The worm keeps turning

And so the sea change in America continues, this time in the most unlikely of places: The desert.

Where the University of Arizona eighty-sixed its head football coach, Rich Rodriguez, after a sexual harassment allegation the university has been investigating since October, and a pending hostile-workplace lawsuit against the school.

You knew eventually the wave of sexual harassment j'accuse would crash ashore in sports, because it is and always has been fertile ground for men treating women badly. It's a male-dominant culture that presumes certain things about women, and those presumptions go all the way to the top. Which is why so many athletic hierarchies -- (cough) the NFL (cough) -- have been largely ineffective at getting their arms around the issue.

Well ... not so much now.

In show business, in business generally, and now in sports, women have decided enough is enough. They are tired of being prey. They are tired of having to kowtow to artificial social constructs because men can't control themselves. They are tired of being tired.

And so they are speaking out, more and more of them -- and if the backlash says a mob mentality has come into play in its wake, well, it's hard not to think it's about damn time. There has, after all, always been a mob mentality at work in this area. The mob in question just had a different gender.

Now the shoe's on the other foot, and so goodbye, RichRod. You may be as innocent as you claim to be, but the length of the school's investigation suggests otherwise. And let's face it: Hardly any male in a male-dominated culture ever thinks he's treated women badly when he's treated women badly. The culture itself precludes him from seeing it otherwise.

Well, gentlemen. Welcome to your wakeup call.

It's being sounded by all those women who've suddenly discovered strength in their common experience, and in their numbers. And it's so loud it's impossible for those at the top to block it out anymore.

"After conducting a thorough evaluation of our football program and its leadership, both on and off the field, President [Robert] Robbins and I feel it is in the best interest of the University of Arizona and our athletics department to go in a new direction," athletic director Dave Heeke said in a statement, upon the announcement of Rodriguez' firing.

A new direction. Do tell.