Young, Yost, Hochuli learn tough lessons

It’s a jungle out there.

We’re here today with sympathy cards for Vince Young, Ned Yost and Ed Hochuli.

They are all culpable. They have all been guilty of being wrong or misguided or losing. This is not to excuse them, but to commiserate with men who end up burned by the glare of sport.

The three of them serve as fresh reminders: It is a cruel world out there, if you foul up.

•Dropped by to see Young’s team play the other day.

Young wasn’t there.

Life has gone on for the Tennessee Titans, who have handed the quarterback job to Kerry Collins and instructed their phenom to get his body healed and his head on straight.

Last time I saw Young in person, he was bouncing off USC tacklers like a pinball machine, leading Texas to the national championship. But those were the happy, carefree days of college. The working world of pro football has been far more trying.

You saw the headlines last week. How the Titans called the police in concern about his mental state, and how Young’s mother went off in the media about the relentless criticism her son had been taking.

Such is the hard life of a quarterback in the NFL, and it has become clear that Young is not quite ready, even with his gifts and talents. Good thing he wasn’t drafted by a New York team.

•Yost’s team was tied for the wild-card spot in the National League. The Milwaukee Brewers fired him, anyway.

It is a worn path in major league baseball, from the manager’s office to the guillotine. But 12 games from the finish line?

True, the Brewers have been in a September swoon. But this smacks of throwing a man overboard to tell the customers that nothing was left untried.

Those in the profession understand how tenuous their employment can be. But the Brewers have raised the bar. When the going gets tough, fire the manager, even if he is 83-67.

•Hochuli blew a call.

A number of NFL officials do that, replays overturn their errors, and the game goes on. The public quickly forgets the officials’ names, if it ever hears them at all.

Hochuli’s misfortune was to make a mistake in the Denver-San Diego game that could not be entirely corrected by a replay. He ruled an incompletion on what should have been a fumble. The Chargers should have had the ball and a victory, but both ended up with the Broncos.

Hochuli’s judgment was wrong, but the rule book kept it wrong.

Now Hochuli is as infamous as Pacman Jones’ police sheet.

The real message here is that the NFL might be the most complex organization this side of the Pentagon, and can devise a fail-safe system for its officiating calls that is exotic enough to make NASA proud.

But sooner or later, it comes down to humans, and humans err.

Seldom, though, are they hung out to dry as much as Hochuli.

He had a bad news week. But he wasn’t alone.