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Post by Crowfan on Apr 3, 2013 16:07:36 GMT -5
In December last year, Mike Rice got suspended for verbal and physical abuse....he didn't get fired until today when this video went viral.
Why wasn't the coach who blew the whistle in December listened to? And if the President and the Athletic Director of Rutgers had seen this video last year, why on earth was Mike Rice allowed to keep his job???
There is NO EXCUSE for a coach to verbally and/or physically to abuse players. Adults should NOT bully kids. The players can't do anything about it if they want to play. Just disgraceful.
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Post by Mod City on Apr 3, 2013 19:35:34 GMT -5
Yeah, that's pretty horrible. I agree he probably should have been fired back in December, but I'm also sure it happens way more often than we hear about. Bob Knight and Billie Gillespie are two others that come to mind who got nailed for something similar and there's no way I'm buying they're the only other two in the last ten years who have acted this way.
If you ever get to be a fly on the wall on the sideline of a high school or college football game, you'd see very similar behavior from coaches that's just chalked up to "being intense." They do it right in front of everyone - parents, school administrators, you name it. Heck, I hear verbal abuse that intense from the stands sometimes. I couldn't believe it the first time a heard it but nobody else seems to care. Sad.
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Post by Crowfan on Apr 4, 2013 5:22:04 GMT -5
I'm sure it does happen a lot more than we hear about....I've played for guys who did this to others, and when you're in that situation, you really don't know what to do as a kid. I just find it interesting that the guy who tried to report this got fired and had to sue Rutgers before this came out....
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Post by Mod City on Apr 4, 2013 9:38:18 GMT -5
I agree, that is interesting. And odd. Why was Rutgers defending the guy in the first place? It's not like he was a super hot coach on the rise or anything. Maybe they were just trying to save face overall but you'd think they could have quietly forced him out if they wanted to.
Rutgers definitely dropped the ball on this.
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Post by continosbuckle on Apr 4, 2013 10:20:46 GMT -5
I agree, that is interesting. And odd. Why was Rutgers defending the guy in the first place? It's not like he was a super hot coach on the rise or anything. Maybe they were just trying to save face overall but you'd think they could have quietly forced him out if they wanted to. Rutgers definitely dropped the ball on this. Apparently the AD came in a couple years ago and Rice was his big hire, so if he fired him so quickly he would have looked like an incompetent dope. So at first he hoped that it would all go away, and when shown videos existed, hoped that a suspension, a fine and a stern talking-to would do the trick. In a lot of ways it's like Penn State. Sweep it under the rug and hope it goes away before the public finds out about it. That's one thing that makes me cynical about the whole firing: what changed between December and now that justified his firing now but not then? All I can see is that those videos became public.
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Post by TheNewMads on Apr 4, 2013 11:40:21 GMT -5
I'm gonna be off in left field on this: the only thing that scandalizes me about this at all is the homophobic slurs. these guys aren't children; they're college athletes and most of them could probably beat this coach in a fair fight. and it's not like the coach is hitting them with his fist in their face; he's shoving them a bit, giving them little kicks in the butt, etc. it doesn't even look like it hurts. and most of the athletes who were interviewed said they weren't even bothered by it. I just feel like we're becoming a culture of over-protective busybodies, and this is just one of the many signs of it.
also, there's a world of difference between this and coaches being given a pass on child sexual abuse. in terms of scandals the two aren't even remotely on the same planet. and that's the ugly flipside of being a culture of over-protective busybodies -- we over-prosecute venal crimes and non-crimes to try and make up for the fact that the hideous, egregious criminals, as often as not, go completely unpunished.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Apr 4, 2013 13:41:00 GMT -5
I agree with NewMads. Yeah, the guy's a dickweed (Rice, not New Mads), but he's coaching college men, not kids. I played basketball all 4 years of high school, and I got called every name in the book by my coaches. I know it's not acceptable in polite society, but we all figured it came with being on the team. Intense, negative reinforcement is part of athletics.
This guy took it to inappropriate levels and should have been fired, but it's not like verbal abuse is anything new in coaching. And it's certainly nowhere near the horrors of sexual abuse of Sandusky.
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Post by Mod City on Apr 4, 2013 14:57:15 GMT -5
His anti-gay slurs shouldn't be acceptable in any society, polite or not. And while I know it goes on at every level, it certainly isn't helping ease the acceptance of gay athletes in the pro sports world. Negative reinforcement has its place, to be sure, but I don't think this incident falls into the "we're all too sensitive" category.
Some faculty members are calling for the university president to resign. That's not entirely surprising since Rutgers already received some serious criticism from the Tyler Clementi incident a few years ago.
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Post by Crowfan on Apr 4, 2013 15:53:11 GMT -5
His anti-gay slurs shouldn't be acceptable in any society, polite or not. And while I know it goes on at every level, it certainly isn't helping ease the acceptance of gay athletes in the pro sports world. Negative reinforcement has its place, to be sure, but I don't think this incident falls into the "we're all too sensitive" category. Some faculty members are calling for the university president to resign. That's not entirely surprising since Rutgers already received some serious criticism from the Tyler Clementi incident a few years ago. Agreed. And I don't think that throwing basketballs at players's heads is a good idea either.
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Post by TheNewMads on Apr 4, 2013 17:10:15 GMT -5
i abhor gay slurs, but let's live in the real world: they're being flung around high school and college gyms and fields thousands of times every day. you wanna address that problem in our culture, i'm totally down with it, but let's not pretend this is the only guy in college athletics who talks this way.
as for the rest of it, we can have a conversation about whether or not it's good coaching (i think it's not), but is he "abusing kids"? nah. no way.
