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April 3, 2013 9:03 AM

Rutgers Fires Basketball Coach After Video Goes Public: [New York Times] Rutgers fired Mike Rice, the coach of its men’s basketball team, on Wednesday, a day after a video [ESPN] surfaced showing him berating his players during practices, throwing balls at them, kicking them and taunting them with slurs.
posted by Fizz (66 comments total)

On one hand, good. On the other hand, why does it now take a YouTube video going viral for appropriate action to be taken?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:05 AM on April 3, 2013 [9 favorites]

On the other hand, why does it now take a YouTube video going viral for appropriate action to be taken?

Because until people see wrongdoing taking place, they always interpret spoken and written accounts according to their own biases and desires.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:07 AM on April 3, 2013 [20 favorites]

He should have been fired when the issue came up the first time instead of suspended three games.

He was an assistant coach at my college years back. He was always known to be intense but nobody ever heard of him touching a player. Maybe the power of being a head coach got to his head and intensified his rage problem.

I went to grade school with one of his assistants and really hope things turn out okay for my friend.
posted by moviehawk at 9:08 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

But Rutgers admins first saw the video in November, I thought?
posted by toxtethogrady at 9:09 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I would expect the AD, Pernetti, to be fired soon as well. He sees this video and decides the best course of action is a 3 game suspension? Only after it goes public does he fire the guy. Inconsistent, spineless, and reactive.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 9:10 AM on April 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

they always interpret spoken and written accounts according to their own biases and desires.
yeah, but rutgers had video the whole time. they just chose to not share it, to not share why the coach was suspended, and to give him a slap on the wrist. also, if this is the first the school president has seen of the video, that seems like another failure of the athletic director. it seems pretty clear to me that the AD should be following rice out the door.
posted by nadawi at 9:10 AM on April 3, 2013

or, i guess, the school president could be lying to make pernetti the fall guy.
posted by nadawi at 9:11 AM on April 3, 2013

Obviously the AD should be fired, too, and maybe even the president of the university. Forget even the physical assault and the throwing of the balls, etc. Can you imagine for a second any other university employee screaming "faggot!" and "cunt!" at kids and NOT getting fired?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:11 AM on April 3, 2013 [29 favorites]

Compare with this famous headbutting.
posted by josher71 at 9:14 AM on April 3, 2013

I've been following this for the last day or so, and I am very happy to see that Mr. Rice has been fired.

However, both the AD and the U President looked at this video back in November and thought it warranted a 3 game suspension. That, to me, is absolutely ridiculous and I think they should be shown the door as well.

Absolutely sickening stuff.
posted by kbanas at 9:16 AM on April 3, 2013

Of course, there's other stuff going on here as well. Pernetti played a big part (I think) in getting Rutgers into the Big Ten. He basically made it rain money for Rutgers. We'll see what that buys him.
posted by kbanas at 9:16 AM on April 3, 2013

I realize it's not the same thing at all but this has the stink of Joe Paterno and the politics of university/administration all over it.
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on April 3, 2013

Compare with this famous headbutting.
posted by josher71 at 12:14 PM on April 3 [+] [!]

Not that that is anything resembling civilized behavior, but isn't there a pretty significant difference when the Rutgers incident is at an educational institution and involves minors, rather than a professional team of adult athletes? I think that's the source of some of outrage here.
posted by aught at 9:19 AM on April 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

it should also be noted that murdock (the whistle-blower) didn't get his contract renewed due to "insubordination". hopefully he gets some sort of settlement out of this.
posted by nadawi at 9:19 AM on April 3, 2013 [12 favorites]

Example #10,482 of the complete moral bankruptcy of revenue generating college sports.
posted by marxchivist at 9:20 AM on April 3, 2013 [32 favorites]

Can you imagine for a second any other university employee screaming "faggot!" and "cunt!" at kids and NOT getting fired?

Not to detract from your point, but these aren't kids. They're grown men. Young men, but still.

