Wiedmer: Vols assistant Chris Rumph has priorities in order

Tennessee co-defensive coordinator Chris Rumph answers questions during the Volunteers' media day Thursday in Knoxville.
Tennessee co-defensive coordinator Chris Rumph answers questions during the Volunteers' media day Thursday in Knoxville.
photo Mark Wiedmer

Just check out the latest headlines involving Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer and his former wife-assaulting assistant Zach Smith, and it's easy to question what lessons of character and decency are being taught throughout big-time college athletics.

Yes, The Ohio State University has put Meyer on paid leave and it may ultimately terminate him and his $7.6 million annual salary. And that's an important lesson for all moving forward, whether they are abusers or among those seeking to cover up the abuse.

Perhaps if Meyer had either suspended or fired Smith back in 2009, when he reportedly slammed his then-pregnant wife Courtney against a wall, had Meyer at the very least forced him into counseling with zero tolerance for a repeat incident as well as ordering him to publicly address the wrongness of his behavior, perhaps we wouldn't be where we are now in this disgusting story.

But just when you think this has all gone to heck in a handbasket, just when you convince yourself that we need to start this whole major college athletics thing over, just give the whole thing a death penalty for a year or two, along comes a group interview with University of Tennessee co-defensive coordinator Chris Rumph on Thursday afternoon.

Because new Volunteers head coach Jeremy Pruitt apparently wants to do all the talking from this point forward, reportedly putting his assistants off limits to the media for the rest of the preseason and the season, the too-rare wisdom Rumph dispensed might not be heard again until this time next year.

And that's a shame, because rarely has any coach at any level better said what Rumph did concerning every coach's responsibility to the young men he teaches.

"I tell them all the time, if the only thing you learn from me is how to tackle, then I have failed," said the 46-year-old Rumph, who played at South Carolina and has coached at Alabama, Florida and Clemson, among others.

"I don't want to be a guy that just teaches you how to do that. I want to teach them how to be a man, how to be a father, how to be a husband, how to treat your wife, how to treat your kids and how to treat people."

But he was just warming up, which might be why Tennessee recruiting seems to be warming up, because if a mother or father can't feel good about a guy like Rumph working with their son, they probably can't feel anything.

"They are our future," he said, "unless you want them kicking in your door at night robbing you. If you don't want that, teach them, so that's what we have to do."

Even then, Rumph was just getting started, just getting to the stuff every coach at every school in the country - from Power Five conference programs to middle schools - needs to embrace.

"Can we teach them how to be a man, a true man?" he continued. "Not someone out there running the streets trying to see (what) girls he can get, how many drinks he can drink. That's not about being a man. Anyone can do that. Can anyone sit in there, suck it up and be tough when times are tough, when your wife and kids are looking at you and trying to see how you are going to feed them? How are you going to keep the lights on? Are you going to go run out on them or are you going to sit in there and make it happen?"

Rumph did close with something that all coaches say to some degree. He said, "You combine that with football because football teaches you that. It teaches you how to be mentally tough, physically tough and how to overcome adversity."

Maybe it used to. Maybe on some level, under some coaches, it still does. But ask yourself what Meyer's inaction regarding Smith taught players. You think they didn't know? You think too many of them haven't known someone else just like Zach Smith? That's part of the problem now. They've known too many Zach Smiths who got away with it.

Ironically, a mere few hours before Rumph railed against the status quo, this city's new Chattanooga Preparatory School opened its doors for the first time to 66 male sixth-graders whose goal it is to become the class of 2029, which is the year they hope to graduate college.

In one of those moments that can inspire for years to come, this group of mostly black and Hispanic financially disadvantaged boys were welcomed to their first day of school by more than 300 community leaders, who lined both sides of a campus street to slap or shake their hands, despite a steady rain.

"The hope is we will grow them academically, we will grow them socially and emotionally, and hopefully, we will be able to see they are successful scholars," said Elaine Swafford, the school's executive director who already has worked vast wonders with CPS's sister school: the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy.

It is a hope that long has needed to become a reality, and thanks to Swafford as well as the immense generosity of Ted and Kelly Alling and others, it now has.

But Rumph provided the other reality 116 miles up the road in Knoxville. Can you be tough when times are tough? Are you going to run out or are you going to stay and fix the problem?

In our town, the combined efforts of the Chattanooga Preparatory School and Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy should help immensely. On a larger scale, so would a nationwide embrace of the wisdom of Rumph, who said of his goals to better shape young men: "If we can do that, the world is going to be great."

Or at least preferable to the world Meyer tolerates.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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