On Second Chances
“Oh, football players, huh? Maybe your husband’s recruits are better on the field than they are in the classroom. Football players are the worst.” I shuddered as I had one of my first encounters years ago with a faculty member. I had just been introduced as a football coach’s wife and the disdain for athletes poured out of the professor with ease. I felt like the person who we put on this pedestal of enlightened thinking, intelligence, and expertise was a farce. The professor came across as judgmental, prone to stereotype, and seemed like they could have been voted least likely to have compassion or empathy. It was a disappointment. I looked forward to a future opportunity to teach on a college campus and before I had stepped foot into a classroom, I was questioning my choice because my mindset was drastically different from that of a person who would eventually be my peer.
Higher Education is an industry of pride for America, yet it is the most dysfunctional family of people. It’s a house divided of sorts. On one side, you have the business folks, the people who make efforts to have operations run smoothly in this all inclusive environment. They manage marketing, social opportunities, accounts, career services, recruitment, facilities, food services, health and wellness, and many more. The rest of the family is your academia group, the people responsible for generating the family legacy. They facilitate the education, they manage your majors, they are equipping America’s youth to become experts in their field. Both sides, in my opinion are equally important, but if you are only immersed in one or the other, you often only see how your cousins across the way are simply getting in the way of your plans.
During my time as a Higher Education professional, and as I completed my Masters in the same field, I came to believe that Higher Education was purposed towards bettering people. Students who attend college gain important skills to carry them through their professional lives. Some come straight from high school, others have lived through some things and decided to get a new start or a second chance with a new degree. Sometimes these are one and the same. High schoolers who have lived through hell, who have never experienced a normal family or home life, come to college to make something out of the nothing they came from.
As a coach’s wife, I see many of these students who have the need for a new start, a new life, and they are athletes, in my case they are football players. Some of them are a product of the hell they were raised in — they have gone through something criminal, or been a victim of accusations that may or may not be true, they live through things that someone their age shouldn’t have experienced. I’ve heard stories of coaches recruiting a player who lived in a home with actual dirt floors having to wait an hour for the player’s only nice pair of pants to dry. Many have no parents at all. Many recruited players we meet are raised by aunts, grandmas, or another family who has no involvement once they graduate. Some have no knowledge of accountability because they weren’t held accountable in their formidable years. They’ve had to raise themselves, and people wonder why they would make a criminal choice in their lives and those people often black ball them from ever being capable of remorse, humility, and repentance.
As I stood there hearing the stereotyping and judgment spew forth I felt angry at and sad for the professor I was just meeting. How can we as educators not see the fact that athletes in general are the same as any other student on campus? It is because athletes contrastively have very little anonymity about their history, especially if it is negative and they are talented. Sometimes the most talented have a past full of pain or even crime, and devoid of family, accountability, and most importantly unconditional love.
While an educator isn’t expected to give unconditional love, they should see all students as equal opportunity learners. Categorizing all athletes as irresponsible and irreverent is, in itself, an act of irresponsibility and irreverence. In my admissions experience I processed applicants that had no athletic affiliation who had to check off that they had some form of criminal past. Unless it was a specific type of charge or category of crime, it was noted in the file and many of them were admitted after a review by the institution. Their history never reached a professor’s desk. You don’t see a half researched story about their poor choices on SI.com or unsubstantiated commentary by ‘know-it-alls because I saw in on Facebook’ on Facebook.
I’ve seen my husband willing to give these players second chances with every team we’ve supported. I’ve made an effort to be involved in these players’ lives intentionally. I’ve found myself tearing up as I tell a young man how much our family loves him and cares about him all the while knowing this same young man desperately wants to know why his own parents don’t love him. I’ve looked on as a player expresses regret for his actions and is in the process of paying for them. Once a player is vetted by many stakeholders on campus and are deemed someone worthy of a second chance — through becoming a college student athlete — many are ridiculed by people unknowledgeable about the facts and they are labeled as incapable of change and unworthy of a second chance. In turn the coaches that believed in him are ridiculed for only caring about winning and are considered selfish and careless about how it impacts their university. Honestly, watching these young men and coaches weather the social media storm is admirable and inspirational.
The coaches I know across all levels of play and spread around the country love where they work, love their players — sometimes using tough love, and care about providing a second chance to someone who desires one. At the end of the day they are just students and barely adults. The choices they make, are, in the end, theirs. All we can do as coaching families and university stakeholders is pour ourselves into them and hope they make the right choices in the end.
As for the educators who believe all athletes are the same, I hope they would take a moment to get to know their athletic students, maybe consider encouraging them and helping those on a second chance find success rather than root for them to fail so they can just say “I told you so.”