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Post by TheNewMads on Apr 4, 2013 17:15:24 GMT -5
although also, maybe we're missing the big story here, and this is where comparisons to sandusky are 100 percent fair: it's pretty obvious rutger's decision to throw the book at this guy has to do with the fact that the video went viral, because they knew all about it and thought a suspension was penalty enough. they're admitting they went easy on the guy when public opinion wasn't an issue.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Apr 4, 2013 19:01:35 GMT -5
Well, there's no question that the NCAA is the most crooked of all sports leagues. And the individual colleges are endemic of the screwed up system. Articles like this one make me jaded to anything any NCAA program or the NCAA at large tries to pull off.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Apr 4, 2013 23:20:13 GMT -5
So why do coaches often get a pass on stuff like this? I've heard other parents say things like it's good for the kids and can help them get a tough skin in rough situations...but if a teacher yelled at your son to do math, we'd all obviously get them fired.
Is a coach's job that different from a teacher's? If stuff like this is supposed to motivate kids to perform better, why isn't it used in classrooms? Does it help them remember a play or remember a batting stance? If so, then it should work to help them remember vocabulary or to focus more on addition, right?
I'm not saying I'm surprised by the Rutgers guy. What I am surprised is how many people seem to think it's okay, even and especially in the context of their own children.
But my usual rule of thumb is that if I don't want my sons' teachers behaving in a certain way, I don't want their coaches doing so, either.
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Post by continosbuckle on Apr 5, 2013 3:26:50 GMT -5
I'm gonna be off in left field on this: the only thing that scandalizes me about this at all is the homophobic slurs. these guys aren't children; they're college athletes and most of them could probably beat this coach in a fair fight. and it's not like the coach is hitting them with his fist in their face; he's shoving them a bit, giving them little kicks in the butt, etc. it doesn't even look like it hurts. and most of the athletes who were interviewed said they weren't even bothered by it. I just feel like we're becoming a culture of over-protective busybodies, and this is just one of the many signs of it. also, there's a world of difference between this and coaches being given a pass on child sexual abuse. in terms of scandals the two aren't even remotely on the same planet. and that's the ugly flipside of being a culture of over-protective busybodies -- we over-prosecute venal crimes and non-crimes to try and make up for the fact that the hideous, egregious criminals, as often as not, go completely unpunished. I mentioned Penn State because I felt that the initial response from the people in charge was similar in both cases: that the blowback they'd get from making the scandal public was worse for the program than keeping it under wraps, even if that risked the abuse continuing. Also, I think there ought to be a strict rule about player treatment, and that's simply because no other option will work. If you allow a coach to hit a player, but decide that he can't hit him "too hard", how do you define that? Can he kick a player in the ass but can't punch him in the head? Can he kick a player in the ass as hard as he wants, or is it only okay when he doesn't wind up to do the kicking? Can he throw a ball at a player's stomach but not his head? How hard can he throw it at the player's stomach in a disciplinary measure? Can he do it right to the point before the player suffers a debilitating injury? Would that be the standard: "No one was badly injured"? Do you really want to start drawing these lines? Do you even think it's worth having this sort of conversation? Why is this sort of line drawing better than the strict rule that says that coaches can't batter players? And as for slurs, the same thing applies. Do you want to really have a conversation where we decide if it's okay to call a player a "fa**ot" but calling him a "ni**er" is over the line? Is it okay to call someone a c*cksucker but not a motherf*cker? You want to elucidate that rule for me, so that I, a coach, who wants to call his players sissy little b*tches to motivate them, would know whether that crosses a line? And let's suppose that calling them sissy little b*tches no longer works because it's been my go-to insult for years. Can I start calling them useless rotting c*nts, or is that over the line? Would I need to go to the University's in-house counsel to determine this? Because if the rule is neither "Everything's allowed" nor "Nothing's allowed", that's what would happen. You need to start doing ridiculous little exercises about whether c*nt is too harsh a slur to allow, and if it is, then we have to decide if p*ssy is a sufficient substitute. I'm suggesting that we shouldn't even bother debating this in the first place. I don't see the value in allowing coaches to physically or verbally abuse their players that would necessitate such discussions.
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Post by TheNewMads on Apr 5, 2013 8:46:32 GMT -5
I dunno, to me the lines seem to be pretty clear. Anything that would or could cause physical harm is just assault. A non-forceful kick in the ass is not. That said, it's a bit odd to me that a basketball coach can't use non-harmful physical contact but football players can literally assault each other all day long on the field and inflict injuries on one another on a routine basis. seems to me we're already drawing lines when it comes to the world of sports, and those lines are already fairly arbitrary.
would the guy be fired if he had not been physical but had only used the slurs? the impression i get is that the physical contact is the part that really is bothering people. i've been pretty clear, i think, that i was never ok with the slurs. i just think we're lying to ourselves if we're going to claim this is the only coach who uses them. if i had to guess, i'd say more coaches probably use them than don't, at least in first-tier outfits like the NCAA.
anyway, i've got sean hannity and bill o'reilly on my side, which is never a good sign. that said, doesn't it seem a little thought-policey to say things like "we shouldn't even bother debating this in the first place"? how is it possible to decide whether a particular subject is worth debating except by debating it?
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