansas' FOIA law. In some ways, the answer given was correct, but as everyone learned, not completely accurate.

We know from previous cases that you can expose your personal email accounts to FOIA in certain states if they are being used to circumvent official email. Here we see a phone that got scrubbed for data when it was turned in, screen captures made of the text conversations and then they were released to the Arkansas media.

The questions you need to ask yourself on behalf of your agency/department:

What is the policy about stored data? Do state laws or institutional policy require maintaining records?

Whatever those policies are on email, there is the high likelihood they apply to text messages. If they don't, then unless you want to end up in this kind of pickle, keep your phones clean.

This especially applies to smart phones, which can store, as Bobby Petrino found out the hard way, lots of stuff.

It's obvious from some of the back and forth two things were going on. First, people who didn't want to talk to each other were using text to communicate. If you read the whole 30 pages worth you'll see things like are you in your office, etc.

Second, the same people put things in texts that they thought would be ephemeral, that knowing FOIA law would apply to an email they would never have sent in that manner.

Remember the first law of Facebook: Digital assets are extremely portable and once posted are always available.

That applies everywhere in a digital world.

After twice burned, can we hope that the next head football coach at Arkansas will understand that cell phone records are part of the public record?

To repeat my earlier #WordsOfTwisdom in the matter:

Things to remember: never use your office phone/computer/email for personal business. Never. Ever. Ever. Never.

The Four Rules

As a reminder and a longer form answer to my tweet, the four rules broken or ignored that lead to the end of the Petrino Era.

Three from the earlier blog this week:

In social media, you are always outnumbered.

If more than two people know, you don't have a secret.

In a crisis, trust in God, verify everyone else. (Older blog gives an example of when it worked in a crisis.)

Plus the cardinal rule of Watergate: it's not about the crime, it's about the cover-up.

The End Will be Another Beginning

Jeff Long closed one chapter of the on-going saga at Arkansas tonight with an extremely well received press conference by the media.

A stark difference from other schools who dragged these kind of things out, or did what they could to salvage a bad situation.

With Detail Work Like This . . .

Following up the you don't have a lot of choice and you are surrounded, one Razorback follower took the time to work very detailed on the "sun was in my eyes" part of the Bobby Petrino story.

You need to skim it to appreciate it, but basically he uses the US Navy to prove the sun could not have been in his eyes. No. Seriously.

Petrino Was Set-Up

Now that I have your attention, on Tuesday, Bobby Petrino found himself surrounded and outmanned at this press conference.

While it is impossible to know for sure, it appears that Petrino still believed his version of events - that his passenger on the motorcycle was still a secret kept by himself, the good Samaritan couple who picked him up and likely his Arkansas State Police personal detail officer.

What is now obvious is the media - and dozens of other people - knew the truth. Another person who came upon the wreck called 911 to help out.

So when one TV station went out of its way to ask after the press conference if he was alone, and Petrino bit and replied "yeah" before walking off.

There is your smoking gun. Your 181/2 minute gap.

Aside from another reminder of the Watergate Rule (it's never about the crime, it's about the coverup) let's review some crisis management 101 and social media realities.

SM Reality #1: You are outnumbered.
Since the dawn of the networked media age, anyone in the arena is surrounded with individuals who at a moment's notice can become a reporter and at least a recorder of events. This is s Stazi dream come true. The hive will inform on you. Which leads to . . .

Management 101: If more than two people know, you no longer have a secret.
Let's see. At least three cars stopped at the accident. In the reports, the couple that drove Petrino away said another car had stopped. The 911 caller said the other car drove away, implying there may have been a third car - his - at the time. We know from the media as they got their first pictures of the wreck that another person drove up and snapped pictures. Maybe that's a containable group, but once the call is made, dispatch knows, everyone in Madison County law enforcement knows, that will be shared with Washington County and now we have a rumor R-naught of something like 16.

Hard Truth: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
Been here and done that - the good Samaritans got a visit from "an officer" after the event sent by Petrino to thank them. And remind them of anything? The 911 caller will become the anti-Christ to the pro-Bobby faction of rabid Hog fans if this goes bad for their sainted BMFP. The state police captain who is trying to do his job to help Petrino is in for likely trouble as well. Really makes you want to stick your neck out, hmm?

