Why do universities coddle abusive coaches like CSU’S Larry Eustachy?
Colorado State University has spent the past four years demonstrating why coaches who impose a culture of intimidation and abuse at their institutions often have little reason to stop.
Their complacency is rational and based upon experience. Even when a coach’s behavior is outrageous, extensive and long-standing, his employer is likely to postpone the day of reckoning beyond all reason and then, when it has no choice but to act, to treat the tyrant with kid gloves rather than simply boot him out the door.
CSU’S behavior follows this indulgent
pattern. Even with clear evidence that Larry Eustachy, the men’s basketball coach, violated terms of a 2014 agreement that saved his job after an official finding that he emotionally and verbally abused his players and coaches as well as threw alarming tantrums — even with such evidence in hand, CSU couldn’t bring itself to terminate Eustachy for cause.
Instead, the university rewrote his contract and allowed him to resign as a “special assistant to the athletic director,” to pocket the remaining installments on his million-dollar salary through June 30, and to receive $750,000 over the next two years rather than be thrown out the door without an additional cent.
No less galling, the new agreement, according to the Fort Collins-based Coloradoan, prevents “either party from making any comments which disparage or reflect negatively upon the other.”
In other words, the deal prevents CSU from telling the truth about its coach.
This to protect a man whom the university established in an investigation four years ago would tell assistant coaches to “shut the f--- up” and call players “f-----g c--ts,” a man whose anger would propel him into throwing unopened soda cans, kicking basketballs, and punching and smashing dry erase boards.
This same fellow, despite his formal contrition and pledges to reform, could betray unvarnished contempt for those concerned about his behavior. In a letter dated March 5, 2014, then- athletic director Jack Graham reminded him, “You acknowledged that you made a gesture simulating masturbation when entering the conference room after leaving a meeting in my office … .”
Graham recommended Eustachy be fired and has been vindicated by subsequent events.
The incident triggering Eustachy’s final downfall pivoted, predictably, on outsized rage, namely a “profanity-filled verbal attack at a player during a timeout in a Jan. 17 home game against Air Force” that provoked complaints, according to The Coloradoan. That incident alone — and there were reportedly others behind the scenes — should have been enough for the school to terminate him for cause. After all, he’d been explicitly warned that he must “represent the university in a positive and professional manner” and to “handle conflict and adversity in a manner that maintains the respect and dignity of the individual(s) involved.”
Eustachy was an embarrassment, and yet athletic director Joe Parker expressed gratitude for the coach’s efforts as he was being forced to resign. This is the same department that a year ago insisted, “We stand behind, and are proud of, the environment our athletic department and Coach Eustachy have since created” — since 2014, that is — “for our student-athletes.” Misleading the public over its basketball program had become a habit for CSU.
But the saga points to a larger problem that Coloradoan sports editor Miles Blumhardt touched upon in a recent commentary: Fear and intimidation in a program even as abusive as Eustachy’s is such that those who know what happened largely keep quiet to protect their careers. No doubt that is why a top college athletic official in this state once told me that tyrannical behavior by some football and basketball coaches was one of the most serious unacknowledged issues he had witnessed across college sports.
There are some who would portray Eustachy’s downfall as a tale of old-school coaching values clashing with modern sensibilities. And while it is no doubt true that coaches in the past were more likely to berate and belittle those around them, the idea that this was the prevailing norm is not credible. The line between coaching and cruelty was not discovered in the past 25 years. At my high school in the 1960s, for example, the lone coach prone to crude bullying was widely considered a jerk by many athletes — in part because he was such an outlier.
Yes, a few of Eustachy’s players have defended him. So what? Others in and around the program were clearly appalled by his conduct. Every raging coach, from Indiana Universi- ty’s Bob Knight to Rutgers’ Mike Rice, has had his defenders.
Whistleblowers who document verbal abuse in college athletics should be honored, not blackballed. But why should they believe they will escape unscathed when universities refuse to suppress even the most embarrassing public outbursts of rage by their highestpaid employees? Coaches should be free to bellow at players and game officials — of course — and to be ruthlessly honest in their language. But the sort of tantrums that are particularly prevalent in college football are a disgrace.
Last year, for example, CU football Coach Mike Macintyre — a good guy by most accounts who appears to treat those around him with respect — unleashed a tirade that stunned even the ESPN sideline reporter, a former NFL player.
“Guys, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like this,” the analyst said. “Coach Macintyre has been berating the back judge really for the last five minutes. He’s not even focused on the game right now. All of his attention is on yelling at the back judge. He’s got to find a way to get his head back in this game.”
And that by no means was the first lengthy tantrum by Macintyre in recent years. CU administrators should lay down the law. Uncontrolled rage is not an option for the middle-aged coach of a multimillion-dollar enterprise.
In what other profession, after all, are people free to act like lunatics when things don’t go their way? It’s high time for college athletics to clean up its act.