It is not clear what set off Pitt coach Kevin Stallings this time. “Somebody said something bad about my players,” he explained. His players were near the end of a 77-51 loss to Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center, so merely shouting the score at that point would have been saying something pretty terrible about them.
Whatever it was, though, Stallings could not let it stand.
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“We don’t pay our guys $100,000,” he shouted, referencing the FBI investigation that revealed an alleged arrangement to pay six figures to the family of recruit Brian Bowen. “We don’t pay our guys 100 grand, though.”
Here it is: the audio of Kevin Stallings saying "At least we didn't pay our players 100 thousand dollars." @WHAS11 pic.twitter.com/lwAwrAUXj7
— Whitney Harding (@WHAS11Whitney) January 3, 2018
Stallings gets paid well to be the head coach at the University of Pittsburgh. We don’t know exactly how well because Pitt likes to keep that a secret, and you would, too, if you handed this guy a six-year contract to coach your team.
As the coach of a team that made 11 NCAA Tournament appearances in 13 seasons under his predecessor and now is on its way to a second consecutive losing season since his arrival, Stallings has encountered plenty of criticism in less than two years with the Panthers. The Petersen Events Center, once an arena that rocked with enthusiasm, welcomed just 5,307 fans to the team’s ACC opener Saturday against No. 15 Miami.
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He gets paid well enough that he should be able to properly manage whatever criticism comes his way, whether on Twitter or on radio talk shows or, occasionally, from an out-of-line fan in the audience.
We’ve seen this sort of thing before in college sports, of course. There was the incident following a Florida State football loss to Louisville in October, when a fan shouted “new coaches” at Seminoles head coach Jimbo Fisher as he left the field.
“Bring your ass down here and say that,” Fisher responded.
(He later left for another job, assuring FSU would get new coaches).
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There was a circumstance last season when then-Louisville coach Rick Pitino heard a North Carolina fan shout something his way – according to ESPN’s Maria Taylor, it was simply, “Pitino, you suck!” – and Pitino had to be held back from confronting the person.
(He’s no longer at Louisville, either, as you surely know).
There was an occasion last November in Cincinnati, when the Bearcats were losing yet another football game and then-coach Tommy Tuberville heard a fan shout at him, “Tommy, you’re stealing! You’re stealing from this university.” Tuberville responded by hollering, “Hey, go to hell! Get a job. Get a job.”
Frustrated Tommy Tuberville vs a frustrated fan after #UC loss to #BYU. .@WCPO pic.twitter.com/L6anZFpkVV
— Keenan Singleton (@KJMSingleton) November 6, 2016
(Tuberville resigned under pressure at the conclusion of the season).
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There are times when fans can go over the edge, get personal, get profane, even get ugly. What is the coach’s responsibility in such a circumstance? If he or she is offended or affronted, the proper course is to, as former Bengals coach Sam Wyche once said, “point ’em out, and and get ’em out of here.”
That’s it.
The coaches we are talking about are representatives of institutions of higher learning. Confronting or insulting the fans who pay to watch college sports is incongruent with the mission. I have a friend who has told coaches he knows that dealing with the occasional clown in the crowd is sort of a tax they pay for working in a high-profile, highly compensated profession.
This does not excuse the aberrant behavior of fans, but handling it properly leads to it being dealt with properly: with admonishment, ejection, perhaps even a ban if the offending remark is severe enough.
The curious thing about Stallings becoming so eager to defend the current Panthers is that in the past three seasons he’s twice made audible comments on the court toward his players that were easily construed as offensive.
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In 2015, after he was informed Vanderbilt guard Wade Baldwin had clapped in the faces of opponents following a Commodores win, Stallings confronted Baldwin on the court and said, “I’ll f-ing kill you.”
As part of a subsequent apology, Stallings said, “In my haste to resolve the situation, I made a very inappropriate comment.” It remains unclear how that threat, although obviously not meant literally, was going to resolve anything.
And late last season, his first at Pitt, Stallings was heard shouting at forward Ryan Luther “Would you f-ing get in the game?” This occurred as Panthers forward Sheldon Jeter was down injured on the court.
Stallings later said his comments to Luther could be considered “inappropriate.”
The only thing piling up around Stallings more rapidly than inappropriate behavior is defeat.
