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There's a line that can't be crossed when it comes to coaches disciplining athletes, and every coach knows it. And as events have dictated in recent weeks, that line seems to have moved.

The truth is the line has been moving for generations. The unspoken truth is there's more than one line.

The biggest influence in an athlete's life is his coach, not just for what he teaches or counsels but what he controls. Coach controls everything. It's the first lesson of sports. It has nothing to do with winning or losing or sportsmanship or competition. The first rule is that Coach is always right. The second rule, as the old maxim goes, in case Coach is wrong, please refer to the first rule.

They are all-powerful, in charge of playing time and career opportunities. And in the old days, they were in charge of even more than that.

"We didn't let them rest," Mac Morris, the legendary basketball coach at Page said. "We didn't let them have water. Those were the old-school ways."

It made you tougher, they reasoned. And they were right. Of course, it made some players pass out and made some players die and made most players give up sports altogether.

The events of the past weeks brought those days back into focus as America was reminded that many of those coaches are still around. A generation after Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes slugged an opposing player in a bowl game, we found out he's still coaching. Some 30 years after Arizona State football coach Frank Kush was sued by a player who accused Kush of smacking him in the mouth for a bad punt, we realized he's still out there. More than a decade after Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight grabbed one of his players by the throat, we now know there are lots of Bobby Knights still roaming the sidelines.

In a series of stories splashed across the airwaves and various other waves of communication, coaches across the country began falling as charges of violent, vindictive and senseless acts cost them their careers.

Mike Leach, the former Texas Tech football coach, was fired after a player accused him of banishing him to a tool shed during practice. Jim Leavitt, the former South Florida football coach, was fired after a player claimed Leavitt grabbed him and slapped him in the face during halftime of a game this year. Mark Mangino, the former football coach at Kansas, was fired after a series of vile and sometimes violent actions came to light, again, from former players.

"There have always been some coaches at the college and professional levels who choose to use more coercive approaches to motivation," Duke University sports psychologist Greg Dale said. "In the past, these methods were blindly accepted and the code of silence that 'whatever happens within the program stays within the program' is becoming less powerful. Kids today are used to sharing their entire lives on social networks and have been conditioned by their parents to stand up for themselves and speak out against anyone who might treat them unfairly."

Morris said the change has come, in part, because modern-day parents and kids have a weapon they dared not use in the old days. Blame.

"I think part of the problem is that parents are so different today than they were even 10 years ago," he said. "You know the term 'helicopter parent,' parents hovering, wanting to be more involved, parents look for excuses. They often try to make it a teacher's fault or a coach's fault, for the failure on the part of the kids."

All across the country, in the wake of the firings and subsequent lawsuits, people believe they have finally brought to light a problem and moved the line so that awareness alone will solve the problem once and for all.

Please.

Discipline is part of coaching, said former N.C. A&T football coach Bill Hayes. And that will never change, he said. The lines that are being crossed in South Florida don't even exist in some programs. The actions in Kansas and Texas Tech have little or no bearing on athletes and coaches in other areas. Hayes said what is acceptable or not acceptable is often open to interpretation.

"The student-athlete we come into contact with often comes from a different background, a different set of circumstances than other students," said Hayes, now the athletics director at Winston-Salem State. "If we don't talk to them in a certain way, they don't know what the hell we're talking about. Now, each young man is different, and you have to treat each other differently when it comes to discipline. But you have to discipline these young men.

"Some of them have never even been around a strong male influence in their whole lives. Some have never had a real man in their lives tell them what to do. You have to get to these kids. You have to jump-start them, because if you don't, they're going to get you fired. I mean that. We live in a world of tough love.

"Anytime I go to a banquet or something years later and see these players, there's always one who comes up and says 'thank-you coach for changing my life.'

"I had a guy from Detroit, probably 30 years ago, who was abusing young women in the cafeteria. I had to do something. No one else was going to. I didn't know any other way to handle it than to put him across my knee and spank him. That's the truth. So I did. Can you believe that? No one had ever done that to him before in his life. No man had ever taken the time. I put him over my knee and I spanked him. He went back to the locker room and told the rest of the guys 'Coach just spanked me!' He loved it."

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com