Disgrace on the sidelines

I’ve written a number of times in this column about the misplaced moral outrage of sports journalism. About the grandstanding, the faux sincerity and the self-righteousness that so often seems to accompany serious examinations of sports in our culture. So it’s only fair to applaud the media when they collectively get it right.

The universal admonishment of disgraced Rutgers men’s basketball coach Mike Rice was entirely justified. Rice’s dismissal and the “resignation” of athletic director Tim Pernetti was modest retribution for the coach’s physical and verbal assault of his players over a prolonged period of time. The incidents captured on video show Rice shoving students, whipping basketballs at their heads and berating them with homophobic slurs. Even if he weren’t the public face of a national program, these acts alone are worthy of our ire and disgust.

But that is the key distinction, the part of the whole ordeal that really sticks with me. It’s not the actuality of his methods—lots of wonderful coaches yell and scream at their players. And it’s not just that Rice is a spokesperson for Rutgers and the state of New Jersey. It’s that he is a coach. And coaches at all levels have a unique responsibility, one that empowers them to do a great deal of good. Or tremendous harm.

I’m going to tap the breaks here just a bit; I don’t want to get carried away. I think it’s silly that we call people in this line of work “coach” for the rest of their lives, even after they have worked in a studio four times as long as they walked the sidelines. ESPN College GameDay commentator Lee Corso, for example, was barely a coach even when that was his actual job (he led my alma mater Indiana Hoosiers football team to a combined 10 wins in his first four seasons), and he’s certainly not one now.

At the same time, it’s not a melodramatic overstatement to say that coaches shape lives. If you acknowledge, as I do, that there are valuable lessons to be learned from sports and competition, then it’s easy to recognize that it is the coach who instills those values. Even if they only teach the fundamentals of the game, they are changing their players, helping them to grow. Becoming a better shooter or pitcher or left tackle might seem like a superficial change in the grand scheme of life, but the very experience of growth is inspiring in a way that transcends the game. It is literally and figuratively transformative. And it’s in the coach’s hands.

My first real experience with competitive sports, the kind where neither my playing time nor even my place on the team were guaranteed, was on my seventh grade basketball team. It was the first time that there were actual stakes. Small stakes, to be sure, but there was accountability for winning and losing. I had never really been taught the game of basketball, never learned a system. We ran the flex offense—a very, very simplified version of the offense the Utah Jazz ran under Jerry Sloan for 20 years. Let’s just say it was not intuitive for me. And my coach screamed at me. Lots. He would stop scrimmages to colorfully point out my mistakes at a high volume.

But then he would show me what to do. He would talk to me, and when I started to get better he would praise me. He would put the ball in my hands in increasingly important spots, and he would play me for longer and longer stretches. And he would yell when I messed up, but I actually learned how to play basketball. At a time in my life when I was too young to consider the impact that my parents and teachers and coaches were having on me, I was being led. With the help of this example, I was growing.

Cut to the following year. I was playing on the junior varsity team (because I’m not very good at basketball) for a coach that didn’t know my proper name for the first third of the season, who didn’t take any time to find out what we were good at, who had clear-but-arbitrary favorites on the team, who had no desire to instruct or teach or lead. Like Mike Rice, he enjoyed yelling for its own sake. Not surprisingly, none of us got any better. I regressed, and I didn’t have any fun. When I needed knee surgery at the start of the following season, I wasn’t sad to miss the year.

I was never going to be anything special as a basketball player. But I probably could have played through high school, had a unique and valuable experience, and grown as a person and a player. The fact that I didn’t is my responsibility, first and foremost, but I resented that coach. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my seventh grade coach had really made a positive impact.

Mike Rice coached in Division I basketball. His job was to win games in a highly competitive environment with millions and millions of dollars at stake. He wasn’t charged with being a role model to his players, not in the way my middle school coaches were. But, like all coaches, he was entrusted with responsibility. It’s a position that bears the implicit trust of the community. When they’re going to call you coach for the rest of your life, you are responsible for earning that respect.

Mike Rice violated that trust, and his actions cast a pall over one of the most important roles in our society. It’s a big deal. For once, I’m glad the media has treated it that way.