Blues wrote:At least for the time being, I'm still having a tough time sympathizing with her... From CNN:
"Is it because I have a disability? Is it because I'm black? Is it because I'm female? Is it because I'm successful? Is it now because of my sexual preference?" Coach Bev Kearney asked on CNN's "Starting Point" Tuesday. "I had to finally come to embrace not knowing why, and I had to embrace it because the more you try to figure out why, the harder it is to forgive."
It sounds like she's going to make this as ugly as possible. Not only is she throwing the kitchen sink at UT, but for good measure, she's throwing the oven, the refrigerator and the garbage disposal as well. Has she no shame? Jesus Christ!
Personally, I can't relate to eldanielfire's comments, but I don't know how old he is. Don't get me wrong, 20 years ago, when I was in my 20's and even early 30's, I did view some female college athletes as sexual beings, but not anymore. Today, I look them the same way I would look at my best friend's daughter, it just doesn't seem right.
lonewolf wrote:I suspect insiders at UT have known about this for all these years.
Once this story came out a few days ago, I was told by someone that they were surprised this was the issue she was in trouble for since it wasn't a well kept secret over the last decade.
lonewolf wrote:I suspect insiders at UT have known about this for all these years.
Once this story came out a few days ago, I was told by someone that they were surprised this was the issue she was in trouble for since it wasn't a well kept secret over the last decade.
But the only way that anyone can ever really confirm that a relationship is taking place between two people is if one of them talks, or evidence is discovered by a third party such as emails, text messages or a blue dress.
EDIT: What I don't understand is why did she resign if she feels she didn't do anything wrong? Shouldn't she have forced UT to fire her?
eldanielfire wrote:In the wrong moment and circumstances anybody could break and cross a boundary without a second thought.
Some people undoubtedly could, but not everybody. Some people have a strong enough moral compass to resist temptations like that.
It still boils down to professionalism,coaching ethics,and individual moral ethics.It's flat out wrong !!!
This is horse rubbish and a poor comparison. A gynaecologist doesn't get or have need to be personally involved with their patients and are highly unlikely to see them for hours a day on a regular basis for years. I’d also think it was not professional if a gynaecologist ever needs to see women’s breasts as part of their job.
By the way, sexuality is not just breasts, bum and vagina and relationships and feelings are not simply physical desires that are turned on or off or controlled it you want to. Relationships, closeness, high intensity situations which are large parts of successful sporting relationships can stir hormones and emotions the people involved don't want and had no prior intention of having. This leads people into emotionally vulnerable states or moments of high passion where anything can regardless of prior values, morals or intentions.
By the way I'm not justifying such relationships, just because I think what is essentially a teacher/lecturer-student relationship is wrong that doesn't mean I can't empathise or sympathise with the situation. Especially as I consider realistically the nature of a high level coach athlete to be an emotionally intense one. Sometimes it shows itself differently, how many secretly athletes consider a coach as more of a parent their their own? Plenty! In other cases different personalities it is always going that comes out in a highly charged moment of intimacy. It will happen right or wrong. We are human and our need for relationships, sex and love is programmed into our DNA, literally as a species.
Blues wrote:At least for the time being, I'm still having a tough time sympathizing with her... From CNN:
"Is it because I have a disability? Is it because I'm black? Is it because I'm female? Is it because I'm successful? Is it now because of my sexual preference?" Coach Bev Kearney asked on CNN's "Starting Point" Tuesday. "I had to finally come to embrace not knowing why, and I had to embrace it because the more you try to figure out why, the harder it is to forgive."
It sounds like she's going to make this as ugly as possible. Not only is she throwing the kitchen sink at UT, but for good measure, she's throwing the oven, the refrigerator and the garbage disposal as well. Has she no shame? Jesus Christ!
Personally, I can't relate to eldanielfire's comments, but I don't know how old he is. Don't get me wrong, 20 years ago, when I was in my 20's and even early 30's, I did view some female college athletes as sexual beings, but not anymore. Today, I look them the same way I would look at my best friend's daughter, it just doesn't seem right.
I am not sure why the implications are quite so obvious. I suspect that this is maneuvering as regards a settlement. I think that it is a bit hard to not realize that someone that is in such a minority^4 [black, female in a male sports/head coach role, lesbian, disability]. The reports indicate that there was a report to the school by the individual involved in 'late October'; was it spurred by others, etc.
