Now that both Rutgers mens basketball coach Mike Rice and Athletic Director Tim Pernetti have been removed from their respective positions, their dismissals provide the sports-world an interesting story on many different levels. The most obvious might be how harshly people have responded toward Rice after watching him belittle and throw basketballs at his players in order to improve mental toughness. In the past, coaches using Rice’s authoritarian, bully-style have been tolerated — if not revered (see Bob Knight). Today things are very different as seen in the case of Rice, where sports writers and the like immediately called for his head – and he was fired a day later.
New coaching standards?
There are apparently new norms the media has set with respect to proper, pro-social behavior expected from coaches. Don’t get me wrong, I also agree that swift action needed to be taken, but I am surprised at how many writers have not only aggressively gone after Rice, but also his AD and even the Rutgers school president. In fact, I would not be shocked if somebody out there has already blogged about shutting down all of Rutgers because of this incident. Some in the media would probably like to see Rice on death row, or at least that’s the way it feels reading many of these columns.
Viral media impact
But there is an even more interesting sport sociology angle to what is happening, and that is the impact of social media and speed-of-light “viral” communication. Just a few years ago you would have probably not only missed the video, but likely wouldn’t have even heard about Rice’s practices. If this were the year 2003, Rice and Pernetti would still be employees at Rutgers.
Today’s sports media is a lot about sensationalism and “clicks,” and I know this to be true from personal experience writing for publications who have so much as told me how to create a title/headline flashy enough to garner tons of clicks on the story. You see, more clicks = greater advertising revenue, and the thinking by some media outlets is to push the envelope as far as humanly possible, because the more dramatic stories get the attention. Yes, this is a troubling media communication model, as it tears away at the integrity of stories and leads to countless consequences based almost entirely on public opinion, and not necessarily the crime itself. Just think, would you have clicked on a story that was titled “Basketball coach at Rutgers goes too far – needs better coach education”? Pretty “vanilla,” and probably wouldn’t get nearly the clicks as a more angry headline.
Again, to be clear, I felt Mike Rice should have been removed from his job, and that his actions at Rutgers were reprehensible. But I also feel like the sports media and independent bloggers out there (of which I am a part) often go for the strongest, most vivid, most dramatic, and most damaging angles when constructing their opinion pieces. Thus far, I haven’t come across any mild, objective, inquisitive articles about Mike Rice and his coaching style short of this one. Rather than going for the jugular of Mike Rice, it would be nice if more attention were paid to coaching styles and helping better train coaches to lead their athletes in more appropriate, safer, and effective ways. Unfortunately, that type of angle isn’t very sensational, and therefore unlikely to sell magazines and newspapers — which is exactly why you won’t see many of those types of stories in the future, unfortunately.
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