Coaches and Managers

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Football

      In N.F.L., the Same Old Line and Verse About Hiring Black Coaches

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySPORTS OF THE TIMESIn N.F.L., the Same Old Line and Verse About Hiring Black CoachesIn the latest hiring cycle, Eric Bieniemy, the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, watched from the sideline as white peers were chosen as head coaches.Eric Bieniemy, the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, will coach in his second consecutive Super Bowl on Sunday.Credit…Mark Brown/Getty ImagesFeb. 1, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETThe N.F.L. can’t hide its Eric Bieniemy problem with poetry.The league announced last week that Amanda Gorman, America’s first youth poet laureate, whose soaring verse on a nation rived by race and conflict enthralled viewers of President Biden’s inauguration, would deliver a pregame poem at the Super Bowl on Sunday.On the one hand, that’s terrific news. Gorman’s way with words is a tonic we need right now.On the other hand, beware. Pro football’s embrace of a young Black woman like Gorman — coming on the heels of its sudden, forced support of Black Lives Matter after the killing of George Floyd — is part of a public-relations campaign that obscures troubling reality.The N.F.L. now sells itself as a champion for equality. But where change is needed most, it remains stuck in the stinging days of old.Black players make up about 70 percent of N.F.L. rosters, meaning they provide the bulk of the entertainment. Yet whites hold the power, and won’t let go. No Black team ownership. A sprinkle of Black faces in upper management. It took until 1989 for the N.F.L. to hire a Black coach for the first time in the league’s modern era. Not much has changed: Now there are three.The story, or, rather, the shameful passing over of Bieniemy, the offensive coordinator who helped power the Kansas City Chiefs to consecutive Super Bowls, puts a fine point on it. He is the best known, and most talked about, head coaching candidate in a small cluster of African-American coordinators in the N.F.L. But he continues to watch from the sideline as his white peers are chosen to lead teams.In the latest round of head coach hiring, there were seven openings. Seven opportunities for the N.F.L. to stand behind the slogans like “End Racism” that now line its fields and adorn its helmets. Seven chances, and Bieniemy was shut out again.What more can he do? His squad marched through the N.F.L. playoffs as if its opponents were stick figures. One more win, and he’s got back-to-back Super Bowl rings.The star quarterback Patrick Mahomes talks up Bieniemy every chance he gets. Andy Reid, the Chiefs’ head coach, says he’s a rare and gifted leader. Given Reid’s stature in the N.F.L., that’s like a blessing from God.Yet Reid continues to be dumbstruck at how his second in command keeps being overlooked. “I’m glad I have him, but I’m not so glad I have him,” Reid said last week. “I was really hoping he would have an opportunity to take one of these jobs. He would be great for any number of teams.”So why can’t Bieniemy get a fair shake?Naysayers claim he doesn’t call plays. But Reid and Mahomes say that’s not true. And when has not calling plays been an obstacle for white assistants hired to steer teams?Another chorus claims Bieniemy doesn’t interview or communicate well. But that belies his calm, sure manner while addressing reporters. Besides, plenty of white coaches seem incapable of expressing themselves clearly.Some say Bieniemy has not been hired because of brushes with the law that took place decades ago — including a fight in college after he was called a racial slur and an arrest on a drunken-driving charge in 2001. But this ventures into double standards for a league notorious for overlooking violent misdeeds off field with its players and blemishes with its white coaches.Does Bieniemy, 51, a former player in his 15th year as an N.F.L. assistant, somehow need more experience? Then how do we explain a league currently in love with a new prototype: the young white coach trumpeted for his genius despite little on his résumé. Consider the Los Angeles Chargers’ new coach, 38-year-old Brandon Staley. In 2016, he was an assistant coach at Division III’s John Carroll University. Now he holds the reins of an N.F.L. team.So much for experience when you look like an N.F.L. owner’s grandson.For a long while, during this same-as-it-ever-was hiring cycle, it looked as if it would be a complete shutout for Black coaches. Then, with one last job available, the Houston Texans hired the Baltimore assistant David Culley.Culley is 65. You read that right: retirement age, and he’s only now getting his first lead job in the league. He has been coaching for roughly 40 years. Is that really what it takes? Four decades of toil? It’s important to understand how discrimination alters pathways for N.F.L. assistants. But there’s another, less talked about worry: the stifling effect on the ambition of Black coaches all the way down the pipeline.Charles Adams is just one example.A few months back, I wrote about Adams and his journey as an African-American police officer and head coach at Minneapolis North high school. He inherited a struggling team from the toughest part of his city, turned it into a perennial power and won a state title. When you watch the Super Bowl and see the Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie Tyler Johnson catching passes from Tom Brady, know that it was Adams who guided the young receiver through high school and still mentors him today.When we spoke recently, Adams told me how he used to imagine latching on with a college team and working up the ladder from there. Maybe the pros. Maybe head coach. Why not? For years, he applied for an N.F.L. fellowship that sends Black coaches to training camps so they can network and soak up knowledge. He never got a response.That’s a stinging blow. Seeing Bieniemy being constantly overlooked is another. Together the message is awful. Don’t think too big.