Twas the Losses That Felled Sarkisian

A whole bunch of USC important people stood up and plainly pretended to be shocked by Coach Steve Sarkisian’s alcohol problem as they canned him. This despite the fact that his five years most previous at the University of Washington were marked by Sarkisian’s legendary drinking and bar tabs on the public tit expense account. He was likely obviously liquored up when helping Pete Carroll win titles at USC his first go-round, definitely pickled during his successful run at Washington. Players knew. Reporters knew. School staff definitely knew. None of which mattered until he let USC drop out of the Top 25 with some questionably poor losses.

Big time sports cares about winning, followed by winning, and winning. Hiding rape allegations and payoffs to families would be fourth and fifth. In the absence of winning, being a functional alcoholic becomes a problem rather than a coach’s idiosyncrasy everybody needs to shut the fuck up about and ignore. USC is determined to use their shock at Sark’s drinking problem as grounds to void the remaining three years of his expensive contract. All of which should be a lesson to addicts out there, don’t suck at your job. The difference between a lousy drunk and a man bravely working his way through a disease is about two conference rival victories.

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