There’s nothing particularly private about being a big-time college football coach. Beyond your moves on the football field and the recruiting trail and press conferences, pretty much every part of your life is for public consumption and critique. I can remember a long time ago visiting a southern SEC college town, and someone pointed out on a tour the house where the football coach lives, like it was Graceland or something. So if you’re looking to be an anonymous millionaire, it’s probably better to consider a different line of work.
That is something current Nebraska head football coach Matt Rhule is considering, if only hypothetically at this point. According to Rhule, following a recent home loss to Washington, a Nebraska fan walked up to his 13-year-old daughter and said, and I’m paraphrasing, blank you, and blank your dad. Rhule responded in the post-game press conference that if that kind of behavior continued, it would drive him out of coaching. To be fair, that decision isn’t completely up to Matt Rhule, having lost his third game in a row and struggling to bring Nebraska to the upper tier of the hyper competitive Big 10 in his fourth year at head coach. 7-6 is his high-water mark, which might mean that a few more losses to end this season, and Rhule may have a bit more spare time to contemplate his future career choices.
There’s nothing all that unusual about coaches taking harsh critique from fans, extending to their friends and family. That extends beyond college to the pros and even high school, perhaps best characterized by the stereotype of For Sale signs appearing on a high school coach’s lawn. A simple Google search will reveal more than ample support of this phenomenon, something amplified in the social media age where toxicity is just a keystroke away. Earlier this season, South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer discussed how much his family had been affected by online harassment. And Shane is the son of a decorated former college football coach, and even he’s surprised.
I won’t spend a bunch of time discussing how wrong this is, and that it’s only a game. I think we all know that. I’d also suggest this remains a minority of fans, although one that’s growing thanks to the lives we live online. This kind of behavior finds kinship in parents yelling at high school refs, or even some of the insults high school kids in the stands scream at players from a visiting team. Dehumanization is not a new nor overly discriminating artform.
I do think that one of the challenges in curbing the kind of rhetoric hurled at Matt Rhule’s daughter is the pervasive sense that because college football coaches make a lot of money, somehow that makes it OK. Like that’s part of the exchange. I’ve always said that when you take a job with big compensation, you have to be prepared for the undue challenges that come with it. Which is why I hate it when coaches complain about having to answer tough questions from the press. But I’ll never get to a place where demonizing someone’s family is the price of admission. But what’s interesting and timely is how similar this occupational hazard is to those of politicians, who also endure intense personal scrutiny that cuts from the professional to the intensely personal.
Perhaps the most criticized moment of this past election was an ad in the Ohio gubernatorial race where Vivek Ramaswamy featured his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother in a commercial that violated even the warped norms of political media. Both Ramaswamy and Trump defended the message. JD Vance said his colleagues should stop whining about it and worry about the election, even though the ad resurfaced Acton’s painful family history of abuse. It is textbook for hitting below the belt and makes the assumption that because someone decides to run for political office, nothing is off limits. And let’s not forget that not too long ago, someone tried to burn down Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s family home.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Amy Acton is now the Democratic governor-elect in what was increasingly a reliably red state. Turns out people don’t always approve of vitriolic family attacks. Maybe that should be solace for Matt Rhule, and every other big time coach who takes the same kind of abuse. Most people are still on your side. Still, it might help if you beat Ohio State.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.
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