“For many of us, it becomes ‘Why bother?’” Adams said.That’s the overlooked tragedy. Ambitious white coaches look at the N.F.L., see plenty of open lanes and keep charging forward. Ambitious Black coaches see roadblocks and dead ends — and often dim their expectations.The cycle continues. An age-old American tale.It will be great to see Amanda Gorman recite poetry at the Super Bowl. But when you do, think of Bieniemy and all the coaches who look like him. Think of their hopes and frustrations — of their dreams deferred, again and again.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      John Chaney, Hall of Fame Temple Basketball Coach, Dies at 89

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn Chaney, Hall of Fame Temple Basketball Coach, Dies at 89He won more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships with Temple, and he took his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s regional finals five times.John Chaney, the longtime Temple University basketball coach, in 1999. He insisted that his players show discipline on the court and that they pursue their studies.Credit…Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesJan. 29, 2021Updated 5:54 p.m. ETJohn Chaney, the famously combative Hall of Fame coach who took Temple University to 17 N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, largely recruiting high school players from poor neighborhoods who were overlooked by the college game’s national powers, died on Friday. He was 89.His death was announced by Temple. The university did not say where he died or specify the cause, saying only that he died “after a short illness.”Chaney was 50 when Temple hired him, giving him a chance to coach major-college basketball after 10 seasons and a Division II championship at Cheyney State College (now Cheyney University), outside Philadelphia.He coached at Temple, in Philadelphia, for 24 seasons, winning more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships and taking his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s regional finals five times. He did that despite having only one consensus all-American, the guard Mark Macon, who led the Temple team that was ranked No. 1 at the close of the 1987-88 regular season.Chaney was voted the national coach of the year in 1987 and 1988 and elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2001.His tie often askew as he shouted in his raspy voice at his players and the referees, Chaney was a consummate battler. He insisted that his players show discipline on the court — he regarded turnovers as basketball’s greatest sin — and that they pursue their studies and conduct themselves properly, however chaotic their lives might be.Having grown up poor in the segregated Depression-era South and in Philadelphia, Chaney viewed himself as a mentor to young men who often came from broken homes.“Sometimes I’m a little nasty,” he once told The Orlando Sentinel. “But underneath I still carry with me a strong feeling of concern for youngsters. I’ll do just about anything to convince a youngster he can be a winner, and not just a winner in basketball but a winner in life. I want players to take up my value system.”Macon, who later played in the N.B.A. and became an assistant to Chaney at Temple, said in an interview with Comcast SportsNet that Chaney was “my mother and my father,” adding, “He’d tell me the right thing to do and not to do.”But Chaney’s outrage at what he perceived as injustice sometimes raised questions about his own standards of behavior.Incensed by what he saw as an effort by John Calipari, then the coach of his Atlantic 10 rival Massachusetts, to intimidate referees, he charged at Calipari after Temple had lost to his team by one point in a 1994 game, shouting “I’ll kill you” as onlookers held him back.On the eve of a 2005 game against St. Joseph’s, Chaney said he would send “one of my goons” after the team’s players, whom he accused of using illegal screens to free up shooters. The next night he inserted a 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound bench warmer, Nehemiah Ingram, into the game. Ingram committed a flurry of fouls, one of which leveled a St. Joseph’s senior forward, John Bryant, breaking his arm.Chaney was suspended for one game over the outburst at Calipari and for five games after the St. Joseph’s incident.Always outspoken, he railed against what he perceived as culturally biased and racist standardized academic testing requirements imposed by the N.C.A.A. for basketball eligibility. He expressed disdain for the administration of President George W. Bush and spoke out against the Iraq war.Chaney was surrounded by his players after Temple beat St. Bonaventure on Jan. 28, 2004, for his 700th career victory. He finished his career with a total of 741.Credit…George Widman/Associated PressJohn Chaney was born on Jan. 21, 1932, in Jacksonville, Fla., and grew up in a low-lying house that often flooded. His stepfather, seeking work in a defense plant, brought the family to the Philadelphia area during World War II.Chaney was voted the most valuable player of Philadelphia’s public high school basketball league in 1951, but his family was too poor to buy a suit for him for the award ceremonies. He wore his stepfather’s suit, its sleeves and pants hanging down.He became a small-college all-American at the historically Black Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, then played briefly for the Harlem Globetrotters and