PIO Rule #1: Trust in God, Verify Everyone Else.
That piece of wisdom was given to me by a former Arkansas State Trooper who was teaching the state-level FEMA Public Information Officer course. I heard a similar version at the National Fire Academy Advanced PIO and just a few weeks ago from the trainer of PIOs for the Louisiana State Police. Those were words I tried to live by, but from personal experience, nothing, NOTHING will piss your boss off more than you trying to do this kind of due diligence.

Those are words you can count on. Arkansas stands at the crossroads on this crisis, but they will recover no matter what. Don't think so? Baylor had players murdering each other and NCAA violations stacking up just over a decade ago. They were left for dead not once, but twice in the Big 12 formation then reformation. Who has the most powerful athletic department in the Big 12 right now? That's a hard fact - this year they have more wins in the big three sports, a Heisman, a national title and over the past several years more Big 12 team titles than I think any other school, if not just second.

So even Penn State with the right plan for addressing the issues can regain its stature.

However, better to avoid those kind of events when you can by remembering those important rules.

Watergate Rules

I've said it before. I've taught it in class. It was in my previous office manual.

Watergate.

It was never about the crime.

It was about the cover-up.

Similarly, the truth will out, especially in these days of more social media. You have nothing to gain by hiding.

Being First, Being Scared

Breaking news from the old home front regarding Arkansas head coach Bobby Petrino involved in a motorcycle accident and requiring hospitalization.

Since it happens on April 1, obviously, some trepidation.

But it didn't get reported until April 2.

The way it gets into the media is through a morning radio talk show first, which was called out as a hoax by fans and other television media. Until an hour later, Arkansas State Police began to confirm.

The university issued a statement, but as one can expect, the media -- both legacy and new -- are actively pinging their sources. ASP is saying it may be two to three days before the police report is done. University is citing family desire for no info. Hospitals are standing by HIPPA.

And, in the absence of other details, expect this to fester for some time.

Nature -- and the internet -- abhors a vacuum. So instead of hard details on the coach's condition, was he wearing a helmet, etc., we'll have notes about his motorcycle ownership, his love of the hobby, gleaned from older stories.

@NWAAlex: "Petrino told me his wife bought him a Harley in an auction. He said he'd take casual rides around Beaver Lake."

@NWAAlex: "Petrino told me he had never gotten into a bad accident on a motorcycle, but he did fall as a kid on dirt bikes. #arpreps"

@5NEWS: "A gust of wind may have blown Coach Petrino's motorcycle off the road Sunday, police source says."

Why the quick rush to say false? No one wants to be on the wrong side of this story, and it was easy to bandwagon up on a morning talk show. The very active Razorback fan base ready with pitchforks and torches to have the FCC yank the radio station license for broadcasting "false information".

Reminds us again of the fluid nature of things, and at what risk being first?

You also begin to have the media quoting itself with no direct info out there:

@cbahn: "RT @schadjoe: Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino (cycle accident) is "pretty banged up" but "will recover" person close to coach says"

@TJCarpenterShow: "RT @TomMurphyADG: Source close said Petrino had multiple broken ribs, "all kind of cuts and bruises," neck sprain, but going to be OK."

@5NewsSports: "As of 9:30am, still no statement released from the University of Arkansas on the condition of Bobby Petrino"

All of which reveals the pressure that's on the official sources. Jump out ahead and you at least offend the employee; at worst legally violate HIPPA. Wait too long and the institution becomes the story.

I'm Calling BS on Facebook Story

The BS meter went to 11 this week over the Associated Press story regarding job applicants being asked to give up their Facebook passwords to interviewers.

Not that I don't know for a fact that Fortune 500 companies and major universities screen applicants and vet finalists based on social profiles.

Please.

Who is Justin Bassett, and how did this one person become the face of the AP story?

No small coincidence that a quick google reveals 160,000 hits, leading with, shocking, Justin Bassett's Facebook page? And in the last week, roughly 3,300 news stories about his experience.

More in a minute.

That it happens is not the question. Why it has risen to the level of Congressional inquiry is?

No coincidence that Facebook chimed in to tell employers not to do that, but in large part because that's bad internet security to ask for passwords.

Notice, they didn't say the snooping was bad. That would mean the world's greatest data mining and information gathering machine would have to admit that its very core premise was wrong.

