Maintaining an ethical environment is very tough. Many times, seemingly small issues can cause major headaches and unearth various ethical  challenges. This can be very evident in the area of Athletics. Student athletes and coaches face daily challenges that affect not only a student’s chance at a possible career, but also impact the college as a whole.

Brandan Harrell, GHC’s Director of Athletics, shares his thoughts:

“I could probably write all day about ethical situations in athletics.  But, I will just add a couple that I have seen at other schools over my years in coaching.

1. Playing an ineligible player – This has obviously been done many times in sports.  Sometimes unknowingly.  I can remember a team that eventually had to forfeit a conference tournament because a student had been dropped from a class unknowingly to the coach.  This dropped the student to below full time, which immediately makes the player ineligible.  However, this has also been done knowingly as well. Coaches must choose the right path, based on the rules, even if no one may ever find out.
2. Knowingly playing an eligible player – there are many, many instances where this has been found to be true.  This is usually the result of a coach with a win at all cost mentality. The most common form of this violation would probably be forging documents such as high school and college transcripts.  This has declined greatly over the years, but will still happen time to time.
3. Helping student athletes cheat to pass – This is also the result of a win at all cost mentality.  However, there is sometimes a blurred line between getting the student athlete the tutoring and academic help to be successful and having someone actually do the work for the student athlete.  Academic support is a major factor in athletics.  And is sometimes difficult for coaches to monitor all aspects of every student athletes daily routine.  It is important to have an academic support team that is rooted in academics rather than athletics to help ensure that lines are not crossed from support to outright cheating”.