played for teams in Sunbury and Williamsport, Pa., in the semipro Eastern League, where he was named the most valuable player.Chaney was the first Black basketball coach in Philadelphia’s Big Five — Temple, Penn, Villanova, St. Joseph’s and La Salle. His first Temple team went 14-15, but that was his only losing season with the Owls. His 1987-88 squad finished with a 32-2 record and went to a regional final. But Chaney’s teams were barely above the .500 mark in his last four years at Temple.He had a record of 516-253 at Temple from 1982 to 2006 after posting a 225-59 record at Cheyney State from 1972 to 1982.Information on survivors was not immediately available.While Chaney’s temper memorably got the best of him at times, he apologized for the Calipari and St. Joseph’s incidents.But even after his retirement, he seemed to enjoy reprising his provocative image. In a 2010 interview with The Temple News, a student newspaper, Chaney was asked if he had any regrets.“The only regret I have is that I exposed so much of myself to the media,” he said. “Certainly, I regret the language I used with Calipari. I should have waited until after the game was over and then took him outside and beat the hell out of him.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Football

      Reeling Texans Set to Hire David Culley as Head Coach

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReeling Texans Set to Hire David Culley as Head CoachCulley, who is Black, is one of only two nonwhite N.F.L. head coaches hired in this cycle. His task: leading a Houston franchise that has alienated its star players.David Culley, 65, takes over the Houston Texans, whose 4-12 record last season almost belies the bleakness of its circumstances: limited draft capital, no elite receivers, a forbidding salary-cap situation. Credit…Scott Galvin/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 28, 2021Updated 7:11 p.m. ETAs their tumultuous season bleeds into a tumultuous January, the Houston Texans have reportedly chosen the Baltimore Ravens assistant David Culley to help foster their revival, making him the first — and only — Black head coach hired after the 2020 regular season.Culley, 65, has a long and distinguished N.F.L. résumé, but this will be his first head coaching job at any level, and he joins the organization at a fraught time, as it strategizes how to proceed with disgruntled players, a star quarterback, Deshaun Watson, who is reportedly seeking a trade, and without many draft assets after trades gutted the supply.Culley, the Texans’ first full-time head coach of color since their inception in 2002, is the second head coach from a nonwhite background hired by a team this winter. Romeo Crennel, who is Black, had been interim head coach since October 2020 when the team fired Bill O’Brien, the coach and general manager, after starting the season 0-4. The Jets hired Robert Saleh, believed to be the league’s first Muslim Arab American head coach, earlier this month.The league, which has long been scrutinized for lacking diversity across its coaching positions, updated its interview processes last May, increasing the minimum number of interviews teams were required to conduct with external head coaching candidates from nonwhite backgrounds from one to two. But the guideline, the Rooney Rule, does not require teams to hire coaches of color, and the league will enter the 2021 season with only one more nonwhite coach than it started with last year. Three-quarters of the league’s players are people of color, but the vast majority of top coaches and player personnel executives are white men.“They are trying, but they are struggling,” Nellie Drew, director of the Center for the Advancement of Sport at the University at Buffalo School of Law, said of the N.F.L. in an interview Thursday. “The results to date have not been impressive, especially given the number of people of color who play in the league.”Saleh and Culley join Ron Rivera of the Washington Football Team, Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins as head coaches of color. In 2011, the N.F.L. had, for the first time, eight nonwhite head coaches among its ranks, a peak it reached again in the 2017 season.The Ravens will get two third-round draft picks, one in 2021 and one in 2022, as compensation for losing a nonwhite staff member who became a head coach as part of the N.F.L.’s incentive system that was ratified by league owners in November. The new measure was criticized by some, including African-American coaches and players.“I just have never been in favor of rewarding people for doing the right thing,” Tony Dungy, a former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts, said in May 2020. “And so I think there’s going to be some unintended consequences.”Culley filled several roles for the Ravens across the last two seasons — assistant head coach, passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach — helping to establish the league’s leading rushing offense in 2020, but one that ranked last in passing. In 2019, Culley helped bolster the Ravens to No. 1 in scoring with an average of 33.2 points per game.Noted for his ability to develop creative schemes that improve players’ weaknesses and complement their strengths, Culley cultivated a reputation as an excellent teacher and communicator across his 27 seasons as an N.F.L. coach, most of which have been spent assisting Andy Reid, first in Philadelphia and then in Kansas City.