The University of South Carolina suspended their head basketball coach, Frank Martin, for one game after video captured him screaming and cursing at players during their blowout loss to #1 Florida (27-2, 16-0) on Tuesday night, ESPN reported. ESPN did not, however, report what Martin said. Those words (answer the f---ing question a--hole) were uncovered by the lip readers at Dead Spin, a website, for better or worse, built on exposing the dirtier side of American athletics.
"The one-game suspension is a result of inappropriate verbal communication as it relates to the well-being of our student-athletes," South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner said in a statement Thursday.
Martin, 47, once appeared on an ESPN special (related, I believe, to the incident involving former Rutgers coach Mike Rice) with several other prominent head coaches defending what the public has come to view as the darker side of the profession (i.e. screaming and cursing at players). Rather than anger and verbal abuse, Martin termed his outbursts a sign of passion.
Since taking over Kansas State in 2007-08, Martin has headlined the list of verbally aggressive head coaches (one that now prominently includes Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin, if his anger towards officials translates to his players). It was such behavior at K-State -- or the stubbornness behind it -- that may have created the rocky relationship between him and the school at the end of his tenure following the 2011-12 season. He wasn't fired, but left to coach a lesser program (though one that paid slightly more and was closer to his native South Florida).
Likely, Martin is liked, or at least respected, when he's not calling his players a**holes and screaming in their faces. Really, he's like most collegiate coaches that seem to have a greater craving for victories than the combined desires of their roster and half the student body. Such a personality trait is mostly a positive, especially in terms of wins and losses; Martin won over 20 games in five seasons at K-State (who haven't been a power since the 50s and 60s), qualified for the NCAA tournament four times, and made one Elite Eight run.
Eventually, there comes a point when all the screaming is no longer worth the results -- or, in Martin's current predicament, when it's simply not effective (South Carolina has been 25-37 in his two seasons). Before that point, however, wouldn't it be even more effective if coaches could teach their players to crave winning at least close to the same level as they do (which seems to be what Jay Wright is accomplishing this year at Villanova)? How about the opposite scene: a coach makes a bad late-game play call and a winning-obsessed player curses him out? Of course, that couldn't happen in the college game, where coaches almost always outlast the four years of their players and winning games is inherently more important to them.