But a 50,000 dollar fine ? For a guy that makes a couple million a year ? Why didn't they take his birthday away, too ?
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:21 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

And here, friends, is an interview with Rutgers AD Pernetti from ESPN yesterday, where he tries to justify his decisions during this process, and it's an absolute joke.
posted by kbanas at 9:22 AM on April 3, 2013

Vintage Bob Knight would not have survived a week in the YouTube era.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:23 AM on April 3, 2013 [10 favorites]

Also, this tweet from LeBron James is pretty cool:

"If my son played for Rutgers or a coach like that he would have some real explaining to do and I'm still gone whoop on him afterwards! C'mon"
posted by kbanas at 9:24 AM on April 3, 2013 [7 favorites]

Ugh, that interview with Pernetti is full of all kinds of bullshit.
posted by Fizz at 9:26 AM on April 3, 2013

bob knight shouldn't have been given the free reign he was given. the fact that we don't accept that sort of behavior anymore should be seen as a general win for our culture.

and, yes, they're men - 18-21 year olds who are supposedly there for a higher education. they are not professionals. they do not get a pay check. if they get hurt there's no guarantee that the school will pay for it. the system of college athletics, especially the big money getters like basketball and football, is completely fucked. i don't think we need to add turning a blind eye to verbal and physical assault along with it.
posted by nadawi at 9:27 AM on April 3, 2013 [23 favorites]

For a guy that makes a couple million a year?

He doesn't make close to that. Well, didn't.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:27 AM on April 3, 2013

Sports-for-profit culture is sick.
posted by DU at 9:28 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

for anyone that missed it - the whistle-blower is a former nba player - he understands locker rooms and practices and he says this is the worst he's ever seen. maybe that's sour grapes fro getting fired, but i'm inclined to believe him.
posted by nadawi at 9:28 AM on April 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

"If my son played for Rutgers or a coach like that he would have some real explaining to do and I'm still gone whoop on him afterwards! C'mon"

I'm sure a beating from your father would improve on your experience, yes.
posted by thelonius at 9:33 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

A related video from the link that kbanas shared. Mike Rice responds.
posted by Fizz at 9:34 AM on April 3, 2013

and, yes, they're men - 18-21 year olds who are supposedly there for a higher education. they are not professionals. they do not get a pay check.

Not only that, but a lot of these guys probably believe (and have been told so constantly by everyone in their lives and society at large) that sticking with the program is their only hope for a future. Many of these guys may feel like basketball is their only marketable talent. I see that mindset constantly as a high school teacher, and I have to wonder how that affects them later in life.

You have massive incentives--college scholarships, hopes for a pro basketball career, etc--and you have the looming threat of having no future at all if you "blow it." Plus there's the idea that if you "snitch," you're weak. I am not at all surprised that this went on for so long.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:35 AM on April 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

mike rice made just over 650k/year after bonuses - it should also be noted why rutgers separated from their last coach.
posted by nadawi at 9:36 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Because Universities eventually do the right thing, but only after all other possibilities have been exhausted and they believe the outrage will negatively impact their brand and bottom line.

That these Universities fail to see that doing the right thing will positively impact their brand and show that their institution is a place where integrity is encouraged....sigh.
posted by Fizz at 9:43 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

"If my son played for Rutgers or a coach like that he would have some real explaining to do and I'm still gone whoop on him afterwards! C'mon"

I'm sure a beating from your father would improve on your experience, yes.

I had the same reaction on first read, but I think he was saying the coach would have the 'splaining/whooping, not his son.
posted by echo target at 9:45 AM on April 3, 2013 [8 favorites]

"I'm sure a beating from your father would improve on your experience, yes."

I can see how you would read it that way, but I think what he was saying that he would beat the hell out of Mike Rice if Mike Rice was treating his son that way.
posted by kbanas at 9:45 AM on April 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

Either way, I think we can all agree that the best response to physical assault is to find someone to beat up.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:46 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Either way, I think we can all agree that the best response to physical assault is to find someone to beat up.

