John Blanchette: Kramer deserved shot with Vandals

This is something you might file under situational ethics or moral relativism.

Or you might just call it college administration.

A couple of days ago, Mike Kramer withdrew as a candidate for the football coaching job at the University of Idaho made vacant by Dennis Erickson – speaking of moral relativism. Kramer marked it with a press conference back at Montana State, where he’s employed, and a press release – and with candor unusual in these situations, for he conceded he wasn’t going to get the job anyway.

There had been drug-related arrests in Bozeman on Monday of one current and two former MSU football players, and Kramer acknowledged that as recommendations go, that wasn’t quite as good as getting a thumbs-up from Joe Paterno. He felt Idaho president Tim White and athletic director Rob Spear had a problem, and not without reason.

“I can understand their concern,” he told The Spokesman-Review’s Jim Meehan, “because they don’t know me. If there was a flicker of doubt, even if it was only perceived by me, that was enough for me.”

And so back Kramer went to Bozeman – where, he also admitted, he must convince people “this is not a program run amok.”

Which seems as if it might be evidence enough of his worthiness, and maybe the Vandals should hire him anyway.

That isn’t going to happen. Idaho will still get a good man, you’d have to think, but Spear’s drilled two wells so far and has yet to strike anything but out. So the big-splash factor has pretty much come and gone.

Then again, the Vandals have done the big-splash thing, and look how that worked out.

But that reminds us – when did White/Spear get so squeamish?

Just 10 months ago, both were absolutely giddy to announce Erickson as the turbocharger Idaho football so desperately needed – not only as the big brains on the sideline, but the big name who would crank up recruiting, energize fund-raising and get the tectonic plates grinding on facility upgrades. He had launched his head coaching career at Idaho two decades ago and gone on to nine bowl games and two national championships elsewhere, and everyone in black and gold saw happy ending written all over this one.

Well, we know how it turned out. Erickson lied about his ambitions and bailed to Arizona State before his forwarded mail could catch up with him.

Spear is getting beat up pretty good nationally for being delusional about Erickson’s happy feet, but that says more about the athletic culture’s rotting values than Spear’s savvy.

But just as that wanderlust was glossed over upon Erickson’s hiring, so were the other unsavory aspects of his resume. The indifference to academics in each of his collegiate programs. The flagrant lack of sportsmanship his teams at Miami and Oregon State displayed. The rule-breaking and probation he left behind at Miami, though he loves to alibi that the NCAA never sanctioned him personally.

It’s never Erickson’s responsibility. He’s only in charge of the won-lost record.

Yet it was all pretty much dismissed because A) Dennis would never do that here – he loves Idaho too much, and B) did you see his rings?

Now along comes Mike Kramer – who, yes, needs a porter to schlep some of his program’s baggage. In addition to last week’s arrests, another former recruit – dismissed from the team in 2004 before playing a down – was arrested last summer in a drug-related killing. And two years ago, former assistant coach Joe O’Brien was sentenced to four years in prison for methamphetamine distribution.

Sounds like “Law & Order: MSU.” And the buck does have to stop somewhere, and so it stops with Kramer.

But if this made Idaho’s administration nervous, how then did the cheating, goonage and classroom calamity that occurred on Erickson’s various watches not? Was White, who was at Oregon State during Erickson’s tenure, blinded by the fire Erickson had lit under Beavers fans and donors? Was Kramer’s considerable success as a Big Sky coach considered too small time by comparison to mitigate these issues?

Is anybody drowning in the irony?

Colleges have a hell of a time sorting out responsibility and consequence. Just across the border, Washington State has hired a new president – Elson Floyd – from the University of Missouri system. Among other works both worthy and controversial, Floyd once had an unfortunate association with a troubled basketball player he was asked to counsel. Worse, once the player was jailed, Floyd’s wife – despite her husband’s cautions – was caught on surveillance tapes offering the young man some inappropriate advice, including the suggestion he no longer date white women.

The usual apologies were made. Floyd’s career has obviously survived his wife’s brain cramp.

And Dennis Erickson can get hired anywhere.

And Mike Kramer has a job to do at Montana State – but not at Idaho. The school’s leaders might say that Erickson’s hit-and-run made them more cautious, but that’s awfully thin. Kramer is not without faults, but at this point he was what Idaho needed, and he has only coveted the job for, oh, 30 years. And he did Idaho one final service by explaining his withdrawal so gracefully.

Meanwhile, the search heads into a second week.

Hey, at least Idaho is keeping its name in the paper. That’s a little splash, anyway.