Tarnished Tenure - Marcum Deserved Better Send-Off

Adam J Locascio
Thursday March 3, 2011

With all the damage and destruction surrounding the Tampa Bay Storm this off-season, it’s a miracle that they haven’t changed the name of the franchise to “Katrina.”

The Storm’s front office has been mired in controversy since last season’s ArenaBowl loss to the Spokane Shock. The team has changed owners, changed head coaches and general managers, endured law suits and failed to re-sign their top-flight quarterback.

And how was YOUR vacation?

Present turmoil aside, the most shocking event has to be the firing resignation of Storm head coach Tim Marcum due to the discovery of racist jokes and pornographic materials in his work-related e-mail. Shortly after the discovery of said material, it was uncovered that these various items were sent and received by Assistant Coach Dave Ewart… who just so happened to be Marcum’s successor.

Well, doesn’t this create quite the problem? 

Wouldn’t it be someone hypocritical to keep Ewart after firing Marcum for what seems to be identical offenses? True.  It won’t happen though. We’re too close to the beginning of the season and this team needs to get back to the business of football.

But Marcum’s firing resignation brings to light many of the ambiguities that we – or anyone for that matter – are faced with in an ever-changing technological world where entire novellas of information can simply be forwarded with a few clicks of a mouse.

Before I continue, I will say the following: no one will consider Coach Marcum and me to be buddy-buddy. Two seasons ago, I called for his job in this very forum for reasons unrelated to his browser history. There are no less than three notable Marcum-clichés (all negative in nature) that are inspired or derived from my personal interactions with Coach Marcum as a result of covering the Storm for this Web site. I am quite certain, if I was drowning next to Marcum’s boat, he would no doubt toss me a cinder block to keep me afloat.

But do I believe Marcum to be a racist? Never. Not in a million years.

And my reasoning has nothing to do with what I know about the man. Marcum is a football coach, plain and simple. Football, as it stands, is a sport dominated by African Americans. In our Twitter-dominated society, how could the slightest incident of racial discrimination, whether true or imagined, go unreported?

Any fan of the Storm can laundry-list the players that were unceremoniously dumped or traded as a result of a culture-clash with Marcum. Ironically, most of these players end up with the Orlando Predators, Tampa Bay’s arch nemesis (Bobby Sippio and T.T. Tolliver come to mind almost immediately). No one, no matter how underappreciated they felt they were, no one ever came forward and said Marcum exhibited any kind or racism or racial discrimination.

And these were players who feuded with Marcum openly. These weren’t behind-closed-doors confrontations. These came out in the local media. It would have been very easy to callously say Marcum was the second coming of Mel Gibson, but it didn’t happen.

If Marcum was a racist, in almost two decades of coaching with the Storm, someone would have said something. In all his time with the Storm, in all of his red-faced scream sessions, something would have sneaked out. It never did.

Which brings us back to Coach Marcum’s Outlook. Apparently, during the discovery phase of his pending law suit with former Storm owner Dr. Robert Nucci, multiple e-mails were found on Marcum’s work computer containing jokes with various racist overtones. These jokes were forwarded to others.

There’s something about an e-mail, or anything in writing for that matter, that makes people overly sensitive. Anything committed to text carries so much more weight than the spoken word. I guess it’s just the underlying belief that if someone didn’t feel strongly about an issue or topic they wouldn’t commit it to paper, let alone forward it to a co-worker.

Case in point: I just watched Chris Rock’s “Best of SNL” DVD on Netflix. Rock did a commentary during SNL’s “Weekend Update” around the time of the 1992 Presidential Election. There were rumors circulating that President George H.W. Bush was thinking of dropping Dan Quayle as his running mate and adding General Colon Powell. Rock said that there was no way an African American would ever be elected Vice President because that would ensure that the white President would be assassinated. He would even do it himself. “What would they do? Put me in jail with a bunch of black guys who would treat me like a hero for the rest of my life? I would be the biggest star in jail.”