No, it's not, obviously - but I think the role that it serves that is important is that it's a sanity check. Here we have the best basketball player in the world who has been inside a lot of locker rooms at both the high school and professional level (no college, eh) and he's saying, "This is not OK."

This is someone inside the thing that's saying it's not OK.

It's easy for us - or for me - to sit back and say, "That's not OK!" but hell, I don't know, I don't play ball, maybe that kind of shit is normalized behind closed doors and it's normal and it's accepted and I just don't know it because it's not anything I have any experience with... but here's someone playing at the highest level saying that if it came down to it he would punch this cat in his mouth.

It's not good to answer violence with violence, but it's still telling.
posted by kbanas at 9:49 AM on April 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

Yeah, but he's also Lebron James. He has always been the greatest basketball player in the world, and no coach in his right mind would treat a player like that in such a way. It's a power imbalance -- at some point, you're so good you outrank the coach. I love Lebron but he has no idea what it's like to be a kid who is living on scholarship on a team that is going nowhere. These kids had no power, and that is one of the real tragedies here. They couldn't complain to anyone (off the team), they couldn't quit (lose scholarship), they couldn't transfer (sit out a year). They were stuck, and had to take it. When the power imbalance is that great, abuse is more likely to crop up.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:55 AM on April 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

If it weren't terribly unfair to the women's team, I would say they should bring over C. Vivian Stringer as head coach. I guarantee she doesn't deal in that kind of nonsense, and winning 900 games is nothing to sneeze at either.
posted by epj at 10:11 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not that that is anything resembling civilized behavior, but isn't there a pretty significant difference when the Rutgers incident is at an educational institution and involves minors, rather than a professional team of adult athletes? I think that's the source of some of outrage here.

Agreed. It was just the first coach on athlete violence that I thought of, and had no consequences for the perpetrator. But, I don't want to derail.
posted by josher71 at 10:11 AM on April 3, 2013

If you want to coach like he coached, you should also be a good coach who wins tons of games and brings a championship win to the school. Tough coaches are a part of the sport, I guess. But what do I know, I'm a musician.
posted by ReeMonster at 10:19 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

But guys, you just don't understand. These kids are finely honed, single-minded sports machines, athletically gifted to an insane degree. And athletically gifted is much more meaningful than academically gifted, whatever that means, multiple kinds of intelligence, different strokes, blah blah blah. To deprive a team of the crucial coaching support they rely on so utterly, when they're giving 110% of their all on the court each and every day, during this vital and vulnerable time, is to do a massive and hugely unfair disservice to the Rutgers men's basketball program, the noble sport of basketball, and each of the individual kids themselves. It's as though you have personally taken each of these young men, taken their futures and crushed them underfoot like the first fragile flowers of spring, all in the unbalanced pursuit of your own abstract ideals. Why do you gotta hate sports and also people so much?
posted by Nomyte at 10:21 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I once had a manager who had been a college sports star. He honestly believed he should be able to shout and hurl things at employees because that is what his coaches had done and it had worked right? It made him a college sports god so it should work just as well for people who neglected to file the right reports or clock in at 9 on the dot. He eventually got fired for assaulting another minor exec he had some kind of power struggle with.

I think the effects on kids who are treated this way for years by coaches is probably much greater than we think. This guy's conflict resolution skills and the way he treated subordinates was way way off. It might have worked for him if he had stayed in sports, but not all these kids can.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:24 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, to be fair, their record *was* 14-18 last year... ;-)
posted by markkraft at 10:28 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

All the strong universities near Princeton have benefited from Princeton's nasty practice of hiring faculty for tenure track jobs but not giving them tenure unless they win a fields medal, nobel prize, etc. So seriously smart cookies buy their house near Princeton but ultimately lose their job five years down the line. As they're now settled, they take professorships at Rutgers, Philly, etc., improving these schools PhD programs, etc. It's shameful Rutgers' moronic administration wishes to grow athletics at expense of academics, squandering their geographic opportunity.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:59 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I recently finished grad school at Rutgers, and I can confirm that the administration there defers to the athletic department to a disgusting degree. Essentially, the football team was good for a very brief period, and the school decided that it was going to transform itself into an athletic powerhouse. They started throwing money at the athletic department at the expense of academics - while all academic departments were being asked to shed staff, Rutgers build a huge new football stadium, and routinely puts its players and coaches up in a hotel the night before their home games.