“David will do a good job,” Reid said after practice Thursday. “He’s a people person. He’ll bring energy to the building.”Ravens Coach John Harbaugh overlapped nine seasons with Culley as assistants in Philadelphia and has said that he tried multiple times to hire him in Baltimore. When Harbaugh finally succeeded in 2019, luring Culley from Buffalo, where he coached the Bills’ quarterbacks, he called it a “coup.”Culley was an athlete growing up in Sparta, Tenn., about 90 miles east of Nashville, where he played football, baseball and basketball at White County High School. He was a quarterback at Vanderbilt and went on to coach at several colleges before entering the N.F.L. in 1994 as the receivers coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.It came as no surprise to Harbaugh that Culley would be picked up this year — by the Texans.“I do believe that David Culley would be a tremendous hire for any team; maybe, especially, the Texans with Deshaun Watson,” Harbaugh said on Jan. 11.But the opportunity to coach Watson may not come, as the quarterback reportedly requested a trade after a series of disagreements with the Texans’ upper management. He reportedly became disgruntled when the team hired a new general manager, Nick Caserio, without his consultation this year and felt the team had been inattentive to social justice causes, including diversifying their hiring practices.Watson had signed a four-year, $156 million contract extension in September 2020 that included about $75 million guaranteed, a $27 million signing bonus and a no-trade clause, meaning that he will have a say in where he ends up next, if the Texans pursue a deal. Culley’s hiring will not have an effect on Watson’s decision, according to ESPN.Culley takes over a team whose 4-12 record last season almost belies the bleakness of its circumstances: limited draft capital, no elite receivers, a forbidding salary-cap situation. After finishing 10-6 in 2019 and winning the A.F.C. South for the fourth time in the previous five seasons, the Texans flopped last season. O’Brien had reportedly argued with players, including the star defensive end J.J. Watt, who later ranted about the team’s “trash” season in a postgame news conference.“We need a whole culture shift,” Watson told reporters in a videoconference after the regular season ended. “We need new energy. We need discipline. We need structure. We need a leader so we can follow that leader as players.”Culley will have to be that person, with or without Watson.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Football

      Jennifer King Becomes First Black Woman to Coach N.F.L. Full-Time

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Washington Coach Reaches a First for Black Women in the N.F.L.Washington promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach, making her the first Black woman with a full-time N.F.L. coaching job, amid increasing scrutiny on the diversity of the league’s hiring.The wild-card playoff game between Washington and Tampa Bay on Jan. 9 was the first N.F.L. playoff game with women in coaching roles on both sidelines: Lori Locust, a Bucs assistant defensive line coach, and Jennifer King, right, a Washington intern who was promoted to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday.Credit…Daniel Kucin Jr./Associated PressVictor Mather and Jan. 26, 2021Updated 6:22 p.m. ETThe Washington Football Team promoted Jennifer King to assistant running backs coach on Tuesday, making her the first Black woman to become a full-time coach in the N.F.L.King’s promotion accentuates the importance the Washington franchise has placed on diversifying after a tumultuous year in which its longtime logo and nickname, widely perceived as racist, were dropped. The move also comes as the N.F.L. faces increasing scrutiny because of its paucity of Black head coaches.King, 36, was a coaching intern with the team this past season and previously served as an intern with the Carolina Panthers and as an offensive assistant at Dartmouth College.“She earned this opportunity with hard work,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said in a statement. “The sky truly is the limit for her.”The number of female coaches in the N.F.L. has grown, slowly but steadily, over the past five seasons, with eight women on staffs in 2020. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, which tracks racial and gender demographics of coaches in five professional sports leagues, the N.F.L. trails only the N.B.A., which has nine female assistants.Yet while about 70 percent of N.F.L. players are Black, only two of the current head coaches are, and just four — including Rivera — are people of color, according to the league’s measure of diversity.Of the seven head coaching jobs that became available in the past four months, only one has been filled by a nonwhite candidate — the Jets’ Robert Saleh, who is a Muslim Arab American. The Houston Texans’ head coaching position is still open.Three minority candidates were hired as general managers in the past two weeks — Terry Fontenot in Atlanta, Brad Holmes in Detroit and Martin Mayhew in Washington — swelling the leaguewide total to five. The general manager hirings are significant, because their roles enable them to hire, and recommend, more people of color to join their organizations. But they are less visible than coaches.In most instances, the pipeline to N.F.L. coaching and scouting positions is stocked with men who have played college football, diminishing chances for women interested in pursuing careers in professional football. But in recent years, the league has made stronger efforts to enhance opportunities for women, particularly those of color.It established the Women’s Careers in Football Forum, an annual event held in conjunction with the league’s scouting combine that since 2017 has given women with entry-level roles in college programs a chance to learn from, and network with, N.F.L. general managers, coaches and executives. At last February’s session, 26 of the league’s 32 teams participated, and Samantha Rapoport, the N.F.L.’s senior director of diversity and inclusion, said that with a virtual format next month, she is hoping for full representation.In 2019, 55 percent of the participants at the forum were women of color. Among all the women who attended the most recent gathering, in February, 15 were hired for full-time positions or internships, either in the N.F.L. or for a college program, for the 2020 season, bringing the total to 118 such jobs since the forum’s inception.