A video surfaced earlier this week from ESPN. My first reaction was "holy smokes Bobby Knight is coaching again?" Anyways, take a look at the video first then I'll share my thoughts.
We haven't seen this sort of behavior on the basketball court in a while from a coach. Ever since Bob Knight descended into the darkness of the night there's no one crazy figure to report on. Frank Martin, formerly of Kansas St, was the scary sergeant looking coach that every player was afraid of. When a player made a mistake, you can just feel his icy cold stares going around the room.
Now, that's different. That's discipline. But what this guy Mike Rice does is beyond bad. He literally took coaching to Bob Knight level, demeaning and physically abusing players. All the kids can do is hopelessly look on and pray that someone else messes up soon. At one point, as soon as the coach threw the ball at a player, the assistant coach quickly handed him another ball. W.T.F. So happy to wake up this morning and hear he was fired.
There's a bigger issue at hand here. The entire NCAA system, as we know it, is a big joke. Schools make BILLIONS of dollars while they try to justify the system by saying "well we are paying for their education!" Bullcrap! What they are doing is exploiting the student-athletes. What is this BCS system? Bullcrap! Oh wait sorry I got carried away.
Just a note - Frank is still coaching. He's at South Carolina now.
It's appalling to me that the AD hasn't been fired yet. Watched him try to defend Rice on SportsCenter last night and I was disgusted. I'm sure Rice was trying to motivate his players and get them to play with passion, and I don't really have much issue with the name calling (that happens everywhere), but the throwing the basketballs is where it just crosses the line for me. You don't get to throw basketballs at 18-22 year olds when you're in a position of authority and make $655K/year.
Fuck this guy, I hope he never coaches in the NCAA again.
Oh yeah of course. My most vivid memory was him coaching in the tourney few years back at KState. You do know no one watches SEC basketball right? :P
Growing up playing sports, I really don't see the problem here. I'm sure there are tons of coaches that do this and I've even dealt with coaches like this when I was about 12. While many people may see it as a problem, I don't think it really is. If it were, wouldn't the players be the ones bringing this to light?
Honestly, seeing some video clips from a practice doesn't entail who this coach is. There is a difference between being a bad coach who is aggressive, and a good coach that is aggressive.
It is really, really hard for a player to bring this to light. The coach can pretty much mess you up for the rest of your playing career. Not everyone is talented enough to just "transfer" to another school and hop on right away. So they're at the mercy of the coaches.
You also can't transfer without sitting out a year.... isn't the NCAA great?
If you think a young college student, who is on a full ride playing a sport they love, is going to tattle on someone in an authority position (especially their head coach, who is likely the reason they're at the school in the first place) for yelling shit at them, you don't understand power dynamics.
I agree that there are tons of coaches that do this type of stuff but that doesn't make it right or not a big deal. I have less of a problem with the being physical and yelling (although you can yell and make your point heard without calling someone a faggot), but as I said earlier the throwing basketballs really just made it clear that this guy is a douche. I can't think of a single instance where I would think it was acceptable for my lacrosse coach to whip balls at us for not doing something correctly during practice.
First of all -- This is way above Bob Knight level of crazy. And knight must have done something correctly because his players were all extremely upset when he was fired. The kids at Rutgers? Not so much.
Second, Rice is an idiot for doing this at all, but even more so because he knew practice was always being recorded.
Well I think his level of crazy may be equivalent, but this guy doesn't have the credential that Knight has.
Quick tangent: The McDonald's All American game is tonight in an hour or so. ANDREW WIGGINS, who many have dubbed the next LeBron, will be putting on a show. Tune in!
I don't think the Bob Knight comparisons are valid at all. Knight was a dick to his players, but he also was a great teacher and most of his players when asked about him said he was a great mentor and they still spoke to him years after playing. The fact that we haven't hear one player defend Rice (as far as I know) shows that he was a dick and not a good teacher.
Well, there's one: http://larrybrownsports.com/basketball/mike-coburn-defends-mike-rice/18…. It almost sounds like he has Stockholm Syndrome though.
This is one of those great times for quotes
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success" - Bruce Feirstein
For Frank, he will be less successful and this will lead to underperformance of all of his players.
