This entire Eustachy debate has blown up in Iowa State’s face, and rightfully so. Here we have a man who gets paid about $1 million a year to coach a collegiate basketball team and he still acts like a complete moron.

We should demand a little more propriety from our highest-paid official in the state than cavorting about with college-aged women at fraternity parties.

Who in their right mind would risk a high-visibility job that pays them roughly $3,000 a day by saying extremely inappropriate things about shaved beavers while publicly intoxicated?

This situation is ridiculous and would never have happened if Eustachy would have shown a little respect for the university he is (or should I say was?) serving.

Using his diagnosed alcoholism as an excuse for this sort of behavior is just like saying, “The devil made me do it!” Sure, it’s a disease, but it’s a disease you can control and seek help for when you need it. All the same, he is responsible for his actions.

I am personally embarrassed to be attending a university at which sports officials, in particular, seem to be in a contest to see which one can commit the biggest crime. What’s next? I can’t implicate anyone here, but I seriously think that public officials at Iowa State should stop trying to top the latest tasty morsel of gossip.

For me, it is hard to believe that there is an actual debate as to whether or not Coach Eustachy should be fired. Of course he should no longer be part of our basketball team, just like assistant coach Randy Brown before him.

Granted, the two coaches did completely different things. Brown’s actions were unquestionably illegal in any sense, but Eustachy’s are only considered to be a breach of university contract. Outside of his contract, attending parties at schools to which Iowa State’s basketball teams lost and proceeding to make an ass of himself by bashing his own players and hitting on women half his age is only unintelligent, not unlawful.

But, as it stands, Eustachy is a visible, well-paid representative of Iowa State and therefore obliged to act according to the rules of his contract. Seeing as he didn’t, the university has every right to discipline him as they see fit.

I have a solution to make sure that a public relations fiasco like this never happens again: Don’t place so much importance on the basketball coach’s position. You should never pay anyone $1 million for a job anyone decent could do for $500,000 or less. If Coach Eustachy didn’t happen to be the highest-paid public official in the state of Iowa, having his outrageously huge paycheck funded by the public, no one may have even cared.

People all over the country have come to view this man as the embodiment of Iowa State and all it stands for simply because he coaches a basketball team. However, I believe there should be more to a university than its athletics.

Iowa State is supposed to be an academic institution. The only thing left for them to do is to start acting like one.