By ALEX SMITH
Rutgers University fired head basketball coach Mike Rice after video surfaced of him grabbing his players, throwing balls at their heads and shouting vulgar remarks at them during team practices. Firing Rice was the correct move, but this story has brought to attention a much larger problem. The way Rice was acting was over the top, but coaches act like Rice all the time, on every level of sports from Little Leagues to the Major League.
After this story broke, I spoke to a number of people who could recall stories of how they had coaches like that in high school, or even middle school. I think it’s fair to assume that we’ve all seen it. We’ve seen the Little League baseball coach who is a hothead that screams and yells when his eight-year-old player does something wrong. We’ve all heard, or have experienced in person, stories of coaches screaming and humiliating players to try to motivate them. Some of these young athletes can be scarred for life by their coach’s actions, so is it really worth it just to win a game? Just because you have a whistle and a whiteboard doesn’t mean you can bully a person until they break. I know it’s outside of the world of sports, but the movie Full Metal Jacket comes to mind.
Getting back to the Rice situation, we have seen other college and pro coaches snap on players before. Some of the best coaches in college basketball history have had anger issues. Bob Knight is third on the all- time wins list in Division I hoops, and he was at the top of the list when he retired. He was famous for yelling and throwing chairs across the gym. When we think about Knight, we think of him first as a great coach, and then we think about the other stuff. There’s a fundamental problem there.
We’ve seen many other cases of coaches screaming and grabbing players. I understand that sometimes in the heat of the moment, emotions can cause things to happen accidentally, but every human being should have the common sense to not grab someone else’s child by the throat for turning over the ball. In college athletics, parents trust these men to watch over their child during their college years and to help take care of them. Coaches sit in players’ living rooms and tell their parents that their son will be in good hands. These good hands shouldn’t be around the athletes’ necks.
Somewhere a line has to be drawn. There is no excuse for letting this kind of behavior continue to happen. This was Rutgers’ biggest mistake. His behavior, along with the video evidence, was presented to Athletic Director Tim Pernetti last year. After reviewing the tape, Pernetti suspended Rice for three games. Did he honestly think that would be enough? Did he think that having a coach miss three games would completely and permanently change his coaching style? If so, then he never should have been in athletic administration to begin with.
I think the worst part of this whole Rutgers situation may just be that Mike Rice was fired not necessarily for his actions, but because he got caught. That thought is incredibly troubling.