Meanwhile, back to Justin. My curiosity is from the PR professional point of view. How did the AP reporters happen upon his compelling story? Is it coincidence that something that would cause people to rethink their social profile material is going mainstream during the time between Facebook's public filing and the actual sale of shares?

Viral needs a host, and that host is the growing concern among the general public that we have given up too much of our privacy.

Guess what kids? Too late.

We did it to ourselves, and unless we can convince a rising generation of young adults there is something wrong with the honest of open lives, the chance of reversing into some European style privacy laws for on-line content is zero. Who watches the watchmen? You have to find enough people who care.

Perhaps that is the real motivation behind this story.

Brands Learning College Lesson

I'm finding this article via the PRSA Issues and Trends interesting: Mascots Are Brands' Best Social Accessories.

For those of us old enough to remember, everyone had a cute mascot to promote their products like Tony the Tiger or Charley the Tuna. Eventually, it burned out as the Baby Boomers grew up, but . . . . their brand affiliations were somewhat established during that youth period.

The resurgence is tagged to social media, and the intimacy, casual conversation message and fun aspect.

Two things.

You're telling American universities something they figured out early, and the better ones have begun to ratchet up. Check out the institutional logos of the University of Texas, University of Michigan and LSU. Hmmm. Those look a LOT like the athletic marks.

Because once you get the ivory tower over it, they know the best sales pitch for the school is the friendly mascot. Everyone loves the mascot.

Second thing -- why didn't anyone ascribe the return of the mascot to the aging of the late Boomers?

Frankly, social has nothing to do with the revival in my opinion. Yes, the mascot makes a friendly face for the messaging, but this is more of a revival of the look and feel of the late 1960s and early 1970s fashion.

Mazda's new SKYACTIV commercial. The Blake Griffin 70s track suit look of his Kia commercials. The dominance of the Mad Men phenomenon.

And what was part and parcel of that advertising age?

Sorry Charlie, only the most retro get to be a part of the new social.

Gooey EULA Fun at Pintrest

Pintrest got an unwanted week of attention as copyright advocates mounted a campaign against the hot new social network. Guess what? The week ends with Pintrest updating it's terms of service.

Ah yes, that EULA (End User License Agreement) that hardly anyone reads or notices until there is trouble.

Pintrest makes it clear -- you shouldn't be posting things you don't own copyright to, and to give in to the copyright crowd (and gain a little more DMCA protection) Pintrest made it easier to report violations of copyright.

But then, there was this:

Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.

Oops.

Perhaps it should have said, Pintrest really wanted to sell your content in the data mining sense -- you suddenly got ads from say, Lowes, if you had pinned something that was in the home improvement part of the site. And photographers and other creative types took it to mean because the site is so visual that Pintrest wanted to sell your actual image creations.

Because Pintrest (and several new other services like Path) have another dirty little secret. On those "would you like FILL-IN THE BLANK WITH SERVICE NAME OF YOUR CHOICE to find your friends using . . . ", what the service is really doing is uploading your whole address book to its servers. Why? Oh, to make it work better for you. And, to harvest all those names and addresses.

Path and others were revealed to be archiving and storing those names. Why again? Just to make it convenient for you as a user of again, fill in the blank with whoever you want here, because they will help you by keeping those on file. In the server.

That is something that should concern us. However, when you consider how much of your data is now mine-able, searchable, track-able . . . what's another service watching you.

Don't Waste a Crisis

Rahm Emanuel's "you never want to waste a serious crisis" line is terribly Machiavellian.

Doesn't also mean it's not true.

Case in point. Here at Northwestern State we closed the campus today due to heavy rains and localized flooding within the parish.

My email box lit up at 9:42 p.m. last night. Twitter subscriptions -- 35 in about 15 minutes as students figured out that A) we'd just announced via our social and website the school was closed and likely B) they heard from friends that "hey, NSU just tweeted out there's no school."

ADG vs NCAA

Wally Hall laid down the marker in the sand -- the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was not signing the "restrictive" credential policies of the NCAA to cover the UALR-hosted women's first and second round. Rather than give up their rights on images and other restrictions, the ADG staff bought tickets and covered the event from the stands.

A noble stand in the growing battle over who controls what, and I would like to share with you Wally's prose.

But I can't. Because the ADG is behind a pay wall.

What's good for the goose, as they say.

