“Praise in public, criticize in private” is a long-held management mantra often credited to legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi, the idea being it’s best for morale to provide critical commentary in the locker room, whether figurative or literal. But what’s the fun in that? Why deliver your feedback behind closed doors when you can just air your employees out publicly, especially when those employees are working for you on a fixed short-term basis? Sometimes those employees are even working for free!
Such is the way of a special class of college athletics coaches who, because of the high-stakes pressure of the NIL era or good old fashioned immaturity, choose to put their teams on blast in strikingly personal terms.
Following a recent blowout loss to Cincinnati, Kansas State’s Jerome Tang became the latest college coach to go nuclear. But he was far from the first. From hot-headed Hall of Famers to heated has-beens and a few in between, these are 10 Times College Coaches Crashed Out On Their Own Players.
“They’re slow laterally”
Coach: Rick Pitino
School: St. John’s
Date: Feb. 18, 2024
Pitino was hired at St. John’s in March 2023 after a peripatetic career that saw him win championships at Kentucky and Louisville and coach in the NBA for the Knicks and Celtics. We note the month of his hire at St. John’s because in his first season, he was working with players he hadn’t recruited. Which, as tactless as some may find it, he wasn’t shy about using as an excuse during his first year. After the Red Storm lost to Seton Hall, Pitino methodically dragged his inherited players under the bus, saying, among other things “...they’re slow laterally; Sean Conway gives you everything he can, he’s slow laterally…they hear but they don’t listen, it’s taken me a month to get them to throw bounce passes—actually two months.”
“That’s why he was playing five minutes a game”
Coach: Jim Boeheim
School: Syracuse
Date: Feb. 23, 2022
Boeheim won more than 1000 games and a national championship during his 47 years at Syracuse, albeit while also having to vacate more than 100 wins over player eligibility issues. He was also a world class whiner, complaining about everything from the NIL era in college sports (despite making tens of millions of dollars off the work of “student-athletes” during his career), to the journalists covering his team to…the city of Greensboro. Late in his career, after a loss to Notre Dame, Boeheim turned his wrath on center Frank Anselem-Ibe, saying “I’ve never…had to tell a player to jump…sometimes I think he thinks it’s against the rules to jump…Frank is not ready for this, that’s why he was playing five minutes a game this year.”
“We’ve got to find a guy who won’t throw it to the other team”
Coach: Hugh Freeze
School: Auburn
Date: Sep. 21, 2024
One of the core tenets of successful offensive football is “do not give the ball to the other team.” Seems simple, right? Alas, the Auburn Tigers suffered from a severe case of giving-the-ball-to-the-other-team during their game against Arkansas in 2024, coughing up four interceptions and a fumble. After the game, head coach Hugh Freeze was succinct in his diagnosis of the issue: “I know that there’s people open…and we gotta find a guy who won’t throw it to the other team.” It wasn’t the first time that season Freeze dragged his own team, claiming after a home loss to Cal that “there was one play in this game that I think was a bad call by our staff and the rest of them…” Auburn finished 5-7 that year. The next year Freeze found a quarterback who only threw two interceptions…and Auburn went 4-5 before Freeze was fired (with a $15.4 million buyout).
“It’s really hard to coach people that are delusional”
Coach: Mick Cronin
School: UCLA
Date: Jan. 7, 2025
There’s passing the buck and pointing fingers and then there’s this entirely different nuclear grade example of refusing to take accountability from Cronin. Select quotes: “We’re soft”; “I have the most energy of anybody at practice every day”; “I’m upset with everybody in that locker room—my assistant coaches and my players”; “I don’t need to do anything else; I almost got 500 wins.” The last one is particularly rich—nearly 300 of those wins came at Cincinnati where Cronin’s teams got past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament exactly once.
“Good luck ever finding another job”
Coach: Frank Martin
School: South Carolina
Date: Feb. 13, 2013
Within the first 70 seconds of his press conference following South Carolina’s 64-46 loss to LSU, Martin compared his team to The Return of the Living Dead and said he’d “never been more embarrassed to call myself a basketball coach than I am today.” Not satisfied that he’d sufficiently ethered his own squad, Martin went on to muse about how he’d handle the team if he were in the NBA (“We’d fine ‘em, we’d take their money, we’d release them and say ‘good luck ever finding another job’”) and what would happen if he lost the locker room (“...If I’ve lost them then they better disappear…they better figure out where home is at, because obviously it’s not going to be here”).
