Mike Rice, former Rutgers University basketball coach was fired from his job this past week shortly after a video was made public showing him berating players during practice, throwing basketballs at them, kicking them and taunting them with vulgar language including homophobic slurs.
I’m not a therapist, but it’s not unusual for a coach to have personal problems at home and, without realizing he was doing it, taking it out on his players. They call this “misdirected anger” and many of us have been responsible for similar behavior in our personal lives. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making excuses for Coach Rice’s performance because what he did was 100% wrong. But there’s a lesson to be learned, and this is, if we don’t confront an issue head-on and resolve it, or begin the process of resolving it, it will only fester and show up in unexpected ways, such as how we interact with other people in our lives.

Rice’s behavior has conjured up memories of Bobby Knight when Knight was fired as head basketball coach at Indiana University in 2000, shortly after a tape appeared to show him putting his hands on a player’s neck. But here’s the thing about Coach Knight. He genuinely cared about his players as human beings first and then as athletic performers, and when players sense that their coach genuinely cares about them and loves them, they’ll not only play their hearts out for him but they’ll also allow him to do almost anything to them, including putting his hands on their necks. And how did they know he genuinely cared about them? Most sports fans know that Knight had one of the highest team graduation rates in the country. But few knew that if a player had used up his four years of eligibility and still had not graduated, Knight paid the fifth year out of his own pocket. How’s that for sending a clear message to your players that you care about them.