“People that are marginalized or disenfranchised, if you give them a shot, an opportunity to have a conversation with someone who can potentially hire them, that’s how they land on the short list,” Rapoport said.In 2015, Jen Welter became the first woman added to an N.F.L. staff, as an assistant coaching intern with the Arizona Cardinals. Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time assistant coaching position the following year, when she was named special teams quality control coach under Rex Ryan with the Buffalo Bills, and after the 2019 season Katie Sowers, who worked mostly with the 49ers’ wide receivers, became the first woman to coach in a Super Bowl.(Sowers, after four seasons with San Francisco, announced a few weeks ago that she would not return in 2021.)Another breakthrough came in November, when Callie Brownson of the Cleveland Browns was elevated to tight ends coach on a brief interim basis, becoming the highest-ranking female coach in league history.“What we’re hoping for is normalization,” Rapoport said, adding: “We’re not looking for firsts. We’re not putting on a schedule for the first female head coach or the first female general manager. That’s not our focus. Our focus is really the ubiquity of women in football.”King, like many of the women who have coached in the N.F.L., has played football and other sports. She was on the basketball and softball teams at Guilford College from 2002 to 2006 and was the head basketball coach at Johnson & Wales University Charlotte from 2016 to 2018. King has also played in the Women’s Football Alliance with the Carolina Phoenix, the New York Sharks and the D.C. Divas.“The way she’s worked with the guys, she’s just Coach King to us,” Randy Jordan, Washington’s running backs coach, told The Washington Post in December. “Her input throughout the game, there are things I may not see, and she’ll point it out to me.”“Her input is very, very important not only to me,” he continued, “but to the entire staff. She’s been doing a heck of a job.”Amid an organizational overhaul led by Rivera, the Washington Football Team has hired people of color for significant roles over the past 13 months. The team announced last week that Mayhew, who is Black, would become its general manager, filling a position that has been vacant since 2016. In September, the team added Jason Wright, the first Black team president in the N.F.L., to its front office.Gillian R. Brassil contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      She Thought the Grizzlies Wanted Hiring Advice. They Wanted Her.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyShe Thought the Grizzlies Wanted Hiring Advice. They Wanted Her.Sonia Raman had spent years studying N.B.A. games as she coached Division III women’s basketball at M.I.T. Then the Memphis Grizzlies called about an opening for an assistant coach.Sonia Raman on the bench this season for the Memphis Grizzlies.Credit…Joe Murphy/NBAE, via Getty ImagesJan. 18, 2021, 3:12 a.m. ETThe women’s basketball team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology knew something was up when Sonia Raman, the coach with the most wins in the program’s history, organized a video meeting on short notice in September. Most of the players figured it had to do with the coming season, and with complications stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.They were completely unprepared for the news Raman delivered — that she was joining the Grizzlies as an assistant coach.“At first we were like, ‘Grizzlies? What college is that?’” Kylie Gallagher, a senior forward, recalled.Raman quickly clarified that she was headed to the N.B.A.’s Memphis Grizzlies, then worked off prepared notes — she knew she would be emotional — as she thanked her players and her staff, and offered more details about the unexpected opportunity that had come her way.“Oh, they were shocked,” Raman, 46, said in a recent interview. “But those players are a part of me, and my experiences with them has made me the coach I am now.”In recent years, the N.B.A. has been more progressive than most men’s sports leagues in hiring and promoting women to coaching and front office positions. Raman, though, was a thoroughly unconventional hire.A former lawyer, Raman had spent 12 seasons at M.I.T., shaping the Engineers — real-life rocket scientists — into a regional power. Within the tight-knit world of Division III women’s basketball, Raman had developed a reputation as a smart, dedicated and resourceful coach. But Division III women’s basketball is not the usual pipeline to the N.B.A.“If you’re really, truly going to find the best people, you have to be open-minded,” Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins said. “Great coaches exist everywhere.”About four months after joining the Grizzlies, Raman does a bit — or rather a lot — of everything: scouting opponents, player development and analytics, an area of particular interest. In the preseason, Jenkins said, Raman seemed to have her laptop cracked open to game film every time he walked past her office.“I don’t have these thick folders on every team in the N.B.A. like I did in the N.E.W.M.A.C.,” she said, referring, of course, to the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference.Lucia Robinson-Griggs, the Vassar College coach who was a longtime assistant under Raman, said she had already felt the effects of Raman’s jump to the N.B.A.