The timing is part of the picture here. My guess is there that she had a few strong enemies and that they decided this was the time to stop her rather than enshrine her and found a way to transform rumors in action, and given the climate change since Penn State (but also, the climate has been progressively changing in that direction from when I started teaching in the early '80s).
eldanielfire wrote:A gynaecologist doesn't get or have need to be personally involved with their patients and are highly unlikely to see them for hours a day on a regular basis for years. I’d also think it was not professional if a gynaecologist ever needs to see women’s breasts as part of their job.
Many of these individuals deliver the children of the women they see, and are very familiar with many aspects of their lives. FYI they don't just see breasts -- there's also palpation. It’s very routine. Ask your wife or girlfriend.
eldanielfire wrote:high intensity situations which are large parts of successful sporting relationships can stir hormones...
I'm confident 99% of the coaches out there don't get sexually-related hormone rushes watching their athletes perform. If anything, they're concerning themselves with technical aspects of their athlete's performance.
eldanielfire wrote:By the way I'm not justifying such relationships, just because I think what is essentially a teacher/lecturer-student relationship is wrong that doesn't mean I can't empathise or sympathise with the situation.
Sorry, I don't understand and share the feelings (empathy) of such inappropriate relationships, nor do I have sympathy for those in authority who receive a legal and professional smack-down because they broke those rules.
eldanielfire wrote: We are human and our need for relationships, sex and love is programmed into our DNA, literally as a species.
We also have self-conrtol and (should) make decisions based on personal/societal moraliy.
JumboElliott wrote:I don't care who the governor is, he deserves to make more than the women's track coach at UT.
I can list a million reasons why the governor of Texas is not deserving of making more than former coach Beverly Kearney. As I stated earlier, I prefer to keep the focus on track and field.
JumboElliott wrote:What is the head coach of a non-revenue generating sport doing making over two times what the governor of Texas is making?
If we're comparing the salaries of non-revenue coaches at public universities to the salary of that state's governor, there are literally hundreds of coaches all over the country in a variety of sports who are overpaid, not just Bev Kearney. The two most egregious examples are probably women's basketball coaches Pat Summitt ($2.2 million) and Gino Auriemma ($1.8 million), with Vin Lananna being the most overpaid in track and field.
Another way of looking at it would be that given the revenue and attention he brings to both the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene (without him, the OT may not even be there) that Lananna is underpaid.
Perhaps the only track coach in the nation whose program pays its own way (relatively speaking)?
gh wrote:Another way of looking at it would be that given the revenue and attention he brings to both the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene (without him, the OT may not even be there) that Lananna is underpaid.
Perhaps the only track coach in the nation whose program pays its own way (relatively speaking)?
According the Oregon's athletic department books, their track program loses money. Keep in mind that I'm not arguing that Lananna is overpaid, I'm just pointing out that based on JumboElliott's logic, he's overpaid since he makes more than Oregon's governor and he coaches a program that loses money.
gh wrote:Another way of looking at it would be that given the revenue and attention he brings to both the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene (without him, the OT may not even be there) that Lananna is underpaid.
Perhaps the only track coach in the nation whose program pays its own way (relatively speaking)?
Helps having a billionaire as your best supporter. Who also helps keeps the football coach from going.
that's why I said "relatively speaking"; the track operation itself undoubtedly loses money, but Lananna's work makes money elsewhere, for both university and city.
gh wrote:Another way of looking at it would be that given the revenue and attention he brings to both the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene (without him, the OT may not even be there) that Lananna is underpaid.
Perhaps the only track coach in the nation whose program pays its own way (relatively speaking)?
According the Oregon's athletic department books, their track program loses money. Keep in mind that I'm not arguing that Lananna is overpaid, I'm just pointing out that based on JumboElliott's logic, he's overpaid since he makes more than Oregon's governor and he coaches a program that loses money.
Overpaid? Pocket change in Nikeland....as is Chip Kelly's salary.
gh wrote:Another way of looking at it would be that given the revenue and attention he brings to both the University of Oregon and the city of Eugene (without him, the OT may not even be there) that Lananna is underpaid.
Perhaps the only track coach in the nation whose program pays its own way (relatively speaking)?
Helps having a billionaire as your best supporter. Who also helps keeps the football coach from going.
