Cancel Culture is Alive in Athletics: How do we survive? PART I

In Part I of Cancel Culture in Athletics, I will be outlining some of the circumstances facing athletic departments and their soldiers on the front lines, the coaches. In Part II, to be published next week I will be addressing the solutions.

My phone rang a few months ago and on the other end was my former college tennis coach. A genuinely upbeat and positive person as long as I have known him, he sounded exhausted and desperate.

For the first 20 minutes of listening, all I could do was shake my head as he explained how an unfounded complaint of one dissatisfied athlete actively destroying his reputation in his hometown and threatening his family. The recap of his story is burned into my memory bank with the same sad and infuriating theme that is not isolated to his particular case. As I listened to my former coach, the most glaring of his statements actively supported the trends I am experiencing with the six other coaches I have been working to support:

"It's been an absolute nightmare for me and my family." - D2 College Tennis Coach

While my former coach is seeking legal response, it is likely too late with the true damage already being done. The reality is that the justice system has not evolved to match the speed of social media and the court of public opinion combined with optics, now renders innocence irrelevant. Athletics is no exception.

As I sit down to write about cancel culture within athletics at all levels, I anticipate the bulk of my audience sits amongst one or more of the following groups.

There's pro and anti-coaches groups, the pro-student-athlete group, the pro and anti-admin groups and the pro and anti-parent groups.

The most depressing part of such a contrasting population of readers is that our political polarization has likely already made up your mind about which side you are fighting for rather than seeing the entire system that is at play in the cancel culture war.

As a reader, I ask that no matter what camp you are in, do your best to stay open as this is the only way we work to meet in the middle in athletics at all levels.

I am not here to be on any group's side but rather, to shed some light on the idea that there is more than one perspective that even most journalists won't cover in order to steer clear of backlash. I am writing to present to you alternative options the next time you see a tweet or a post calling for cancel culture in athletics. I urge you to consider reading more or finding your own facts before you participate in adding to the chaos by retweeting, commenting or reposting. I include myself in this as I am guilty of it as well.

Bad coaches and university administrators exist just as bad doctors, teachers, lawyers, police officers, and every other profession that harvests their own batch. However, many, many good coaches are becoming casualties of cancel culture in the midst of a few select, not-so-great coaches being rightfully ousted. There must be a middle ground which is why as a Fearless Coach, I feel compelled to bring you the other side of the coin which is:

Culture killing or calculated athletes exist too.

Yes, despite it being a complete no-no to talk about, offering up the other side of this reality in our profession, is crucial. Proceed to cancel me how you see fit but we need to acknowledge the various challenges in athletics and athletes are a part of this equation.

I have personally been a part of an array of athletic cases that have never made headlines. The vast majority of these cases are intentionally kept from the public for a variety of reasons. I too, read all the same buzz-word articles and stories concerning the culture in today's athletic departments and admit it is fairly easy to rapidly become enraged. The themes are repetitive and appear to garnish the most attention even while lacking balance in both the claims and the demand of their action items that follow. You are likely familiar with these themes:

A coach was fired. They must have been an abuser. All coaches are abusers.

All athletes are entitled and getting a free ride. Take their scholarships away.

Schools are just using athletes to make money. Let's cancel college athletics.

The above three statements are exhausting but the group nearly no one is coming out to support is our coaches.

Whether it is the parent who has a child who hated their youth league hockey coach from 10 years ago or even the grown adult who once had a coach that they themselves hated as an athlete, they may believe in perpetuity that every leader in athletics is a monster. While there is not much we can do to reverse the committed mindset this non-negotiable group sponsors, we can be reasonable and more proactive as coaches, parents and admins on how we prepare for cancel culture and respond to it.

We are indeed facing new challenges every day with a generation who has their own struggles with adversity, stress, depression and various coping mechanisms that coaches are not equipped or supported well enough to handle.

With all the talk about student-athlete mental health, emotional instability and the lack of resources in departments to support programs struggling with its athletes, how is that we widely accept this existing epidemic yet refuse to acknowledge that is may be playing a key role in increased athlete dissatisfaction and complaints? If no one in our profession is willing to say out loud that there are student-athletes who are permitted to use trivial dissatisfactions to end careers prematurely, I will.

I've experienced it myself and I work with coaches who have and are experiencing it right now.

I am not referring to whistleblowers of sexual assault, inappropriate coach-athlete relationships or physical and mental abuse. I am referring directly to the athlete who desires to see their own program go down in flames because they only played 15 minutes their freshman year. The athlete who got suspended for drinking and their parents believe any consequence is unfair or an attack on their child. The athlete who seeks to destroy their coach in their senior year evaluations because he or she took the entire team to frozen yogurt instead of going directly to the hotel after a game so they could see their parents. (If you are thinking these examples are farfetched exaggerations, I have documented examples for days.)