“I’ve gotten a lot of calls from coaches who are just like: ‘How did this happen? How’d she wow them?’” Robinson-Griggs said. “And a lot of it was just Sonia being Sonia. The idea of being a student of the game gets thrown around a lot, but that’s Sonia and everything that she embodies.”Growing up in Framingham, Mass., Raman loved basketball. She rooted for the Boston Celtics. She played with her friends. Her parents, both computer programmers, supported her interest in sports, she said. She went on to play college basketball at Tufts, where she came off the bench as a high-energy guard.“I was not very good,” she said. “I just worked hard and tried to be a good teammate.”After graduating from Boston College Law School, Raman worked for the federal Labor Department and later for an investment firm, in the risk and compliance division. She had only recently started that job when Kathy Hagerstrom, who was then the basketball coach at Wellesley College, asked if Raman would be interested in volunteering as an assistant.“I always knew that I was going to find a way to coach,” Raman said. “It just wasn’t a part of my life plan to make it career. I thought it would be something that I did after work, or on weekends — maybe coach a youth team.”For six seasons, Raman kept her day job as a lawyer while moonlighting as one of Hagerstrom’s assistants. Raman finally left the law behind in 2008, when she went to M.I.T.“It’s a very nontraditional career path for someone of South Asian descent,” she said. “My parents are both immigrants from India, so coming here and working hard and providing me with so much opportunity — I don’t think it was on their radar that their daughter was going to become a basketball coach.”She added, “But I think they saw where my passion was all along.”She embarked on an extensive rebuild at M.I.T., which had scuffled through five consecutive losing seasons. It was not an instant turnaround.“There were times where it was like: ‘Oh, did you see this person running around in P.E.? Would she be interested in playing?’” Robinson-Griggs said. “We needed numbers.”Raman was not especially demonstrative during games or even at practice. But she was methodical in her approach. “Preparation is everything for her,” said Meghan O’Connell, a former assistant and now the team’s interim coach.Raman would go so far as to workshop conversations with her assistants.Raman coaching the M.I.T. Engineers during the 2018-19 conference championship game.Credit…Ben Barnhart, via DAPER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology“She’d say, ‘OK, this is going to be your role today, and this is going to be Meghan’s role, and this is how we’re going to push people and get to where we need to be,’” Robinson-Griggs recalled. “She would anticipate questions that our players would have for us, and we’d talk about our responses.”She also would attend Celtics practices whenever the team opened them up to area coaches. A voracious consumer of late-night N.B.A. broadcasts, Raman would mine random midseason games for fresh material.“She’d show up to practice the next day, like, ‘Guys, I have a new end-of-the-game play for us to run,’” Gallagher said.Raman doubled as the athletic department’s assistant director of compliance — “lots of stuff with the Division 1 rowers,” Griggs-Robinson said — and learned to navigate the admissions department’s rigorous standards when she recruited players for her own team. Even prospects who were academically qualified sometimes needed convincing that M.I.T. was the right place for them.“My parents really wanted me to visit M.I.T., and I was hesitant,” Gallagher said. “Because at first, you’re like, if you go to M.I.T., you’re a nerd.”It was the human touch, Gallagher said, that swayed her — the immediate sense she got that Raman cared for her players, and that the players were normal people.The Engineers eventually turned into perennial winners, claiming back-to-back N.E.W.M.A.C. championships in 2018 and 2019.The Grizzlies’ interest in Raman was rooted in a relationship she started developing a couple of years ago with Rich Cho, the team’s vice president of basketball strategy, when he was looking for student intern recommendations.Last August, Cho called while the Grizzlies were still playing in the league’s bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Raman knew that Niele Ivey, one of Jenkins’s assistants, had left the Grizzlies to become the women’s coach at Notre Dame, and Raman figured that Cho wanted to pick her brain about potential replacements.“But then he said that the organization might be interested in interviewing me,” she said, “and that was not something that I had on my radar at all.”Raman spent the week before her initial three-hour interview watching a stream of Grizzlies games. She also listened to Memphis sports-talk radio and had her partner, Milena Flores, prep her with potential interview questions.“She is the true basketball mind in the family,” Raman said of Flores, a former player and coach, most recently at Princeton.Jenkins, 36, said he had no qualms about hiring a relative unknown, citing his own unorthodox path from San Antonio Spurs intern to N.B.A. head coach. He said he was “blown away” by Raman. “It was clear that she’s someone who can teach the game at a high level,” he said.Still, Raman’s colleagues had to process the news.“If she had said: ‘I have a coaching opportunity. Guess where?’ I mean, I would’ve named every women’s program in the country before I got to the N.B.A.,” O’Connell said. “It’s incredible to think that people in the N.B.A. are going to hear what Sonia thinks about basketball.”After taking the job, Raman called Ivey, who spoke highly of the team and told her that the players would be welcoming.“She’s already got handshakes with the guys,” Jenkins said.In many ways, Raman is simply doing more of what she has always wanted to do: coach basketball. She feels lucky that she gets to spend most days in a gym, she said. The spotlight may be brighter, but the game is the same.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Football

