Some of you reading this may not even know who Tim Welsh really is. Personally, I really didn’t hear about him until about a month ago when he accepted the coaching position for Hofstra’s basketball program. Evidently, he had been the coach at Providence (one of the Big East’s whipping bitches in conjunction with DePaul, Rutgers, and occasionally St. John’s) for about a decade until getting fired two years ago. Since then, he had worked as a college basketball analyst for SNY and ESPN before getting his big job at Hofstra on March 31.
On the night of Friday, April 30, Welsh was found in his parked Lexus… at a green light in the middle of an intersection in Levittown, Nassau County. He was promptly slapped with a DWI charge and indefinitely suspended by Hofstra once the administration board found out about the arrest. Three days later, Welsh resigned in shame. Hofstra released a brief statement saying, “The university accepted the resignation in the best interests of the university and of the men's basketball program.”
This is truly the latest example of a very disturbing trend in collegiate sports: misbehavior of the coaches. Not just the players, the 20-year guys from the ghettos across America with full scholarships, God-given athletic abilities, and propensities to go out and bone groupies; but the coaches, the grown men paid to straighten out these young men and win games. In the past year, several coaches from the college football and basketball words have all been fired or had no choice but to resign due to conduct an urban youth would describe as “OD”. In layman’s terms, a lot of coaches have done stupid shit.
Mark Mangino resigned from his spot as head coach of the Kansas Jayhawks football team for several reports of him abusing players physically and verbally. Bobby Gonzalez of Seton Hall’s basketball program was fired for not only being an asshole of a coach, but recruiting several players who couldn’t obey the law. Texas Tech football Mike Leach was fired for his mistreatment of wide receiver Adam James, who was forced to stand in a dark shed with concussion symptoms (a much more messed-up story when you learn about the whole situation.) Most disturbingly, Jim Leavitt of South Florida was fired as football coach after choking out a player, and secretly threatening his other players to change their accounts of the attack and deny it ever happened.
I can’t explain it. How can these adults do such reckless things when they represent not just their school, but a leadership figure for the athletes they coach? It boggles my mind how these guys, some of whom are among the highest-paid people at their universities, choose to dick around and set an awful example for everyone involved. I think of these situations and compare the debacle going on in the NFL; players are continually running afoul of the law and so much stress is placed on establishing a personal conduct policy. These coaches need some sort of straightening out as well.
Welsh should be ashamed. He didn’t even coach a single game. His most impressive statistic is .019, his blood-alcohol level the night he got arrested. He must have balled out like crazy at the bar…
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