CNN: Athletes allege abuse and racism at University of Illinois

[BleedGopher]

per CNN:

Nearby, at the university's Memorial Stadium, some members of the football team say they were being harassed too. They recalled two instances where players were physically hit by their coach.

Another player, with Type 1 diabetes, said he was shamed about his weight.

CNN has spoken to 15 recently departed players on the football and women's basketball teams, and they allege a wide range of misconduct and persistent bullying of athletes by coaches.

In addition, players and their families have complained to CNN that they were pressured to play through injuries that go far beyond the typical tough nature of college sports. In one case, a women's basketball player says she was forced to play with an injured toe that ended up being diagnosed as a broken foot. Athletes on the football team also complained that injuries were not taken seriously -- one recalling a time when coaches threatened from the sidelines that he would lose his scholarship as he limped across the field with a knee injury.

Overall, students and parents on both teams say there was a culture of coaches bullying students, with frequent threats to take away their scholarships even though university policy says an athlete can't lose his or her scholarship because of injury or performance in sport.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/07/us/illinois-athletics-allegations/

Go Gophers!!

 

[#2Gopher]

Not good...

 

[GoodasGold]

If they were only paid more, they wouldn't have all these complaints.

 

[Ole]

The women's basketball stuff is terrible, that will get sorted out pretty severely with all those players on record.
As for football,
Beckman is an idiot and a toolbag. He should never had been hired.
Everyone at Toledo knew Matt Campbell was the better coach.
That AD has made some awful decisions for them. I would expect heads to start rolling soon.

 

[GopherSOB]

"If they were only paid more, they wouldn't have all these complaints."

How true, and I can't help but to think that the lectures these students have been force fed from the likes of Bill Ayers might also have something to do with the culture around the U of Illinois.

 

[MNVCGUY]

The bullying and abuse by coaches in football and other sports is the old school way of doing things that is gradually being forced out of the game as players now have ways to get their story out there that didn't exist in the past. You also are seeing a generation of kids that understand that they don't have to be belittled and abused by coaches and just take it like they would have in the past.

The hard part now is finding that middle ground where the players still respect and listen to the coaches without having to live in fear of them.

 

[LakerFan]

What I find strange is that they refer to a lot of vague racism. He said "something" about West Side Chicago and it "felt" like a slur. The one time they offered up a quote: Divilbiss made a comment about three black players sitting together at a restaurant, saying, "All the black girls are sitting together, that's segregated." Sounds like a poor attempt at humor and guy is probably an ass but not ready to label him a racist based on that quote. The old coach gets fired, if the team had been playing well unlikely he gets canned in the first place and the talent level of the players is going to be questioned by the new coach not taken as fact that they are better than any new recruits he brings in. It isn't racism to bench the recruits from the former coach and play your recruits over them. It isn't unlikely that those benched players would be a cancer and a poison to the team regardless of race. It isn't racism when 4 non starting upper classmen quit. In a way it's an insidious form of racism to automatically assume that since the new coach is white and the leaving players are black that it must be racism.

4 of the 10 remaining rostered players are black including 3 of 7 underclassmen. Doesn't quite match the picture of the predominantly white team that the new coach recruited. Kennedy Cattenhead So, Jaelyne Kirkpatrick Fr, Cierra Rice Fr.

Is it likely these 4 kids were treated poorly? Yes. Is it likely the coach preffered for them to leave to open up scholarships for new recruits? Yes. Does that happen all the time in collegiate athletics regardless of race? Yes. This story is as slanted as saying that the exiting "black" coach gave scholarships only to "black" kids because he hated white people and felt white girls had a racial bias and cultural background not conducive to playing basketball. There is no evidence given to support either claim.

 

[denguegopher]

I can see why coaches in the NFL want injured players to play, because there are so few of them available for each game. In fact, I heard Brian Billick say about an NFLer, "he's everything a coach wants in a player, he plays hurt..." I think that it made Billick sound like a jerk, but I'm sure that I'm somewhat ignorant to the culture. In college where many more suit up for games it seems that an uninjured 2nd stringer would be more effective than an injured starter, at least in many cases -unless injured players are shot up with pain killers and play, which risks worse injury. I ramble....