Sports

VIDEO: After Chair Abuse Video Goes Viral, Does Coach Fran McCaffery Need to Tone it Down?

A video of the Iowa basketball coach slamming a chair to the ground went viral this week. Passion is good, but how much passion is too much?

Smarting from what would eventually become a 76-47 shellacking to Michigan State, and, also, from hands off officiating in a physical game, Iowa Men's Basketball coach Fran McCaffery decided to get a technical foul and abuse a chair to get his troops fired up.

The tirade, captured in the video above, went viral, and was shown on sports shows and discussed on blogs. When asked about it during his most recent press conference, this is what he said.

Q.  The video of you with the chair kind of went viral on line.  Got mentioned on ESPN and a few other people.  After going back and looking at it, do you have any regrets or anything or what do you think about it? 

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COACH McCAFFERY:  No, not at all.  If anybody thinks I’m going to sit there with my hands crossed when we’re down by 40, they got the wrong guy, okay.  I was brought in here to change the culture.  I’m going to coach with passion, and my players know that.  They also know I’m going to fight for them.

So as far as that’s concerned , a lot of people like to infer what was going on or what was being said.  Nobody knows what I was saying. Nobody knows what we were discussing during that timeout except for me and my players.

I have no regrets, I have no apologies, none whatsoever.  I’m going to continue to coach the same way, and we’re going to keep working, improving, and battling, and fighting until we’re up by 40.

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McCaffery, as you can see if you read his interviews, is an eloquent speaker, and is also as passionate in victory as he is in defeat (see video #2). The question is, when is passionate too passionate? And, as a university representative, should he be asked to represent himself in a different way? Or, in contrast, is this sort of passion just the sort of thing the men's basketball program needs while still in the midst of one of the worst stretches in its history.

Have an opinion either way? Tell us in comments.


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