Rutgers coach: College sports’ ugly underbelly

“Rutgers University basketball coach Mike Rice finally got what was coming to him,” said Bloomberg.com in an editorial. The notoriously fanatical coach was fired last week after a practice video surfaced showing him shoving and kicking players, hurling basketballs at their heads, and berating them with homophobic and misogynistic slurs. The coach seen on the video was “so vile and abusive, it’s hard to believe he was ever entrusted to oversee students.” As coaches like to say, said Pat Forde in Yahoo.com, “the film don’t lie.” Rice taunts his players as “pussies,” “faggots,” and worse. This, at a college still reeling from the suicide of a gay student in 2010. Athletic director Tim Pernetti saw the videos in December, and his only response, until finally resigning under fire this week, was to dish out a feeble three-game suspension to Rice and a $50,000 fine.

“When I was a high school freshman,” said David Plotz in Slate.com, “my basketball coach shoved me, pushed me, mocked me, and chucked basketballs at me.” He once even hit me in the head with a water bottle. But I never viewed it as abusive. By punishing my laziness and pushing me to overcome my habitual mediocrity, the coach motivated me to become a better player, a better teammate, “and possibly even a better person.” Rice’s players—most of whom are defending him—probably feel the same way.

Now that Rice’s behavior has been outed, said Dave Zirin in TheNation.com,we’re in a “cultural battle for the soul of sports.” Rice’s defenders, including Fox News commentator Eric Bolling, insist that tough love builds character, and decry the “wussification” of America. But many others say it’s time to reject the screaming and abusive behavior of legendary coaches like Bobby Knight and the late Bear Bryant, and label these widely admired jerks what they really are: “abusive, anti-gay, misogynistic bigots.” Changing the culture of college sports will require more than firing one coach, said Andrew Sharp in SBNation.com. At every college with big-time basketball and football programs, scholarships reduce 19- and 20-year-old athletes to “indentured servitude.” They work year-round for no salary, while colleges make millions from their labor and tyrannical coaches paid six- and seven-figure salaries control “every facet of their lives.” When a coach has that much power over a player’s destiny, “it’s bound to be abused.”

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