Dana Blankenhorn

Nixon and O.J.

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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They framed a guilty man.

That's what was famously said of O.J. Simpson after his acquittal (he eventually became violent again and is now in jail in Nevada). It meant they went so far in trying to convict a man they knew was guilty that they gave his friends a way to claim he wasn't.

The same may have been true of Richard Nixon.

Nixon was guilty. Yes, he became an enemy of democracy. Yes, he set up the plumbers and all the rest of it. Yes, he tried to cover up Watergate.

But in their zeal to convict him, humiliate him, throw him in jail, Americans also went too far. They mistakenly conflated what he believed with who he was. When Nixon came down, liberals thought his politics came down with him. They didn't. And, after Carter, liberals spent a generation in the desert paying for that mistaken assumption.

TCU

Almost 20 years ago Texas Christian University (TCU) faced a choice.

It was losing the cash cow of the Southwest Conference. It could accept that or double-down on athletics.

It chose to double-down. The school now has state-of-the-art facilities, a football coach making millions a year, and additions to its football stadium estimated to cost $100 million.

In doing this TCU tied its reputation to the behavior of 20 year old kids. So when some of those kids turn out to be using drugs common to 20-year olds, TCU is as shocked as Captain Renault.

TCU could have put its money into academics. It could have gone after some Pulitzer Prize winners, some Nobel Prize winners. It could have built great laboratories with the money it poured into athletics. It could have hired some real stars, the kind who draw great students, the kind who raise a school's academic standing.

TCU chose to put its reputation in the hands of 20 year old athletes instead. You reap what you sew.

The scandal here isn't just what the kids did. They will pay for it for the rest of their lives. The real scandal is the choice the TCU Administration made, one they continue to make, one far too many colleges and universities that could be great make every day.

There's your scandal. And throwing those kids under the bus won't wipe the stain from your hands, guys.