“I have a team that’ll just quit on you”
Coach: Kim Caldwell
School: Tennessee
Date: Feb. 8, 2026
Tennessee has one of the most successful and proud programs in women’s basketball history, but they haven’t been to a Final Four since George W. Bush was president and the last coach got fired after taking the team to three Sweet Sixteens in four years, so it’s understandable that second-year coach Kim Caldwell might be ready to share some blame. Following a 93-50 blowout loss to South Carolina, Caldwell let the finger-pointing chopper sing from the beginning of her press conference, starting with “We had a lot of quit in us tonight,” before clarifying her comment with “I have a team that’ll just quit on you.” In her defense, Caldwell’s team scored 18 total points in the second half while the Gamecocks scored at least 22 points in every quarter.
“These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform”
Coach: Jerome Tang
School: Kansas State
Date: Feb. 11, 2026
After a 91-62 home loss to Cincinnati, Coach Tang began his press conference by proclaiming that he was going to “honor Christ like I always do” and then proceeded to go full Old Testament on his own team, passing divine judgment on his players: “These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform…there will be very few of them in it next year.” He continued the sartorial dressing down with, “It means something to wear a K State uniform, it means something to put on this purple” (Kansas State was 10-15 and last in the Big 12 when Tang said this fwiw). Jesus forgives! Unfortunately NIL check-writing Big 12 boosters do not. Four days later, Kansas State fired Tang for cause, meaning he likely fumbled the $18.7 million buyout he had coming his way if he just lost his job due to his inability to win basketball games.
“Their mentality’s awful; their attitude’s awful”
Coach: Pat Knight
School: Lamar
Date: Feb. 23, 2012
Pat Knight is the son of the legendary Bob Knight, a coach who never flinched when the opportunity to throw someone else under the bus arose. Not surprisingly, the sour apple did not fall far from the tree. After a 62-52 loss to Stephen F. Austin State, Pat Knight lit into his seniors, first dismissing one from the podium and then calling them “the worst group of seniors I’ve ever been associated with.” After listing each senior’s woeful shooting stats for the game, Knight proceeded to air them out personally: “We’ve had problems with these guys off the court…classroom, drugs…” The team made the NCAA Tournament and afterward Knight would compliment the group, calling them the “under-the-bus gang.” It turns out the 2012 class was most definitely not the worst group of seniors Knight would be associated with, as that distinction would likely go to the 2013 class that went 3-28 or the 2014 class that went 3-22 (Knight was fired after that season).
“Your fault? No sh*t.”
Coach: John Calipari
School: Arkansas
Date: Feb. 15, 2025
Calipari won a national championship at Kentucky and took Memphis and UMass to Final Fours (both of which were later vacated for recruiting violations) and reached the Sweet Sixteen in his first year at Arkansas. It doesn’t mean he can’t throw a player under the bus from time to time. After a 69-61 loss to Texas A&M, Calipari first called his team “fragile” and then pointed to the turning point in the game (his opinion), a blown coverage by one of his players. After said player took responsibility for the play, Coach Cal then mocked him in the postgame press conference. No wonder many college players want to hit the transfer portal after every season.
“I’m bringing my luggage with me…and it’s Louis”
Coach: Deion Sanders
School: Colorado
Date: Dec. 4, 2022
This isn’t calling a team or player out after a game—this is calling almost all of the team out before the game even starts. Sanders famously came to Colorado ready to change the culture, and he wasted no time, essentially threatening the status of every returning player during his very first team meeting. His speech at that meeting included the lines “I promise you it’s my job to get rid of you”; “Those of you we don’t run off, we’re going to try to make you quit”; and finally “We’ve got a few positions already taken care of because I’m bringing my luggage with me…and it’s Louis.” More than 50 players left the team that first season and the Buffaloes limped to a 4-8 record after starting 3-0.