Last week I was getting ready to cut grass and realized the temperatures had soared into the 90s. I pushed on, but I was worn out when the job was finished.

After drinking some water and taking a shower, I was still upset so I did what anyone else would do. I picked up the telephone and called Ohio State head football coach Urban Meyer.

I told coach Meyer that I didn’t appreciate the weather conditions and that if he didn’t fix these temperatures that he could cause global warming or global cooling or a hurricane or even a dust storm.

Obviously, Meyer is at fault. After all, when former New England Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez was arrested recently for the alleged murder of Odin Lloyd it was Meyer’s fault. Hernandez played for Meyer at Florida and had a few bouts with the law. If Meyer had disciplined Hernandez seven or eight years ago, Hernandez would have stayed on the straight and narrow.

Yeah. And the Easter Bunny sends text messages to Santa Claus on a daily basis.

Certainly coaches need to discipline players for team violations or incidents with the law, but they are not responsible for the behavior of the players. Believe it or not, the players are responsible for their behavior.

Too many times in today’s society the person at fault wants to point to someone else for the reason they made a mistake or committed some transgression.

Often students get in trouble in school and somehow it’s the teacher or principal’s fault. Mom and/or dad come to their rescue. That’s not to say people in authority can’t be at fault, but too often people like to play the blame game.

There have been numerous cases of athletes involved in murder. Who do you blame for Olympian Oscar Pistorious killing his girlfriend? As of now, he says it was an accident. The trial is set for August, so we have to wait a few weeks to see who is to blame.

If former NFL wide receiver Rae Caruth’s girlfriend hadn’t gotten pregnant, he wouldn’t have had to cut her off with his car while a hired hit man killed her and the baby. How could she be so inconsiderate?

And what about Southern Cal coach John Robinson? Maybe if he would have followed O.J. Simpson around for 40 years, including after he had died, the Hall of Fame running back wouldn’t have killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Now, Mark Rogowski had something to blame. The professional skateboarder — calling him an athlete is somewhat of a stretch — hit the friend of his ex-girlfriend with “The Club” several times and raped her over and over again. He blamed it on his addiction to drugs and alchohol.

Rogowski changed his name to “Gator” before the incident. Hmmm. Aaron Hernandez played for the Florida Gators and Rogowski called himself Gator.

See, I told you Urban Meyer was to blame for everything.

 

Jim Walker is sports editor of The Ironton Tribune.