What I can say to you are these things. I'm pretty sure that the photos taken from the stands are still owned by the NCAA (perhaps the ADG could check the back of the ticket stub for those policies)

I'm wondering how all those quotes got into the game story covered from the stands, if ADG reporter Troy Schulte covered the UALR-Delaware game from the paying public spaces.

I'm not saying Wally doesn't have some valid points, and he points out how he's going to have his 30-year streak of Final Fours broken by not accepting the NCAA's rules.

I am going to say -- if Mike Anderson's Razorbacks were in the tournament would the paper have stood on the same principles since it's "just" Tom Collen's Razorbacks in College Station.

And if the NCAA wants to get chippy, all that post game content -- quotes, play-by-play, stats -- can be declared their intellectual property.

Did Schulte keep his own stats in the stands? I'm sure those came from the AP, who got them from the NCAA.

A story that will bear watching as it goes forward -- will ADG stand firm when Arkansas' baseball team reaches post season in a couple of months?

Somebody's Watching Me

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, famously said that "Only the Paranoid Survive". No better place to adopt that position than on social media.

Thanks to Chris Syme for the heads-up last week on the recent articles in this area, one in particular in The Sport Journal from U.S. Sports Academy written by Frank Butts of West Georgia. It's a nice lit review and primer of prior cases and situations, but in the realm of things like the growing trend against monitoring under the aegis of "First Amendment Rights" there is nothing new.

Let me give you one of my phrases now: It was a voluntary organization until you joined it.

The mounting jihad against monitoring, epicentered in Maryland, is, to use a cute new meme, bogative.

Anyone -- ANYONE -- who says university athletic departments are cramping the style or expression rights of students by watching for violations of the established team rules or other conduct codes that, by the way, the student-athletes signed off as terms of participation is doing a far greater disservice to these young people than not.

Why? Education is critical, and they need to understand the world into which they will move for jobs and job interviews.

Let me bring in today's note from the Wall Street Journal. The latest from corporate America's desire to fit the right worker for the right job -- scraping info off your Facebook posts to create a personality profile.

Northern Illinois, Evansville and Auburn combined to create the academic study that essentially provides proof of concept.

After spending roughly 10 minutes perusing each profile, including photos, wall posts, comments, education and hobbies, the raters answered a series of personality-related questions, such as "Is this person dependable?" and "How emotionally stable is this person?"

And the conclusion? The assessment made was pretty accurate when matched against job performance reviews of the college-age workers surveilled.

The WSJ blog notes that the legality of such a move is "murky." Good luck getting private firms to admit to the practice.

What Do You Do WIth Drug Tests?

The ongoing saga at TCU presents a true PR crisis test: Do you violate FERPA to correct a dangerous rumor?

Lawyers say no. We say yes.

Let's put the film on the projector and break it down for the new or the public.

Two arrested players "brag" about how widespread the drug problem is within the TCU team. Why? To look cool to the undercover cop they are selling to and then to not look like the outsiders. One player's comment was 60 players were "screwed" on the surprise test; the other claimed "what can they do, 82 people failed it" implying the whole team.

So what to do? The public will think your football team sits around licking the mascot trying to get a hallucinogenic high.

But to release the tests falls right in the FERPA and HIPPA wheelhouse?

Not necessarily. No school wants to give up that type of info as if it were FOIA, and almost every university uses FERPA as broad cloak (see the Columbus Dispatch investigative series on this nationwide). Almost all get waiver from student-athletes that would legally cover them if they wanted to, but lawyers will caution against precedent.

TCU's chancellor, Victor Boschini, did what you expect: refused to release the drug test results, falls back on kids will be kids in his statement.

Enter the unnamed source.

Sure, the lawyers have their liability points, but this is the court of public opinion and you cannot let the brash statements of arrested drug users and dealers stand unchallenged.

From the Dallas Morning News, "But a source told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that only five players failed the test." Other "leaks" revealed another 11 had trace amounts within the margin of error.

Five fails on a cohort of 80-90 students at any university -- that's a whole lot different from 60 to 100 percent of the group as implied by the accused.

Who was the unnamed source? Whoever the athletic director and the university's crisis management team determined would tell the media on deep background the truth. Might have been the football SID. Could have been the university PR director. Maybe an athletic trainer. Don't be naive -- it was calculated.

The truth must out in circumstances like these. When it is held back, it only causes double the amount of trouble.

