Fire, passion and visceral reactions are things we want from people in our sports. Well, that is until we don’t like the immediate noises and sounds that come from our picture-box. The latest example/fiasco/pretend scandal is Kevin Stallings yelling at one of his players and screaming curse words.
The curse words are important here. Stallings’ “I will kill you!” remark has resonated with a lot of people in the wrong ways — not with all people mind you, mostly just those who don’t regularly follow sports or know of Stallings as a person, which is also important, because Stallings is thought of in college basketball circles as one of the good guys and a class act — but, apparently, that doesn’t fit the day’s easier takes on the matter.
Sports is a competition at its most basic level: a person or a group of people competing against another person or group of people in the name of whatever is important to them for whichever goals they are looking to obtain. For college athletes, it is a pathway to their “free” education as well as their hopes of eventually making it to the professional level. For coaches, it is their job security and the hopes of having a more lucrative contract down the line. That is not even factoring in the competitiveness gene many of these guys have embedded in their very DNA, one that makes losing worse than getting punched by a walrus in the face. Basically, the stakes are extremely high — even if we don’t want to admit it.
That doesn’t excuse violence in sports or other horrific acts, of course. Still, sports have always been a wee bit different than other everyday parts of society. Any person who has ever participated in any relatively competitive sport has experienced something similar to what Stallings did to his athlete.
Whether it was your high school coach calling out your manhood for missing a key block, a teammate screaming profanities at you for not passing the ball, or the equipment manager telling you stink like a goat who hasn’t showered in 12 days (wait… that’s just me?), these things tend to happen — near daily if not every minute, and none of it is ever meant literally.
We can grasp this, right?
No reasonable soul thinks that Stallings literally wants — or ever truly wanted — to murder one of his players no more so than a player believes that an opponent literally wants to do something nasty to his mom after some trash talking. It is the nature of such high-stakes competition.
Sure, Kevin Stallings could have worded it better, but ignoring the context as to how it all began is more ignorant than laying sole responsibility for the world’s imminent crumbling at the feet of one head coach.
Reportedly, Stallings was notified by one of the opposing team’s assistant coaches that his player was out of control and clapping his hands in the face of a player on another team, which is considered disrespectful and is showing poor sportsmanship. Stallings reacted out of anger, embarrassment and whatever other emotions ran through his body mere moments after the game was over. He did so after a player he has — also reportedly — warned in the past for his iffy behavior had begun acting out again.
Had the cameras not been there, this would have been a non-issue. If transcripts were had of every coaches’ interactions with their players and assistants, the world might as well self-implode. College basketball coaches are notorious micromanagers and hotheads. They use vulgar language as if it were an art form. The silly part of any backlash towards Stallings or any other coach and their antics is that players act the same way. In the simplest terms: It is the culture of the sport.
Not all cultures are worth accepting, obviously. The easiest example is the NFL being violent for violence’s sake and people hurting their bodies for the sake of our entertainment, but this isn’t that. This is a guy showing an emotion we all claim we want to have (being appalled by poor sportsmanship) toward another younger guy who acted up in a way we all claim we hate, yet it was shown on TV and noise accompanied it — good lord!
Thankfully, the backlash to this event has been minimal. Most of the people even bringing this up in a negative way are only complaining about it because it was on TV. If that’s your only gripe — that “you can’t do that on ESPN” — then I think you are doing it wrong.
I mean, are we at the point when we will solely judge things by the exposure they get, or if it is a viral movement or if it is on network TV? Had this game been on some less-watched network, would you be less mad? Because, if so, then shame on you. Be furious over the action if you’re honestly upset by it. Don’t be mad only because it was on ESPN. That’s just silly.
The world is becoming a smaller place with each passing day. Because of that we get closer to things we weren’t afforded the opportunity to be close to before. College basketball coaches using some harsh language is one of those things. If this is your first experience of any sort with anyone in sports losing their marbles in a moment of passion, I just don’t know if I envy or pity you.
Neither, really, but hot takes, lava cakes and opinions, right?