Oh, absolutely (and on the football side, anybody who was surprised that Kelly stayed at home wasn't paying attention). But note how well Lananna's predecessor did in forging a working relationship with Knight and turning Eugene back into TrackTown.
JumboElliott wrote:What is the head coach of a non-revenue generating sport doing making over two times what the governor of Texas is making?
If we're comparing the salaries of non-revenue coaches at public universities to the salary of that state's governor, there are literally hundreds of coaches all over the country in a variety of sports who are overpaid, not just Bev Kearney. The two most egregious examples are probably women's basketball coaches Pat Summitt ($2.2 million) and Gino Auriemma ($1.8 million), with Vin Lananna being the most overpaid in track and field.
UConn and Tennessee both turn (small) profits for women's basketball.
Yes, Lananna has done a wonderful job and knows how to play the game. The program had been going downhill for quite a while before he got there.
As for Kelly:
What I believe now is that Kelly, who makes $3.5 million in guaranteed salary and has the blessing of Nike-infused infrastructure, knows his current gig is the best amateur coaching job in America.
I now suspect he would only trade it for the dream gig of every little kid who grows up in New England -- head coach of the Patriots.
gh wrote:Oh, absolutely (and on the football side, anybody who was surprised that Kelly stayed at home wasn't paying attention)...
Considering the looming NCAA sanctions, I'm shocked he didn't get out while the getting was good(ala P. Carroll).
The one thing that Roger Goodell did that I agree with is enforcing NCAA sanctions on Terrell Pryor and Jim Tressell when the left college to avoid punishment. I wish he had done the same with Pete Carroll who left USC one step ahead of the NCAA mob. I wouldn't have a problem if in the future, the NFL formalized this symbiotic relationship and refused to accept coaches under these circumstances until they settled things with the NCAA.
Conor Dary wrote:Yes, Lananna has done a wonderful job and knows how to play the game. The program had been going downhill for quite a while before he got there.
I'm not debating that Lananna's teams have been better than Smith's, but as I recall, Smith's teams were markedly better than the teams late in the Dellinger/Heinonen eras.
Conor Dary wrote:Yes, Lananna has done a wonderful job and knows how to play the game. The program had been going downhill for quite a while before he got there.
I'm not debating that Lananna's teams have been better than Smith's, but as I recall, Smith's teams were markedly better than the teams late in the Dellinger/Heinonen eras.
As I said the program had been in decline for quite a while.
26mi235 wrote:The timing is part of the picture here. My guess is there that she had a few strong enemies and that they decided this was the time to stop her rather than enshrine her and found a way to transform rumors in action, and given the climate change since Penn State (but also, the climate has been progressively changing in that direction from when I started teaching in the early '80s).
Maybe. There might also be at least a slim chance that in the absence of a conspiracy, a former athlete from that 2002 team returned after quite a while to be coached by Bev recently, and that maybe something happened during their latest coach-athlete association that made the athlete choose to reveal details of the past relationship, or threaten to go public. Stranger things have happened, so I'm not ready to accept the conspiracy theory as having the highest probability of explaining the situation just yet, although I won't rule it out either.
A lot of folks have brought up the timing of this issue, but don't forget that Jerry Sandusky's Penn State crimes were also nearly ten years old but that didn't save the University from having the hammer dropped on them.
jazzcyclist wrote:A lot of folks have brought up the timing of this issue, but don't forget that Jerry Sandusky's Penn State crimes were also nearly ten years old but that didn't save the University from having the hammer dropped on them.
I don't think the NCAA would drop the hammer on UT though, unless it turns out that the coach also committed crimes that were covered up. In comparing this to Penn State, whether or not higher officials were previously aware and covered things up at the time could be one ace in the hole that Coach Kearney could be holding since it could further damage the institution's reputation and put them more at risk of possible civil suits by the athlete (or athletes) involved. If there's an ugly lawsuit between Coach Kearney and UT, I wonder if more former and present UT women's track and field athletes and staff would tend to feel more loyalty to their University and possibly to the athlete involved, or to their coach if they have to be involved. Hopefully it won't come to that.
polevaultpower wrote:I've never heard of the NCAA punishing a school for a non-criminal relationship between an athlete and a coach?
Prior to the Jerry Sandusky scandal, I had never heard of the NCAA punishing a school for criminal actions at all unless it violated NCAA bylaws. Even when there was a murder and a coverup involving Baylor basketball players, the NCAA let the criminal justice system handle it.
