The end of the coaching bully
Why are abusive coaches like Gregg Marshall still allowed in this business?
This story is free. For full access to The Rebound, subscribe today for $7/month or $70 for the year.
Gregg Marshall should be done.
I know what he’s accomplished at Wichita State. I know what he’s done for that program. I know how close he is with the Koch Brothers, and how important their influence is in that athletic department.
I get it.
But there is not a single coach in college basketball that should be able to survive the allegations that were levied against him on Thursday night. (C.J. Moore and Dana O’Neil of The Athletic first reported that Marshall was being investigated, a few hours before Jeff Goodman of Stadium dropped this bombshell of a story.)
I’m going to encourage you to go read those stories yourselves, because the reporting is so good it deserves your click. But the gist of the allegations, via Goodman’s story, are:
Marshall punched Morris in the head during a practice in October of 2015. “I love my teammates, the city and Wichita State,” said Morris, who played at Wichita State from 2014-18. “But if I could go back to that day when he punched me, I would have left.”
Marshall choked Lindsted, then a Shockers assistant coach, at a practice during the 2016-17 season, sources said. Lindsted, now an assistant at Minnesota, declined comment.
Marshall taunted junior forward Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler, who is of Native American descent, “to get back on his horse” and made “Indian howling noises” while in practice during the 2018-19 season.
Marshall body-shamed a former player by lifting his shirt up during a practice in the 2015-16 season, grabbing the player’s stomach and then mocking the player’s girth.
Of the 36 players and coaches Stadium interviewed, only Morris and former Wichita State guard Ty Taylor agreed to be identified for this report. The remaining individuals, who corroborated the allegations against Marshall, said they feared retribution and possible community backlash because of Marshall’s support and power in Wichita.
This kind of bullying and mental warfare has absolutely no place in a college basketball program, and while I do believe that just about every well-meaning, socially-adjusted human on this planet would agree with me, Billy Clyde Gillispie is still coaching.
You remember him, right?
Billy Clyde is the former UTEP, Texas A&M, Kentucky and Texas Tech head coach. He was fired by Texas Tech after another Goodman exposé, in which he dug up serious allegations of mistreatment and NCAA rule-breaking. I reported on Billy Clyde for NBC Sports back in March — you can read that story here — and included some never-before-reported stories from his past.
Put succinctly, Billy Clyde was, is and always will be a sadistic piece of shit.
Allowing him to be in charge of young adults is heinous.
But the reason that I had to write that story in March was because Billy Clyde got himself another job.
He’s now the head coach at Tarleton State, a transitional Division I program in Texas whose athletic director understands the value in finding a coach that can win while under-resourced. Billy Clyde may be a sociopath, but he wins.
So he got another job.
Mike Rice, the former Rutgers head coach that was exposed for being verbally and physically abusive towards his platers, finished 12th, 11th and 13th in the Big East in his three seasons with Rutgers. He is currently coaching in the high school ranks.
See how that works?
Back in 2019, during the NCAA tournament, a clip of Tom Izzo lighting up freshman Aaron Henry on the bench went viral.
Remember this?
It became one of the talking points during the week leading into the Final Four, with everyone from Stephen A. Smith to Jay Williams to Skip Bayless weighing in with their take. We talked about that as much as we talked about anything else.
The problem with the direction that the public discourse took was that it ignored the most important variable in all of this: The relationships.
Tom Izzo loves his players. Talk to anyone that has been in or around the Michigan State program and they will agree. I’d argue that it borders on being a fault of his — the Travis Walton case, specifically, comes to mind — but Izzo’s players know that he genuinely, deeply cares for them. That he wants to get the best out of them. That he wants them to get the most out of life.
That’s why they accept the screaming, because they have a strong enough relationship with Izzo that A) they know it’s coming from a good place, and B) they can motherfuck him right back and everything will be OK. That’s the culture that he’s instilled in East Lansing. It’s worked.
The same can be said about guys like Bobby Huggins, or Frank Martin, or John Calipari. Many of Jim Calhoun’s players despised him while they were playing for him. They love him now. When UConn won titles in 2011 and 2014, all of the alumni were back, smiling and laughing and telling stories about the crazy shit that Calhoun did back in the day.
It’s all about the relationships.
It’s all about how those words are received by the person they are directed at.
Breaking balls can turn into bullying if the recipient isn’t a friend, if they are the joke instead of being in on the joke. Flirting can turn into sexual harassment when the advances are not welcomed.
And coaching hard can turn into something much more problematic when your players don’t believe you love them.
Gregg Marshall didn’t love his players.
No one is going to rally to his defense.
Here’s to hoping he’s coached his last basketball game.
Not only should he be fired, he should be arrested and/or given a show cause penalty.