Hands Off Policy

Football coaches at the collegiate level have taken heavy fire lately for hitting and punishing players at extreme levels. Some incidents even costing coaches their jobs. Take Texas Tech football head coach Mike Leach for example. Prior to the 2010 Alamo Bowl in which Texas Tech faced Michigan State, Leach was suspended for disciplining one of his players that recently received a concussion. The concussed player was excused from practice by team doctors. Leach accused the player of faking his injury and ordered him to stand inside of a dark tool shed nearby the team's practice facility and threatened he'd be kicked off the team if he left the shed. After investigation and a failed attempt to get Leach to apologize, the team fired their coach of 10 years. Leach plans to sue Texas Tech for wrongful termination and says he did nothing wrong.

Leach is only one of a handful of coaches that have been accused and fired for putting hands on players as of late. Mark Mangino, the former coach of the Kansas Jayhawks football team and former 2007 Coach of the Year award winner, was let go by the team as recent as December 3rd, after numerous accounts of physically and verbally abusing players. The most recent coach-player incident, just happens to be the biggest. Former USF head coach Jim Leavitt who was fired last week for what officials say he 'struck' a player during halftime of one of the team's games back in November. & Like coach Leach, Leavitt plans to sue the school in hopes of getting his job back. However, it is very unlikely Leavitt will reclaim his job, after refusing to admit he'd done anything wrong, also similar to the Texas Tech - Mike Leach incident. Although reports say the player involved was just 'struck', he claims Levitt grabbed him by the throat and slapped him in the face.

After flipping the script and interfering with the investigation, by telling several coaches and players to change their stories, the odds are against Leavitt. But as usual, we'll let the court sort this one out and await what happens. If Leavitt's job is indeed handed over, the University of Southern Florida will have to hire only it's second football coach ever, as Leavitt has been there since day one when the school's football team debuted in 1995. As children, we were raised to keep our hands to ourselves, but it seems like coaches nowadays have failed to get the memo and live under a different code. With that being said, could all these recent incidents lead to a much more serious and strict policy among coaches and their players?