Pat Caputo: Michigan State's Mark Dantonio Went Too Far In His Defense Of Ex-Ohio State Coach Jim Tressel
The issue isn't that Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio lent public support to his mentor, former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, at his time of need.
Good for him. That's what friends do.
It was to the degree he did it that has a lot of people shaking their heads — and justifiably so.
At the Big Ten football media gathering last week, Dantonio referred to Tressel as a "tragic hero."
Tressel's situation at Ohio State was neither "tragic" nor does it fit to describe Tressel as a "hero."
A tragedy, in the minds of most of us, is Hurricane Katrina or Pat Tillman dying from friendly fire in Afghanistan. It's not a coach turning a blind eye and blatantly not reporting recruiting violations and losing his job as result. Tressel was a hero in what sense? He won a lot of football games? Well, ultimately not really, because they have taken many of those victories away.
The defense of Dantonio's statements from many in the Spartan family that Dantonio was an English major at the University of South Carolina and is quoting the term "tragic hero" in a literary sense is absurd. Dictionary.com defines "tragic hero" as: A literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy."
