I remember it as if it were yesterday.

When I was a senior in high school and a lineman on the football team, a big tackle for Cathedral High School stepped on my hand, breaking a bone that till this day protrudes noticeably. When I pointed out my injury to Coach Zabek on the bus as we returned to my hometown, he told me to soak the hand and he’d have a doctor look at it.

Eight games later, after the season ended, the coach approached me and asked if my hand still hurt and whether I wanted to see the team‘s physician.

At the time, I thought the football mentor was uninterested in my problem from day one and simply more concerned about winning than the condition of his players.

In retrospect, that was not the case, and had my injury been more serious, he would have been the first to have me to sick bay.

True, since I was a starter, he wanted me in the lineup if possible and didn’t want to risk losing a first-team player because of what he felt was a minor physical problem. But he did care about my well-being and did follow up on the injury after the season was finished.

Comparing my coach’s concerns, belated though they might have been, with those of college tutors in Alabama, Iowa and Georgia is like comparing apples and oranges.

The coaching bozos who have been making news recently have been the topic of discussion at several Whispering Pines lunch tables.

Mike Price, Larry Eustachy and Jim Harrick, men who have a responsibility to worry not only about their players’ physical condition but also about their mental and moral attitudes, have proven to be poor examples for their pupils, and there is little sympathy for them in the village.

The three college coaches — and there are many others who come to mind — forgot what their basic responsibilities were, to their teams, to their schools, and even to their families.

Eustachy, Iowa State’s former basketball coach who now admits to a drinking problem, was caught on camera smooching with coeds, partying with the frat crowd and guzzling a brew or four while his players recovered from another loss on the basketball court.

Paid more than anyone else in Iowa state government, including the governor, Eustachy asked forgiveness for his transgressions, insisting that he is an alcoholic and should be given a second chance. The plea didn’t work, and as one ex-college coach made clear: “He had to say he was an alcoholic, because there’s no disease for just being a dirtbag.“

Eustachy, by the way, told the press he had changed his ways, pointing out that, “I’ve been sober for two weeks.“

As for Price, Alabama’s new football mentor who will never coach a game, his playtime activity away from home did not involve slipping dollars into the apron’s of athletic moms, illegal but common practice, but rather dropping big bills down the thongs of strippers.

Then, to compound his less-than-honorable activity, he had a dancer named Destiny and her girlfriend stay in his hotel room while he was “on the road.“ When his exotic dancer friend ordered one of everything off the hotel’s room service menu (cost: $1,000) the game was over for Price, even though Destiny spoke out to call her rent-a-date a “perfect gentleman.“ (Wonder if she was listed on his job resume as a character reference?)

Though he reportedly had sex with his lady friends, Price said he “was too drunk to really know“ what happened. Barry Saunders, in a recent News and Observer column, had the perfect comment on that Price statement.

“Comedian Jeff Foxworthy once said that if you’ve ever been too drunk to fish, you’re probably a redneck. If you’ve ever been too drunk to remember having sex with a stripper, you’re probably an idiot,” Saunders wrote.

Rather than hide his head in shame, Price criticized the University of Alabama for not forgiving and forgetting. In what has to be the height of hypocrisy, he asked: “What ever happened to a second chance in life? Why do we have a university?”

The sleazy coaches of the country are not limited to those in college. In Mount Airy, a quiet town near the North Carolina-Virginia border that has built its reputation as America’s Mayberry, three high school coaches were arrested recently on charges of sexual transgressions with students, turning the community into a modern Peyton Place. The basketball coach was charged with statutory rape, taking indecent liberties with a student and also with a child. The girl’s softball coach was charged with taking indecent liberties with a student and child, and the coach of the boy’s varsity baseball team faces the same charges.

(Ironically, the three were arrested during National Teacher Appreciation Week.)

Unlike the coaches who have made recent headlines, however, many others have not forfeited their reputations, families, and careers by ignoring their responsibilities to those they tutor.

“Everything I do, anywhere I go, any time of the day, I represent the University of Missouri,“ Gary Pinkel, the school’s football coach, points out. “It’s my responsibility to make sure that I conduct myself properly.”

Many —probably the majority — in the coaching fraternity look at things that way.

Tommie Nacca, a Whispering Pines resident who coached wrestling in upstate New York for many years before moving to the Sandhills, makes a point.

“I always expected my kids to be a credit to the community,” he says. “Learning to wrestle was important. But learning to be a man was more important.

“I told my kids their priorities were to be gentlemen first, students second and athletes last.“

He spoke for most in his profession when he said it would be hypocritical to make demands on one’s charges without adhering to those demands and standards yourself.