If you are a coach who has been in it long enough, you know exactly the battle we are fighting in cancel culture where every single one of us is just one dissatisfied athlete away from losing our job. As a coach, if you have had an athlete who has made their best effort to bleed your program from the inside out and sway the rest of your squad in their direction, you know exactly what I am talking about yet, so few of us will discuss this because it's taboo and often met with the response of:

A) They are just kids. They are young and shouldn't be held accountable for their behavior .

B) If they are breaking rules or standards, it's only because they don't know you as a coach, cares.

C) It's up to you to coach them to be good people. If you can't, their behavior is entirely on you.

For coaches in the industry doing it right, it's these kind of popular knee-jerk responses that solidify just how alone we are on our journey through these challenges.

The explanation or response here isn't that culture killing athletes didn't exist a decade or two ago nor is this is a new thing. However, it just so happens we are dealing with even more social media outlets to whistleblow with zero context that cannot possibly be demonstrated properly in 140 characters or less.

Our larger leadership bodies and resources that are so disconnected with how the athletes have had their world of communication shrunk down into almost non-existence, this is where we the industry has taken a nose dive.

With each new explosive article about exposure of mental abuse or bullying in coaching, the debate over likeness and image use, the timeless complaints concerning the classic money grab by the NCAA over their male revenue sports, there is an existing mob ready to take the exception and attempt to persuade the public that these issues are the rule.

How did this happen? Well, there's a few reasons.

Youth Sports

The trend in dissatisfaction at the lower levels isn't slowing down anytime soon. Everyone from volunteer coaches in club organizations, travel teams and high performance youth teams each has their own short list of why we are seeing such a downward unstoppable trend of spending more time answering complaints and fielding feedback than actual coaching.

Anonymity is the method of choice and it's killed open communication.

Anonymity for the smallest of complaints like playing time or miscommunications is granted so often that we have lost the ability to speak openly and properly discuss disagreements. Open door policies by AD's and presidents trump open door policies by coaches. Athletes and parents choosing to skip the chain of command entirely and head to the main office is also a trend that is alive and well. Departments fostering full anonymity in every situation only perpetuates fear around the idea of speaking openly and are ideal environments to breed mistrust and crucial direct expressions of needs and feelings.

Accountability is negotiable

The most egregious of violations of standards and repeated behavioral issues now possess infinite steps to help our athletes avoid any kind of consequence or lessons to help them grow. No one should be surprised that our athletes struggle with failure as their view of basic consequences is now translated as punishment rather than care, concern or compassionate boundaries.

Student-Athlete Surveys

Survey companies and those they serve are completely out of touch with athletics and what it truly needs to be measured. The schools paying these companies are being duped. While these alleged tools may be providing temporary relief to leadership who can use the information collected as legal means to eliminate a coach, they are providing little else.

The idea around collecting data in institutions for student-athlete experience should actually exist to collect data -- if only that were the goal. However, we have gone from using surveys as a tool to gauge satisfaction of services offered to the coach being the sole measure of a program with the main objective being to stay out of litigation and keep athletes happy. This is a mentality based on fear rather than growth. If you think I am off base here, how many times have we heard that schools with the most egregious stories had "years" of surveys to prove there was ongoing abuse? These cases prove that schools may use surveys as inconsistently as they choose when it benefits their agenda. This isn't data collecting it's opinion harvesting strictly for legal convenience.

Surveys have become a satisfaction opinion forum with anonymity for days over the smallest of claims that could be dealt with in open communication. This so-called "data" leaves zero room for learning or growth in any capacity, nor does it arm its customers/Athletic directors with any tools for leadership development. Not only this but it furnishes departments with only two choices for its coaches: retain or fire.

After personally collecting over 100 examples of surveys from various DI institutions to observe the questions being asked, it is clear these survey tools are one-sided machines that provide zero middle ground and do nothing to foster proper communication or measure student-athlete or staff growth.

Most administrators are so fearful that legal ramifications are coming due to documented athlete feedback, they would rather axe a coach over claims void of context or evidence than commit due diligence to finding the truth is somewhere in the middle.

By this annual practice, each year we are showing our athletes that even the smallest miscommunications or mistakes are unforgivable while at the same time raising them in athletic environments as young adults and allowing endless do-overs and exceptions. These two messages are conflicting and serve more to convenience for departments than actual growth of its staff and their student-athlete constituency.

Now, if you haven't already picked a side, would you like to be part of the solution that doesn't attempt to cancel any of the aforementioned groups? If you are open to believing these are true issues and are interested in the solutions check out Cancel Culture in Athletics, Here is How We Thrive, Part II. #BEFEARLESS