05/22/2002

"In America, willingness to lie on a résumé shows how much you want the job."

That quote has been bothering me ever since I read it several weeks ago.

It's been gnawing at me, causing my stomach to churn, worrying me, troubling me, because I wonder how many other misguided souls besides Tom O'Leary, the brother of football coach George O'Leary, actually believe those words to be true.

George O'Leary was fired by Notre Dame just a few days after his name had been added to a select list that includes such legends of the game as Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy and Ara Parseghian.

He was fired after it was discovered that he had lied about having played college football at the University of New Hampshire, and about earning credits toward a graduate degree at New York University.

The quote is from Tom O'Leary, one of George's brothers, and appeared in an article in Sports Illustrated.

There once was a time in America when a man was considered to be as good as his word. If a man said he was going to do something, he did it. If he said he had done something, he had.

If he hadn't, then he was a no-good liar. A cheat. Someone not to be trusted. And certainly not anyone to be entrusted with anything as important as teaching and coaching young people.

Has that changed?

Are we to believe, as Tom O'Leary attests, and as his brother, George, apparently was convinced, that merely saying we've done something -- instead of putting in the work, time, effort, and sweat to actually do it -- is proof of how much we wish we had done what we'd said we'd done?

What sort of convoluted, self-serving logic is that?

By the O'Leary standards -- or lack of same -- it follows that a student-athlete's willingness to cheat on an exam is merely an indication of just how much he wants a good grade.

For a student-athlete to take a term paper off the internet and claim it as his own work simply shows how much the player wants to retain his eligibility.

Surely, there can't be anybody outside the Family O'Leary who believes such things?

It's not as if George O'Leary was incapable of accomplishing the things he said he had on that phony résumé.

As a high-school quarterback, he led his team to an undefeated season his senior year. That didn't get him any scholarship offers, however. He wound up at Dubuque, a Division III school in Iowa. He spent two years there, seeing very little playing time, then quit.

That's right -- quit. Quit the team. Quit school.

His father used connections to help young George gain admittance to the University of New Hampshire, where he went out for football, but quit that team, too, after only a few days of preseason workouts.

So he was a proven quitter before became a proven liar.

That sad and sorry relevation came much later, long after he first claimed he had lettered three years in football at UNH; and years after O'Leary further embellished his résumé by claiming credit for graduate classes he never took.

No harm, he obviously thought. He had some graduate credits. Why not add a few more?

The harm was that, when the truth finally came out, O'Leary was revealed as a phony.

And he has no one to blame but himself.

He could have stuck it out at Dubuque. He could have remained on the roster at UNH. But he chose to quit, and then later claimed he had been a letterman.

His brother would say that only showed how much he wanted a coaching job.

But what it really shows is a gross lack of character.

O'Leary could have taken the classes at NYU. He could have made the time, could have done the work, as so many others did. Then he could have pointed to his accomplishments with pride.

Instead, he has suffered the embarrassment, the humiliation, of being exposed as a fraud.

There's no reason to feel sorry for him.

In America, at least the America we learn about in history and civics classes that men like George O'Leary and his brother, Tom, may or may not have bothered to attend, if you really want a job, you work harder than everyone else to obtain the credentials that put you in position to get it.