What impact will the Iowa allegations have on the program?
The Yahoo Sports College Podcast crew breaks down the allegations against the Iowa strength and conditioning coach.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: The focus seems to be on longtime Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle. It started slowly and built up on social media with a number of former Hawkeye football players speaking about negative experiences they had while playing for Iowa and specifically, in the weight room. It was not limited to African-American players, although that certainly was part of it.
PAT FORDE: I think there comes a point where doing things the same way forever, which is kind of in the Iowa way, can come back from-- and go from being a strength to a weakness. And I think this might be one of those instances where that's the case. You know, this is a guy that's been an old-school coach with old-school ways, old-school mentality that trickles down to, in terms of control, to the fact that they had a very restrictive social media policy that apparently has very recently been changed. A tweet from Adam Rittenberg, Iowa clarifies social media policy for players' original agreement last week, called for one pre-approved tweet per player. But now there are no restrictions on players and their Twitter participation. Well, welcome to the 21st century, Iowa. It's nice that the players can tweet without pre-approval.
PETE THAMEL: I'm reading the Chris Doyle situation this way. This is a guy who pushed players to the absolute limit and developed players very well and was one of the best of what he does, right? He was-- is an elite strength and conditioning coach. He was paid that way. He was the fulcrum of an Iowa program, like y'all said, that have been very consistent, OK?
Now, in doing that-- I mean, this is about power. And in doing that, he accumulated enough power where he felt like, or was naive to the fact he was doing it-- he basically was demeaning to the players and had no self-awareness. And his motivational techniques were from generations ago-- not acceptable then and should not have happened then, but that that may have been how coaches spoke or how they acted.
And right now, that's not how you can act. Like, it's been made very clear that stereotypes used as motivations, for example, which was one of the things that players brought up in this example, that can't happen anymore. And I was most disappointed in Chris Doyle in his statement because, first of all, when a statement starts, I shouldn't be talking, but I have to, it's probably not going to go well. But then he basically called his accusers, who are victims, liars.
