Whipple missed trial of assault, sports culture
University of Massachusetts football coach Mark Whipple must have been on vacation in the North Pole last week.
It’s the only explanation for why the guy thought it was a good idea to use the word “rape” to describe what he believed was an opponent’s penalty in Saturday’s game.
Sexual assault and football culture were on trial last week during a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The hearing featured the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who described being sexually assaulted at age 15 by Kavanaugh, then a 17-year-old high school football player who, with the help of a football buddy, allegedly pushed her onto a bed, tried to pull her clothes off and covered her mouth when she screamed for help.
Ford choked back tears when she talked about how the attack affected her life, and how she’s still emotionally battered by the memory of Kavanaugh’s heavy body holding hers down and his hand forcefully covering her mouth to muffle her cries for help. To this day, she says she’s haunted by the laughter of Kavanaugh and his friend enjoying her pain.
Answering a press question only two days later about his team’s loss to Ohio, Whipple said, “We had a chance there with 16 down and they rape us … .” “Officiating-wise,” Whipple said, it was “the worst” game he’s ever seen.
Maybe so. But how does a guy get from an on-field infraction to rape? No doubt Whipple felt cheated during the game, but cheating is not rape, and rape is not a game.
Cheating is when something is unfair. Rape is when someone takes violent possession of your body, inside and out, and deprives you of autonomy and bodily integrity. It is, at its core, enslavement, and nothing that happens during rape resembles any aspect of football, except for the fact that football culture seems to be a breeding ground for rapists.
Kathy Redmond of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes wasn’t surprised to hear about Whipple’s remark.
“Studies show that athletes make up a small percentage of the campus population, but are responsible for a disproportionately high number of rapes,” she said, calling football in particular an “especially toxic environment.”
A recent review of data from Baylor University found that 31 football players committed 52 rapes over a four-year period. Not sexual assaults — rapes. Brown University is currently being sued because three football players allegedly gang-raped a woman on campus after she was drugged unconscious, and three Michigan State football players were charged with rape in 2017. The list goes on. Football players themselves admit they have a rape problem. In a survey of football players a few months ago, one-third said there was a “cultural problem” in college football as it relates to sexual assault.
The public outcry after Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was palpable. Many women I spoke to who had also been victimized said they were sobbing listening to her. It was as if someone had turned on a national spigot, allowing the voices of millions of women to pour through Ford’s microphone. But Coach Whipple wasn’t listening. Or maybe he was, which is even more disturbing.
Football is important to American culture, but when a man is held up, rather than held accountable, he may feel entitled to conduct himself without regard for others. Studies show that a sense of entitlement is correlated with high incidence rates of sexual assault.
Of course, football does not cause rape, but men like Coach Whipple, who don’t see any connection, are not helping the problem.