Then, oops! The player who was carrying the football team to glory graduated. Oh well. So now we have an athletic department with the outsized influence on campus of a Duke or a Penn State, without even the record to match.
posted by Ragged Richard at 11:07 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

This was my experience through high school and college football in the 1990s. I honestly thought that's what (football) coaches *did*.
posted by unixrat at 11:07 AM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

But what do I know, I'm a musician.

I've seen plenty of young people verbally abused in musical settings, too, unfortunately. Music is a performance setting, as is sports, and when coaches/conductors/teachers/etc. are depending upon a young person's performance for the adult's own competitive efforts to be successful, bad things often result.

I had to face this tendency myself in my very first year teaching when, in my sixth-grade band rehearsal I found myself berating a kid for not playing a (really pretty important) drum part correctly, the day before we were due to perform at a very public, rated festival. Of course, the verbal berating I delivered was exceptionally mild compared to what we're talking about here, but still, I was being hard on an 11-year-old in front of a room full of his closest peers, and inadvertently making him feel like he was the reason we were not going to do well at festival the next day. Which was completely untrue, and besides, he really was trying his best, and besides that, it's only a festival performance (that will have the performance ratings of my students, the professional judgment of my ability to coach these musicians well displayed very publicly). So my emotional state about performing well at this public event had everything to do with me and how my abilities as a conductor/teacher/coach would be judged, and not with the artistic/technical/social/etc. development of the young people I was leading.

That was a very, very important wake-up call for me as a teacher and leader in a performance medium (much like a coach of a team sport). For people in those roles, who teach students from elementary school age up through college, it is very, very easy to allow your desire to succeed to emotionally trump your focus on each student's development and welfare (as a musician, athlete, human being, all of it), especially because you are powerless to control what they actually do in the moment of performance/competition. It can make you crazy, that ultimately all you have is influence and no control, even though your abilities will be judged (fairly and unfairly) by the result. I will be forever grateful that I learned this lesson vividly and powerfully very early in my own teaching/conducting career, and that it was learned through a mild incident.

Mike Rice clearly never learned some basic lessons about being a teacher and the reasons he was working with those young men in the first place, and I am sorry his students had to endure such abusive treatment. I personally have been coached to wild heights of frothing-at-the-mouth enthusiasm and commitment and effort by individuals who never raised their voices at all, nor insulted or berated me in any way. When winning (or success of any metric) becomes more important than the welfare of the individuals involved, some very basic values are backwards. Unfortunately, I just described too much of student athletics at all levels, and a whole lot of other competitive student activities as well.

The question I think that many people seeing this story now have about Rutgers as an institution is: do you value more highly the success of your basketball program or the welfare and educational experience of your students? I hope it's one they answer well going forward.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:13 AM on April 3, 2013 [24 favorites]

On one hand, good. On the other hand, why does it now take a YouTube video going viral for appropriate action to be taken?

Wrong question. A better question is, in how many places and for how many years did shit like this get repeated before YouTube was an option?

Ubiquitous video recording is one of those rare double-edged swords that actually evens the balance of power rather than exacerbates bit.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:16 AM on April 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

seen plenty of young people verbally abused in musical settings, too

oh hell yes. jr. high band director routinely threw music stands towards us and flung his baton into groups of students, and then screaming at us that we broke his baton or stand with our terrible playing. and like, this was a tiny school that wasn't competitive at all.
posted by nadawi at 11:16 AM on April 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

Rutgers president says:
"[Last fall] the university hired an independent investigator to look into this matter thoroughly. Based on the external investigator's findings and recommendations, Tim and I agreed that Coach Rice should be suspended" etc., and then:
"Yesterday, I personally reviewed the video evidence, which shows a chronic and pervasive pattern of disturbing behavior. I have now reached the conclusion" etc.