You know what I did? I laughed. I even told a couple of friends of mine what I had just watched and that Rock’s “Best of SNL” was worth adding to their Netflix queue.

I still have my job.

Is Rock’s schtick not racist? You bet it is. It draws on multiple negative stereotypes that if said by a white person in regard to Barack Obama, Al Sharpton would be at your front door, yet Chris Rock is doing rather well (with the exception of his movie choices, but that’s another column for another Web site) and SNL is still on the air. Why is it that we can laugh at the spoken word, but if you write it down, it merits your termination?

Now the Marcum-haters (and anyone who hates the Storm and is looking to throw gas on the fire, like Orlando Predator fans, but we won’t name names) will say, “That’s his WORK computer. Work computers are supposed to be used for WORK purposes ONLY. His employer has the right to look at his computer and can fire him for misusing company/team resources!”

Okay, fine. Can we look at YOUR work computer? Spreading electronic jokes aside, is anyone’s work computer used for 100% work purposes? How many bills do you pay on line from your cubicle? How many eBay auctions have you tracked? How many CSI’s did you watch on Hulu? How many times did you update your Facebook status?

What if Marcum sent those same e-mails from his cell phone while watching practice and not his work PC? Would we have the same reaction?

He shouldn’t have been fired resigned. Yelled at, yes, but not fired. I can hear the conversation in Human Resources now: “If you spent more time working on your game plan against Spokane and less time looking at porn, the Storm would have their sixth ring, Tim!”

Our computers are a link to the outside world. You can order pizza from your computer now. Cell phones that only make phone calls are about as fashionable as powdered wigs. Meeting the opposite sex used to be done by staking out local bars and clubs, now you can do it in your pajamas (and have the convenience of picking your category, be it “cougar,” “college co-ed,” or “Jewish single” by going to the proper URL). So the jokes were tasteless and offensive to minorities. Marcum wasn’t retelling them on ESPN or at an autograph session after a game.

Right now, CBS airs a show called “S*** My Dad Says.” CBS, ironically, was fined millions of dollars by the FCC for the Janet Jackson “Wardrobe Malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show, yet they see fit to put one of George Carlin’s “7 Dirty Words” right in the title. ABC is currently producing a show starring James Van Der Beek (“Varsity Blues”) called “Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23.” This is ABC – and who owns ABC? Disney.

Mickey Mouse is calling people “bitch.”

Maybe we’re not as puritanical as people may think. And let’s remember: Marcum’s e-mails weren’t on in prime time.

And maybe Coach Ewart was spared the scrutiny because it became apparent that what Marcum did was perhaps so common it should be dismissed as common practice. Ewart is white and has been with the Storm for seven years and participated in the same e-mail chain. Predator fans could care less about him. Then again, that probably has more to do with the fact that he’s about 200 wins short of passing Marcum on the all-time AFL wins list. We sure do love to tear down our icons, don’t we? I have no doubt no one would care who Brett Favre was texting if he was a third-stringer on the Carolina Panthers.

It’s enough that we ask our sports athletes and icons to maintain a certain level of decorum when they are in the public eye, but think about the precedent that this sets. We now expect these same people to live and act a certain way when they are in private (or in perceived privacy). Go home, sit on your hands, and wait for the next game.

Coach Marcum’s time in Tampa Bay is over, all because he laughed at the old limerick that starts, “There once was a man from Nantucket” and then sent it to his buddy. Marcum’s detractors will point toward his other indiscretions as a pattern of behavior – salary cap violations, fake diamonds in championship rings, DUI, insurance fraud, etc.

You can drive drunk, but you can’t have odd taste in porn? This is not how a legendary coaching career is supposed to end.

And to borrow Marcum’s own cliché, he would be the first one to tell the media outside the locker room that’s it’s the job of “certain writers at ArenaFan.com” to second-guess what happens with the Storm rather than trust those with the knowledge and experience that puts them in their current position.

Yes, Coach. I’m second-guessing the Storm’s decision.