It’s sometimes amazing to me how many organizations have so much trouble with background checks. Granted, there’s a lot to look through, and you don’t want to inadvertently overstep the bounds of reasonableness. That said, it seems to me it’s common practice these days to at least run a name through a Google search and make sure nothing horribly damning comes up as a result. I plan on doing this with my future children, in fact, shortly after I name them, just to make sure they weren’t up to any gangster crap while in the womb.

Actually, given this recent story about the University of Great Falls in Montana involving their hiring of a Sports Information Director and then firing him after a local paper Googled his name, perhaps there’s a business opportunity in all this.

UGF, whose athletic programs compete in the NAIA, introduced [Todd] Brittingham as the school’s new SID and marketing director in a news release. The Great Falls Tribune set out to learn more about him. Presumably they first searched his name. Presumably they found what anyone can find, on the first page of the search results—stories from 2012 about Brittingham pleading guilty to charges stemming from a relationship with a 16-year-old student at the Kansas high school where he was teaching and coaching.

In the end, Brittingham copped a plea to endangering a child and giving alcohol to a minor in exchange for the drop of felony diddling a child charges. Justice! In any case, as you can imagine, the university wasn’t terribly pleased at learning about this and fired Brittingham post-haste.

Gary Ehnes, athletic director at UGF, said he was stunned by the news. He said he was the one responsible for the hire.

“I’m devastated. You do a background check on a guy and figure that’s going to do it. But I guess we have to go further than that,” Ehnes said.

Go further? No, a Google search isn’t going further than a background check, a background check is going further than a Google search. You probably shouldn’t move to step two until you complete step one, especially when step one is the first thing we all do before going on a first date. That’s why I’m thinking of opening Timothy Geigner’s Step One Background Checks. Think of the money! I can contract with unwitting public institutions to perform simple Google searches for prospective employees. Sounds ridiculous, but there’s obviously a need for this service, and for once it’s a business need I can actually fulfill. Capitalism, people!

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