      Jordan McNair's Family Reaches $3.5 Million Settlement With University of Maryland

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFamily Reaches $3.5 Million Settlement in Death of Maryland Football PlayerJordan McNair, a University of Maryland offensive lineman, collapsed from heatstroke during a practice in 2018 and died two weeks later.Jordan McNair in 2016, when he was in high school. He died in 2018 after sustaining heatstroke during a University of Maryland football practice.Credit…Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun, via Associated PressJan. 17, 2021Updated 8:30 p.m. ETThe University of Maryland has reached a $3.5 million settlement agreement with the family of a football player who collapsed from heatstroke during a practice in May 2018 and died two weeks later.The details of the settlement were reported by ESPN and appeared in an agenda item for a meeting of the Maryland Board of Public Works, which will vote on it on Jan. 27. The settlement was reached more than two years after the death of the football player, Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old offensive lineman.Mr. McNair’s parents, Marty McNair and Tonya Wilson, could not immediately be reached for comment. “This has been a long and painful fight, but we will attempt to find closure even though this is a wound that will never, ever fully heal,” they said in a statement to ESPN.Their son’s death spurred two investigations and an ESPN report that described a “toxic culture” of bullying and humiliation in the university’s football program. The team’s head coach and two trainers were fired, and the team’s conditioning coach resigned.Mr. McNair collapsed in the heat during a practice on May 29, 2018, when he ran a 106-degree fever. An independent report commissioned by the university found that Mr. McNair was not properly cared for after he showed symptoms of heatstroke. Cold-water immersion, a standard treatment, was not performed, the report said, and it was more than an hour before anyone dialed 911.The head football coach, D.J. Durkin, and the athletic director, Damon Evans, were placed on administrative leave while the university investigated the claims that were raised in the ESPN report. The investigation found that the program did not have a “toxic culture,” but acknowledged that “too many players feared speaking out.” It suggested that Mr. Durkin had made errors but was not to blame for many of the program’s issues.One day after the university’s Board of Regents said Mr. Durkin would be reinstated, citing the investigation, Wallace D. Loh, the university’s president at the time, overruled the board and fired him.Soon after, the two athletic trainers who had attended to Mr. McNair were also fired, and Rick Court, the strength and conditioning coach who supervised the practice where Mr. McNair collapsed, resigned.The University of Maryland on Sunday declined to comment about the settlement agreement. It said an independent review panel made 41 recommendations in the aftermath of Mr. McNair’s death, all of which have been implemented.“The most notable was the transition to an autonomous healthcare model, where all team physicians are employees of our university health center,” it said. The law firm representing Mr. McNair’s parents said the McNairs were “relieved that this fight is over and to put this behind them as they continue to mourn Jordan’s death.”Mr. McNair’s death prompted criticism of universities and the National Collegiate Athletic Association for not adequately monitoring conditioning workouts, especially in the off-season.From 2000 to 2018, 31 N.C.A.A. football players died during off-season or preseason workouts from heatstroke, cardiac issues, asthma and other causes, according to Scott Anderson, the head athletic trainer at the University of Oklahoma, who keeps a database of athletic fatalities.Mr. Anderson said in an email that he was aware of eight severe cases of heatstroke involving N.C.A.A. football players, three of whom died.Mr. McNair’s parents founded the Jordan McNair Foundation shortly after their son’s death to educate student athletes and parents about how to recognize the symptoms of heatstroke. In their statement to ESPN, they said they wanted to honor “Jordan’s legacy so that his death was not in vain.”“No parent,” they said, “should have to wait this long for closure where their child has been treated unfairly or unjustly.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Football

      In Robert Saleh, the Jets Believe They Found the Head Coach They Need

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Robert Saleh, the Jets Believe They Found the Leader They NeedSaleh’s defense carried the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl appearance. But it was his ability to motivate players that brought him to New York.Robert Saleh, 41, was the San Francisco 49ers’ defensive coordinator for four seasons.Credit…Tony Avelar/Associated PressJan. 