Did Loyalty and Decency Ever Exist?

Were it not for evidence I've seen with my own eyes, I might descend into wondering whether loyalty and decency ever really existed. Or were they just mist, mere vapors thought to have had real form at a point in time roughly adjacent to an idyllic period (the 1950s, etc.) when all was green and good in America?

Heavily greasing my slide into cynicism would be the treatment of all the assistant football coaches at the University of Nebraska, who twisted in the wind for just about exactly 40 Days and 40 Nights (seriously!) while their athletic director looked for a new head coach. After more than a month of wondering where they'd have to move their wives and children if the new coach didn't like them, they learn on a Friday the new coach's name.

Whereupon they're told, "You don't look quite done yet. Take the weekend to stew in your juices a bit more."

The new guy tells them it'll be Monday before he even gets to talking with them about their futures with the program. Decency and loyalty have both failed these assistants, who labor in relative obscurity to generate the kind of show that's sold out Memorial Stadium for something like one kazillion consecutive games.

Decency would have had the new coach working all weekend to talk with each assistant as quickly as possible. Loyalty would have had the athletic director ordering the new coach to do just that. But increasingly, it seems that when people make decisions about other people's lives -- in athletics or in business -- decency and loyalty have left the building.