Yes, in this case, the truth benefited the institution. Keep in mind that TCU's administrators didn't know it would when this started -- when they brought in the Fort Worth PD, when Patterson made the team-wide drug test.

What they discovered was a difficult reality, but not the horror it could be turned into. They have students and student-athletes who need assistance in cleaning up, or discipline and removal from the institution that doesn't support their behavior.

To pick up on Boschini's statement:

"The is no doubt that students fall short form time to time, but we also know that they, as we, are committed to getting back up and moving forward."

The case is developing, but already it is not reaching the levels of even regional knowledge -- much less national. I'm surprised how many colleagues in my circles -- pretty close to Fort Worth in geography and interests -- even knew the event happened.

To control a fire, sometimes you have to set one -- a controlled burn for prevention or a backburn to take away a wild fire's fuel.

So far, TCU hasn't made the mistakes that turn bad news into national crisis.

Small Crack in the Facebook Code

At Northwestern State, we have encouraged a lot of sub pages for programs on Facebook. It also provides us with a small universe of areas to follow each other.

The changes for News Feed with the creation of Sidebar Ticker present a problem for brands -- how do we make sure we are in the "important" news as defined by the Facebook algorithm. I suspected sharing was part of the formula, the past few days have confirmed that along with video and photos.

I've noticed in my own feed that friends that post photos or video seemed to get some preference, but those that did it and then had that link "referred" -- linked/shared -- seemed to score better.

The illustration is from this morning, where my daily Good Morning message from campus was shunted to the side but my share from YouTube to the main NSU page and then a second share of the link from our Leesville campus who sponsored the event resulted in an immediate appearance in my top news.

TCU Facing the Music

In an academic year that saw one major university become synonymous with what not to do in crisis, TCU begins a journey that night lead them to become the model of what to do when your reputation is on the line.

Yesterday, news broke of 18 arrests related to drug dealing at the Fort Worth school, 14 of them students and four very famously part of the squeaky clean football team.

In a stark contrast to Penn State, TCU held press conferences in which they admitted to bringing in Fort Worth PD from the start and football coach Gary Patterson held a team-wide surprise drug test on National Signing Day.

The university and athletic department right now are getting praise in the same newspaper columns for their actions as they facts are rolled out. And that is a key difference between TCU so far and almost any other university. The Horned Frogs are taking their lumps right now, getting it over with, having the terrible facts lined up without additional snarky or cutting extra commentary that results from evasive maneuvers.

Obviously, it's just day two, but the comments of one of the busted football players reveal much. When he volunteered to the undercover cop he'd just made a deal with that Patterson had held the drug test, that it was bullshit and he knew he failed it, you get a sense of why this got so big. The worse part was his bragging that nothing was going to happen because to paraphrase, what are they going to do since the whole team failed it.

Son, go ask SMU what happens when it gets like that. They can take away your football career. And they could take away your team.

See, here is the really bright moment in darkness. TCU is acting like its reputation is on the line, because it is. In the media accounts, the campus police head admits the investigation began because of parent complaints at the start of the year. A source said Patterson ordered the drug test - at this stage somewhat independent of the police investigation - because the parent of a star recruit said they turned down the school because of the drug use on the team.

Time will reveal how much inside action there was on this, but in stark contrast to Penn State, a school who also rose in national attention thanks to its football team, the reaction time was much faster to legitimate complaints that proved to be genuine issues.

John Sloan of UAB put it best in the Dallas Morning News yesterday:

In decades past, there's a ton of evidence that institutions would deliberately cover up news like this.

If you want to follow the local coverage, dallasnews.com. Unfortunately, you'll be pay wall on a lot of their work.

Kevin Sherrington does not give out warm fuzzy praise, but the sports columnist makes it clear he's giving TCU credit for moving fast.

Sherrington gives Patterson's statement, which the columnist praised for "captured the mood." Note Sherrington's interjection:

"There are days people want to be a head football coach," he said in a statement that seemed less prepared than from the heart, "but today is not one of those days. As I heard the news this morning, I was first shocked, then hurt and now I'm mad."

Sherrington's mid-column summation is one that should resonate across America. He writes about Patterson:

He didn't plead ignorance of the facts or hide behind TCU lawyers. He didn't call it an internal matter. No one's running stadium steps.

Sherrington later speaks to the institution as a whole, writing

But whatever the nature of the facts, TCU is sending a message, all right, and it reaches far beyond its locker rooms.