15, 2021Updated 7:51 p.m. ETRobert Saleh oversaw a San Francisco 49ers defense that came within minutes of winning the Super Bowl last year and that managed to rank among the league’s best this season despite missing many of its top players.But that is not why the Jets coveted him.After one of the worst seasons in franchise history, a 2-14 fiasco that exposed a lack of comprehensive oversight and resulted in Adam Gase’s dismissal after two years on the job, the Jets did not focus on finding an offensive mastermind or a defensive wizard when they searched for Gase’s replacement. They wanted a leader, an expert communicator, an energetic motivator capable of inspiring both the locker room and a fan base that had been growing more disgruntled by the day.An extensive process led the Jets to Saleh, who after twice interviewing with the team agreed late Thursday night to become their next head coach, the climax of his 20-year odyssey from a low-level position in the business world to the leadership of an N.F.L. team.Saleh, 41, who is of Lebanese descent, is believed to be the league’s first Muslim Arab American head coach. He spent 16 seasons as an N.F.L. assistant, the last four as the defensive coordinator with San Francisco, where players and fellow coaches alike expected him to get a head-coaching job someday.“When you’re looking for a head coach who can establish a culture and get the respect of his players and is just a great teacher, that’s Saleh,” the former N.F.L. linebacker Brock Coyle, who played two seasons for Saleh in San Francisco, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Every time I left a meeting with him, I knew exactly what needed to be done, whether it was in practice or the game.”Saleh worked with Richard Sherman in Seattle and then helped the star cornerback rejuvenate his career in San Francisco.Credit…Stan Szeto/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Jets have struggled to establish much of anything over the past decade except dysfunction and despair, winning the third-fewest games in the N.F.L. since their last playoff appearance, in the 2010 season. Saleh provides a welcomed infusion of dynamism.With his shaved head and muscular physique, Saleh, a former tight end at Northern Michigan, cuts a commanding figure, and his demonstrative sideline presence — yelling, fist-pumping, high-fiving — after big defensive plays earned him sustained airtime during 49ers broadcasts.Off the field, Saleh projects a calm and collected demeanor, Coyle said, and in the high-stress world of coaching, that resonated with his players.“He really put critical thinking into his coaching,” Coyle said. “He’s not this ego-driven guy. He really thought about what’s the best way to relay the message he wanted to his player and always wanted to hear what the players thought. His door was always open.”After a ragged first two seasons under Saleh’s watch, the 49ers’ defense, fueled by an influx of talent, powered the team to the Super Bowl, which San Francisco lost to Kansas City. Impressed, the Browns interviewed him in the last off-season, and after learning that Cleveland would be hiring Kevin Stefanski instead, the 49ers’ head coach, Kyle Shanahan, said: “Every year we keep him we’ll be very fortunate. Saleh’s going to be a head coach in this league. He could’ve been one this year. Most likely, he’ll be one next year.”Several vital members from the 49ers’ 2019 defense, including Nick Bosa, Richard Sherman and Dee Ford, missed most of this season with injuries, but the team still finished fourth in passing yards allowed and fifth in total yards allowed per game.As Saleh sets about assembling a team to his specifications, it’s likely that he will import players and coaches from San Francisco. That group could include Mike LaFleur — the younger brother of Packers Coach Matt LaFleur, who was the best man at Saleh’s wedding — as the Jets’ offensive coordinator.Mike LaFleur, right, with 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan. LaFleur is a likely candidate to lead Saleh’s offense with the Jets.Credit…Jeff Chiu/Associated PressIf so, LaFleur would surely borrow Shanahan’s run-heavy scheme, loaded with motions and shifts, a decision that could influence how the Jets approach the quarterback position this off-season. The incumbent, Sam Darnold, played in a version of that scheme as a rookie, but the Jets must decide whether to continue building around Darnold or to trade him, filling his spot with a veteran or a first-round pick, perhaps Justin Fields of Ohio State or Zach Wilson of Brigham Young.Saleh grew up in Dearborn, Mich., home to one of the country’s largest Arab American communities, and after graduating from Northern Michigan in 2001, picked finance over football, going to work for Comerica Bank. But a few months later, when his brother David escaped the South Tower during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Saleh reassessed what he wanted from life.“His love and passion for football is ultimately why he wanted to get into coaching,” David Saleh told The Detroit News in 2020. “He just didn’t want to leave the game.”Saleh worked for three college programs over the next four years before joining the Houston Texans as a defensive intern in 2005, a move that altered the trajectory of his career. There, he met Shanahan, who would hire him in 2017 as the 49ers defensive coordinator.Saleh became the fourth head coach of color currently in the N.F.L., according to the league’s measures of diversity, with four openings still to be filled. His hiring came several months after the league updated the Rooney Rule, which aims to increase diversity in candidacies for head coaching jobs and certain front office roles. The rule was changed in May to bump up its interviewing requirement from at least one external minority candidate for each head coaching position to at least two.When Jets General Manager Joe Douglas recently delineated his ideal qualities for the next coach, he only alluded to football. He mentioned character, integrity and communication skills. After interviewing nine candidates, after listening to their plans and their visions and their ambitions, Douglas and the Jets knew what they needed.They needed Robert Saleh.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More