IF you look at knight his psychotic coaching style would throw him into an insane/mental rehabilitation facility if he wasn't winning games. The physicality, throwing of chairs, etc etc. Is both likely part of his success and also ultimately, a lot of controversy.
Overall, IMHO, it makes more sense for people to motivate each other positively. IE: not being abrasive, angry and cussing people out being physical etc because it creates an increasingly stressful environment and instead you want to create a positive feed back loop.... caveat is that stress can also be an incredible motivator and no doubt the guys who played for this crazy ass Coach Knight were stressed and ready to give everything they got.
So at the end of the day, IMHO, draw the line at physicality and throwing chairs, but again extreme people are successful people. The people who take things to the extremes are generally successful (or labeled insane because they get caught up in a different world and fail miserably), Steve Jobs was nuts, all those guys on the Jersey shore are actually pretty nuts, all the dictators of the world (nuts).
Anyway. As they say the best revenge is success.
With that said this guy is a D-bag compared to Coach K.
Fuck this guy, he's a degenerate. (jokingly overreaction) I've played basketball since I was four and I have never seen anything like this. The belittlement and degradation that these players endured is unbelievable, and I cannot see how anyone could find this strategy effective. It is as simple as that.
Even given the fact that he is a statistical outlier from the rest of us normal humans, Rutgers had not performed particularly well to justify his coaching style. He never led them to above .500, albeit the Big East is a power Conference. But the fact of the matter is he is nothing like Bobby Knight--Knight was a legend. This man is not.
Anyone remember that ESPN analyst's son that got Mike Leach fired at Texas Tech?
Yeah, and when Leach got fired there were dozens of players who came out publicly and defended him. Doesn't look like that's gonna happen here, although one player did and there's still time.
Not saying it's the same thing, but I just watched a clip of practice drills from my favorite college football team. The coaches were shoving players, cursing at them, the players were cursing, coaches in players' faces, players in other players' faces. It was intense. It was awesome! If the same university's basketball coach had done that or allowed that same kind of atmosphere they'd call him Mike Rice...
I think the reality is this--the administration saw some of these clips and determined that it was bad but that high major, high stakes athletics is intense. I think when it came out that Rice was caught on tape calling someone a "fcking faggot" it was a bridge too far because the administration knew that it would set off a firestorm among the politically correct crowd that would ultimately lead to his termination. I've been around the block too often to not see what the reality of Rice's firing is.
How many people have seen an MD like this?
lol, since most of these guys will probably end up doing investment banking, seems like he might be providing them with a helpful preview.
If that dumbass spoke to me like that, or threw a ball at me like that, I'd lay him the fuck out.
Tonight college basketball coaches nationwide are burning practice tapes. In all seriousness though he had to be fired for being on tape calling kids fucking faggots, especially after the school had the gay kid kill himself a couple years ago. In reality I think its blown way out of proportion because the "abuse" covers a 2 year period and there are maybe 3-4 clips that make you cringe.
Agreed 100%. It was the public disclosure of that derogatory comment that ultimately got him fired. Over 200 or so practices over 2 seasons the kind of stuff on the tape was nothing to necessarily write home about.
I also agree with your "air fingers quotes" regarding "abuse". I mean, the coach was definitely out of line, but he's a middle aged guy shoving 6'6", 280 lbs college students. There's a pretty high bar for physical abuse of players. However, as I understand it, the verbal abuse was pretty intense.
This guy was a scumbag clean and clear.
There is no excuse for this guy's behavior, such as "it was extra motivation, etc."
There are tons of great coaches in the world of NCAA basketball that would never even THINK OF LAYING A FINGER on their players.
I'm just glad that these practices are recorded; it should mitigate this kind of behavior in the future. Student athletes are of course fearful of losing their playing careers if they tattle, so they don't.
Practices are recorded by the coaching staff for the purpose of analysis. These practices weren't being recorded for the purposes of monitoring the coaching staff.
Do you want to be the kind of coach that builds players up or the kind of coach that tears them down?
Watching the tape of this guy really pissed me off. The only thing I have to wonder is how he he made it so far as a coach.
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