Should sports coaches have different standards of conduct than professionals in other fields? This question has been brought to the forefront of collegiate sports by a scandal at Rutgers University involving the head basketball coach Mike Rice's verbal and physical mistreatment of players during multiple practices. As peace slowly settles upon the university, the focus is shifting from cleaning up the mess that has been left behind to making sure that a similar travesty does not occur again. For this to happen, we must raise the standards to which our coaches are held. But we should also remember that coaching sports has certain uncommon demands that call for unique treatment of coaches.
Scandal at Rutgers has been a long time coming. Throughout his three-year tenure at Rutgers, Rice exhibited violent and abusive behavior. Reports from students and coaches alike cited broken clipboards, flying basketballs and profane language as regular features at practice. However, even increased oversight from athletic director Tim Pernetti could not keep the head coach in line. In a video that was made public only last week, Rice can be seen hurling basketballs at his players' heads, kicking at their feet and mixing in profanities, including gay slurs.
There have already been three causalities of the scandal, including two coaches and the athletic director. All three of these former employees failed to sufficiently protect the student-athletes who they were supposed to be overseeing. They absolutely deserved to be fired.
Now there is an argument raging over whether university president Robert Barchi, who declined to view the troubling tapes when confronted with them in November, should be fired. Belinda Edmondson, director of the women and gender studies department at Rutgers, believes that Barchi should lose his job. In an interview with ESPN she said "If I laid my hands on a student, if I called a student those names, they should kick me out the door before I could take another breath."
While I hope that Edmondson would be relieved of her job if she hurled basketballs or shouted profanities at her students, she is missing a key distinction between what her job and the job of head coach at a Division I basketball program. Sports are unlike other teaching professions in that coaches need to be able to motivate their players and bring intensity to do their job properly. Because basketball can be such a physical and draining sport, coaches need to prepare their players with similarly rigorous practices. The same cannot be said of any typical college courses.
Most people who have watched the tapes of Rutgers practices will surely agree with that Rice's behavior was unacceptable and beyond any reasonable standard for coaches. Yet coaching misconduct remains a pervasive problem at various levels of sports in the United States. It seems that there is a coach in every small town in America who is notorious for his on-field antics. As a teenager, while working as a baseball umpire, I was cautioned about these hotheaded coaches. They pose serious threats to the safety and development of many young athletes. When men like Rice and Bob Knight are allowed to abuse players to the extent that they did, often with little backlash from administrators, this sends a terrible message to coaches across the nation.
We need increased accountability for coaches who use intimidation and violence as the pillars for teaching sports. The firing of Mike Rice was a positive move toward this end. But why was his relationship with Rutgers was so prolonged? The current system needs to be changed to ensure that this situation does not happen again. Coaching and athletic department contracts ought to include clauses forbidding this kind of inappropriate behavior. There also need to be ramifications for colleges and universities who continue to employ abusive coaches. Only through harsh punishments, possibly including fines and postseason bans, can future incidents can be averted.
College sports have unique demands that occasionally call for greater physical strain and verbal motivation to be placed on student-athletes than other professions. The American sporting community would benefit if we stood up to the hot heads that go over the top in pursuit of wins. Rice's dismissal is only the first step of many to be taken.
