WHEN IS THE PAST REALLY IN THE PAST?

When does the past really become the past?

Should the bad things Julie Hermann allegedly did 16 years ago destroy her future?

Why do people find skeletons in one person's closet while looking away from the ones
in another persons?

We're often told to live in the present and bury the past. But how can anyone do that
in a social media world where those who want to tear you down, air your dirty laundry
for everybody to see, even if it got cleaned up during the past decade?

There aren't any rules about dealing with past transgressions and how it can affect your
future. It all seems to depend on who you are. Rick Pitino had a big dirt stain on his reputation
thanks to allegedly getting a woman, not his wife, pregnant. But Pitino won a lot of basketball
games, so that stain pretty much disappeared.

Mike Price pretty much vanished in 2003 after an one alcohol-fueled mistake cost him his
job as the head football coach at Alabama without ever coaching a game..He took a stripper
back to his hotel and she took  him for about $1500 worth of charges on his credit card. He
spent the next nine years in  relative oblivion, coaching at UTEP, never to be mentioned again
for a job opening at a national powerhouse.

Price has to live with that for the rest of his life. He'll always wonder how his life would've
been different if he didn't get out-of-his mind drunk. Should Hermann have to live with a mistake
that she made 16 long years ago, too?

That could've been Pitino if his employers cared more about character and setting an example
for young people than winning and the almighty dollar. When the incident happened, people wondered how Pitino  could go into a recruit and deliver his message to his players? How
could he talk about character and doing  the right thing when he cheated on his wife and
embarrassed the school. Because Pitino is a basketball genius, that's why. Maybe Tiger Woods
was right, when he said, "Winning takes care of everything.
"

Hermann might be on the road to ruins if Governor Chris Christie throws his weight around
and puts pressure on Rutgers, THE state university of New Jersey to fire Hermann. She has
been accused of abusing her volleyball team at Tennessee 16 years ago. If Hermann had fudged
an expense report, that would be one thing, but she allegedly abused players just as Mike Rice
did at Rutgers, which cost him his job and created a mess of biblical proportions.

A reporter from the Star-Ledger went digging and found some major dirt on Hermann in
the form of a letter that was allegedly signed and written by 15 of the players Hermann coached.
But when players have  the freedom to write a letter without fear of repercussion or challenge,
they can be as bold and creative as they like. Every prosecution team in the country would be undefeated if the defense wasn't allowed to challenge its argument, wouldn't they?

The fact is, 80 percent of college athletes hate their head coach. I played at UNC in the early
80's and our coach waged mental warfare on us every single day. He stole a significant part
of our college experience and many of us ended up hating the game we had loved so much.
He tried to control every aspect of our lives and held the fact that he was the one who determined
whether or not your scholarship was renewed, over our heads. You either deal with it or move
on. Nobody thought of writing a letter to get the coach removed, as the players under Hermann
did when she coached volleyball at Tennessee.

But Hermann sure has plenty of support from her former employers at Louisville and Tennessee.
Hermann has admitted she made some mistakes early in her career. (Haven't we all?) If she
cleaned up her act and became great in her job as an administrator instead of a coach, should
she have to pay the price 16 years later? Would any of us like to lose our dream job because
of something that happened more than a decade ago? 16 years is a helluva long time, don't you
think?

Blood has been drawn and the sharks are circling. A few state officials are calling for the head
of not just Hermann, but Rutgers president Robert Barchi, as well. Apparently, they don't
want Hermann's past, smearing the school's future. This isn't missing out on the fact that new basketball coach Eddie Jordan never graduated from Rutgers. This is failing to vet the past of a person hired to clean up the athletic program.

Hermann, unlike Pitino, isn't the best at what she does and can't win a national championship
which would sweeten the bank account at Rutgers. Her past is not really in the past and it
appears that it might be costly to her future. It's not fair, but we all know by now, that life is
not fair.

Why is it that everybody seems to 'misremember' that Andy Petitte was named in the Mitchell
Report along with Roger Clemens as a PED user. But since Petitte is a Christian and seemingly
a nice guy who always says the right thing, rarely does anybody bring up his past as PED user.
They mention him as a possible Hall of Famer, too. Yet, everybody remembers the past of
Clemens and as an accused user and think of him as a bully who always got his way. They say
the chances of him ever getting enshrined in Cooperstown are slim and none.

I guess when it comes to the past and 'misremembering' it, it really just really depends on who
you are.