Tyler Summitt out as basketball coach

[Amy in AZ.]

Perhaps the only person that did Tyler a favor was the coach that cut him from the basketball team. ???

 

[GunnerShotgun]

Not really sure what age has to do with any of this.

I wish people would keep their morals out of sports.

 

[djcarter1966]

and what does morals have to do with it, nobody would have cared (but his wife) if he picked up a girl at the bar...this was with a player he coached!!

 

[Momo'sDad]

Not really sure what age has to do with any of this.

I wish people would keep their morals out of sports.

Paying one's dues over a long period of time is no guarantee that they'll do the right thing. Fair enough.

I highly disagree with your second suggestion, however. Consenting adults have the right to do whatever they want. Agreed. But one does not become a moralist (the negative, "I'm better than you" type) for saying that it's wrong for coaches to have inappropriate relationships with their players. Besides, it's a public university. Therefore, the public has a say.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

I have to wonder how many people knew about this? She (her name has been published) transferred, to go with him, when he got this job. She even sat out a year.

 

[chinamigarden]

The only fact I know for certain is that he didn't earn his job the same way most of us have to.

While there is a lot of inherited wealth in this country, one of the things I've learned about many self-made successes is that they *won't* give lots of cash to their children to set them up with cozy adult lifestyles. They KNOW that trial builds character. We can say that infidelity (which he has admitted to) is a different kind of character trait than work ethic, but it's still about character.

If he and his young wife had been traveling small town to small town throughout the South, trying to find work with a baby on the way, and if he'd managed to find a place where he was able to coach junior high and high school in back-to-back seasons during the school year, while selling shoes during the off-season, things might have been different. If he'd spent years at the high school level, while his wife worked to build her practice in some small, out-of-the-way town....if they'd had to get a small, personal loan - "just this once Mom, I swear, please don't tell Dad" - from his mom to keep the electricity on....if she'd called her dad to ask for a couple cases of baby formula, because child #2 turned out to be a big eater...if they'd ever gone through any sort of real struggle TOGETHER, he probably would've had a lot less interest in stepping out on his wife.

But no. They gave a 23-year-old kid with very little experience a job paying $175,000/year - plus a country club membership - in a town where the median income is $25,000.

It's my opinion that the University did a tremendous disservice to this young man by hiring him and that a more conservative approach to their selection would have been warranted. As for Mr. Summitt, I cannot blame him for taking advantage of what he was gifted, but this does serve as a cautionary tale against giving kids too much.

When you do not earn it, you don't appreciate it nearly as much. And yes, the same goes for ANY sort of gifted entitlement.

He had sex with a player. That's not taking advantage of what he was gifted. It was taking advantage of someone he had authority over. Regardless of how he got this job. Regardless of whether the school made a poor choice he is responsible for this gross misconduct his and his alone.

 

[JJsqueeze]

He had sex with a player. That's not taking advantage of what he was gifted. It was taking advantage of someone he had authority over. Regardless of how he got this job. Regardless of whether the school made a poor choice he is responsible for this gross misconduct his and his alone.

This is a 25 year old guy who had sex with a 22 year old (approximate ages based on some hearsay) and by that same hearsay it was completely consensual, poor judgement and he did commit adultery, but jeez, he is not exactly Bill Cosby here. There is no evidence he took advantage of anyone that I read. Not everything is coercive, if this was a baseball player having sex with a female conditioning coach no one would notice. College age women are not a group of poor defenseless critters that can't make informed (albeit wrong) decisions about who they hook up with. Yes he should have respected his position and not acted on any urges, but damn...the guy is 25. If I had a dime for every dumb rear hookup I had at 25 I would have almost a dollar.

 

[JJsqueeze]

ok...30 cents but the point holds

 

[Momo'sDad]

He had sex with a player. That's not taking advantage of what he was gifted. It was taking advantage of someone he had authority over. Regardless of how he got this job. Regardless of whether the school made a poor choice he is responsible for this gross misconduct his and his alone.

The "advantage" comment had nothing to do with the other woman. It was in response to the claim that he'd "done well for himself", which seemed to imply that his position had been....earned.

I see this as a major betrayal of trust: of his wife, of his family, of his employers, and of the coach-player relationship. For obvious reasons, I'm not in position to judge his relationships with his wife and family, but I hold the coach-player relationship to be sacred as well.

He made bad choices. That's not up for debate. And he could have done the same thing even without being handed a cushy, high-paying (government or not) job just because of his last name. I took this high-profile example to expound on earned vs unearned, but the betrayal of the coach-player relationship is the reason I chose to comment publicly at all.

 

[YOCOACH]

What it comes down to is you have a coach and a player. Yes they may be 2 consensual adults, but that's irrelevant. You have a position of authority versus one of subjugation. Whether anyone likes it or not, this is the truth when it comes to sports,. So the perception of impropriety far outweighs the reality. We, as a society, have gone far beyond reality as far as values and morals are concerned and this will be nothing more than a footnote in history that very few will ever look at. Whether we agree or not is, again, irrelevant. If it creates problems for his family and lifestyle, it's all on him.