Oh right, so he never earlier looked at the video evidence of behavior so questionable they talked to lawyers and hired an external investigator?

What a weasel that man is. If I were a Rutgers parent, I'd be calling for his resignation as well as the AD's. I do have a 17-yo son, and I would be furious, sickened, to find out he had been regularly exposed to that kind of misogynistic and homophobic language from an authority figure, even setting aside the physical abuse.

My god. Is it really too much to communicate to all faculty/staff, if you ever call a student a faggot or a cunt you'll be fired, good-bye, no discussion? Even if you only do it, say, once? Rutgers admin really needed to call in an independent investigator to help them make this judgment call, and even then they couldn't get it right?
posted by torticat at 11:54 AM on April 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

The AD and the President really need to get sacked.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:56 AM on April 3, 2013

Nadawi- that's a feel I know well. I've had the pleasure of dodging a few batons, including one that I caught and then kept to this day. Go ahead and tell the office I stole it, and how exactly I got ahold of it, that oughta be interesting! The guy calmed down a bit after that. Community college was great too, that guy you could at least see where the attitude came from (he played with Buddy Rich at one point.) There's this attitude with music (and I'm certain it's the same in sports) that the kids are lazy and not going to hit anywhere near their full potential without vigorous coaching. And that might be true in a lot of cases: it's a fine line though between achieving that and being an abusive asshole, though. One of the reasons I was never interested in music ed as a career.
posted by mcrandello at 11:57 AM on April 3, 2013

kudos to LooseFilter. What an important insight that is.
posted by thelonius at 12:22 PM on April 3, 2013

The AD and the President really need to get sacked.

Even then, they won't learn anything.

I got to attend a panel discussion about an academic scandal (fake classes for athletes) featuring some of the participants, both from the university and the media. The withholding of the information by the school became almost as much a scandal as what was done in the first place. When someone asked the former AD of the University what he had learned from this, and what he would do differently, he said: "I had to develop some principles to keep in mind during this process. The first principle was: Keep in mind what is best for the school."

That last statement really summed up why there was a problem in the first place. No regard for the academic integrity of the entire institution, nothing about following the law. Just stonewalling, covering their butts and hoping it would go away. All their efforts just kept it in the news longer and spent a whole lot of the university's and the public's money. College men's football and basketball make me sick.
posted by marxchivist at 12:29 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

The only difference between this guy and Bobby Knight is that Bobby Knight brought home championships. This guy would still have a job if Rutgers won some titles.
posted by Renoroc at 12:39 PM on April 3, 2013

Linked youtube video is now private.

But the video in the ESPN article linked to by the OP works.
posted by czytm at 1:34 PM on April 3, 2013

I'm honestly surprised no one fights back (in any of these stories--the Rutgers thing or these other anecdotes about batons and music stands). My lord, if someone shoved me or hit me with a baton or a music stand or anything like that, I would probably respond in kind, and likely in an unchecked and possibly even higher-order-of-magnitude-level manner.

I'm not saying I'm the better man for it; rather, it's a huge flaw. I'm perfectly fine in verbal altercations, but when people touch me (much less shove or throw objects at me, I react badly.

I'm just surprised none of these kids have ever snapped and punched 'em in the dick.
posted by exlotuseater at 2:31 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Many of these guys may feel like basketball is their only marketable talent. I see that mindset constantly as a high school teacher, and I have to wonder how that affects them later in life.

