Nancy Dworaczyk: Athletes have longer leash

The dichotomy regarding how much we value sports/entertainers versus academics came to light when I read two articles in the Jan. 15 N&O.

The news brief item “School employee fired after tweet” relayed an incident about Maryland school system employee Katie Nash who makes $44,000 per year running the school district’s Twitter account. Her tweet to a student who incorrectly spelled “tammarow” when asking that schools be closed, was “But then how would you learn how to spell ‘tomorrow?’.” This light-hearted tweet got her fired.

Contrast this discipline with the Sports article “Brown on Porter: ‘It’s great to have him back’  ” about Pittsburgh Steelers linebackers coach Joey Porter, who was arrested Sunday night and originally charged with aggravated and simple assault, trespassing and resisting arrest, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, for which he apologized. Was he fired? No. He was placed on leave and “welcomed back to practice” on Friday, one day after the most serious charges against him were dropped.

Thank you for publishing a great paper.

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 9:39 AM with the headline "Nancy Dworaczyk: Athletes have longer leash."