Steve Christilaw: Vandal coach honors scholarship despite athlete’s cancer

The recruiting of college athletes is a lot like the vast areas of the oceans. There’s a rich bounty to be found there, to be sure, but navigating it can be a major challenge – as any number of collegiate coaches have discovered when their career has turned into a shipwreck.

Recruiting is, by its very nature, done outside the public spotlight. The only thing regulating what goes on in the living room of a high school athlete is an honor code. You just have to hope it’s more high-minded than “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” But you have to wonder.

The honor code among coaches already has undergone a transformation over the years.

There was a time when the honor code said that, once an athlete verbally commits to a school, you stay away. A verbal commitment is a statement of intent by an athlete saying he or she intends to attend a specific institution, but the only thing binding the school to that institution is the athlete’s word and the school’s promise.

Those were the days when someone’s word of honor stood for something, and neither side would risk breaking promises made. It was a question of character.

In some circles, such things still matter. But some days it seems those circles have grown smaller.

Every recruiting season the broken promises pile up like cord wood. Athletes treating verbal commitments the way the rest of us treat an empty soda can; schools pulling scholarship offers at the last minute from longtime verbal commits.

That’s what earned Louisville football coach Bobby Petrino the scorn of Dutch Fork, South Carolina.

Matt Colburn was a three-star running back recruit at Dutch Fork and was named South Carolina’s Mr. Football last year. And he had a long-standing verbal commitment to play his college football at Louisville.

But in February, two days before he could sign his National Letter of Intent and cement his scholarship, Petrino reneged – pulling the scholarship offer and offering Colburn the chance to grayshirt (a process whereby the athlete delays enrolling until the spring semester).

Colburn wasn’t the first athlete to be treated in that manner, but the reaction of his high school coach, Tom Knotts, was unique. Knotts banned Petrino and Louisville from recruiting his Dutch Fork players, saying the “trust factor is just not there.”

But just when you think it’s time to just lower your expectation, something happens to preserve your faith in human nature.

This time it came along with an extra helping of irony.

Paul Petrino, Bobby’s brother, is the head football coach at the University of Idaho, and he liked what he saw in a player he saw at his summer camp. Liked it enough to offer the young fullback a scholarship, which he jumped at, proclaiming his intention to be a Vandal – the first member of the Class of 2016 to commit.

But life had other plans for Jace Malek.

The West Valley athlete had a good senior football season last fall, but had a nagging pain in his right hip. The pain didn’t go away during wrestling season.

Two days before National Signing Day, the same day Bobby Petrino was taking back the scholarship offer to Matt Colburn, Jace Malek was diagnosed with a cantaloupe-sized, cancerous tumor and told that his football career was likely finished.

But Paul Petrino did something incredible. He told Malek to sign his national letter of intent: He was a Vandal and Idaho was going to honor its offer.

Idaho has stood by Malek during his battle with cancer – a battle that cost the young man his right leg earlier this month in an effort to remove every last bit of the stubborn tumor.

Despite the amputation, Petrino and the Vandals have plans for Malek. They intend to make him a student coach.

 You have to wonder how many programs would take the high road the way Petrino and Idaho did with this young man. It’s anyone’s guess.

But I do know this: Wherever his coaching career takes him, I will be a Paul Petrino fan.