You must watch Hoop Dreams. That's basically the narrative idea.
posted by dhartung at 2:33 PM on April 3, 2013

The thing that really strikes me is this angry little midget is shoving around people that could easily, effortlessly destroy him. These kids all have a foot and a half and 100 pounds on this little jerk. I guess they're all thinking "well, stomping this munchkin's dick in the dirt would be satisfying, but I'm sacrificing any future career in the NBA I might have".
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:36 PM on April 3, 2013

One less maniacal asshole bully shit-canned? Good. Fuck him. Watching that video, I couldn't help but think, "This is only the basketball court - I wonder how he is OFF the court." The other thing I couldn't help but think is now that he's not coaching, what other sector of life will be be a part of where he can go around being a dick bully?
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:49 PM on April 3, 2013

Either way, I think we can all agree that the best response to physical assault is to find someone to beat up.

I expect you'll agree that that's a prejudicial and inaccurate way to put it.

Nobody's advocating "find[ing] someone else to beat up."

People here have only advocated punching (not even "beating up") the assailant.

And not only is that permissible, it might even be obligatory.

Dude needs a punch upside his head, and the world would be a better place for it. There is no number of well-I-nevers that will do the trick here.

And I say this as someone who very much does not care for violence, and avoids it when reasonably possible.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 3:18 PM on April 3, 2013

And I say this as someone who very much does not care for violence, and avoids it when reasonably possible.
posted by Fists O'Fury

Really?
posted by notreally at 4:17 PM on April 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

And I say this as someone who very much does not care for violence, and avoids it when reasonably possible.
posted by Fists O'Fury

Really?
posted by notreally at 4:17 PM on April 3 [+] [!]

No, not really.
posted by orrnyereg at 4:24 PM on April 3, 2013 [12 favorites]

As much as I'd like to see him get a good beat-down, I don't think it would solve anything (duh, right?). I wrote about a violent bully I encountered when I was 13-14 years old. The guy lived with my mother and displayed the same crazy shit this guy displayed on a daily basis. Getting humiliated on top of a good beat-down did wonders for my worldview at the time. So when I see assholes like that, my blood boils. I want revenge in my gut but my head knows I can't have it.

Also, watching his interview after his suspension made me think he is a bit off in the head; like there some cray-cray going on. If he truly wants to change like he said he did, hopefully it's sooner rather than later and he gets some serious psychological help.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 4:53 PM on April 3, 2013

My high school coach was the most soft-spoken guy ever. The team respected him and he got us to work hard. We also did very well. I'm grateful I had him as a role model and not the Rutgers coach.
posted by zippy at 6:24 PM on April 3, 2013

In Roy Keane's autobiography, he tells the tale of being being transferred from lowly Cork to mighty Nottingham Forest, then managed by Brian Clough. Clough is a legend in soccer management.

In Keane's first game, a pre-season warm-up, he played a cross-field pass in front of the penalty box - a cardinal sin in soccer. The pass was intercepted and the opposition scored.

After the final whistle, as the team trooped into the changing room. The moment that Keane entered the room, Clough punched him straight in the face.

Keane went onto become a true giant of the EPL. A violent one.
posted by devious truculent and unreliable at 2:50 AM on April 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, the release of this video lead to the following incident on the Sean Hannity show. Turns out this kind of abuse leads to Fox New correspondents. (Jump to 1:24 for the meat.)
posted by benito.strauss at 10:36 PM on April 4, 2013

Tim Pernetti, the Rutgers Athletic Director has resigned.
posted by plastic_animals at 11:51 AM on April 5, 2013

Mad Men: Why Fox News and Former Players Defend Former Rutgers Coach Mike Rice

I don’t doubt the sincerity of these players at all. I do think their synchronicity with the Hannity and Bolling crowd speaks volumes about how bullies and the bullied can define their lives by the same logic and come to same rationalization: it’s necessary. We recognize this behavior in battered women that defend their husbands. We are loath to recognize it in youth sports although the similarities are glaring. These are young men raised in a highly lucrative prep-to-pros-pipeline where authority is never questioned, abuse is expected and corruption is inevitable.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:40 AM on April 9, 2013