Vanderbilt chancellor has to be cringing at coach’s comments about good looking wives
UPDATE Friday morning: As we expected, an apology was issued by Vandy coach James Franklin about his comments on only hiring assistants with attractive wives. The AJC is reporting that Franklin took to Twitter to say: “My foot doesn’t taste good. I hope I did not offend anyone … attempt at humor obviously fell a few yds. short. … I clearly used language that doesn’t reflect my view on women and I am SORRY!”
Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor of athletics, David Williams, said he told Franklin that his statements were “inappropriate.” “He clearly made a mistake,” Williams told USA Today. “And clearly what he said is not how he feels and not how we feel.”
Here is my original post:
Can a college noted for its academic excellence keep a coach on staff who says something as bizarre as this: He won’t hire an assistant coach until he checks out the man’s wife to ensure she is good looking.
Anyone doubt that Vanderbilt Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos cringed when he heard these comments made Wednesday by Vanderbilt head coach James Franklin on a sports radio show? Or that the two men will be chatting soon?
In his commencement address to Vanderbilt grads two weeks ago, Zeppos urged them to find and embrace complexity to better their lives.
Franklin’s advice — at least to the male graduates at Vandy — apparently would have been to find a hot wife.
(I expect the standard-issue-gaffe statement soon that Franklin was only kidding and that he regrets his poor attempt at humor.)
Franklin, in an interview with Nashville radio station 104.5 The Zone, responded to a question about whether it helps a coach in recruiting to have a good-looking wife.
“I’ve been saying it for a long time, I will not hire an assistant coach until I’ve seen his wife,” he said. “His wife, if she looks the part and she’s a D1 recruit, then you got a chance to get hired.
“I mean, that’s part of the deal. There’s a very strong correlation between having the confidence, going up and talking to a woman, and being quick on your feet and having some personality and confidence and being fun and articulate, than it is walking into a high school and recruiting a kid and selling him.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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83 comments Add your comment
Mary Elizabeth
May 31st, 2012
10:24 pm
Wrong values. Evidently, Franklin Roosevelt placed more priority on substance than on looks when he chose Eleanor Roosevelt to be his wife, and she helped him to reach higher in establishing human and civil rights for all citizens than he might have achieved with another woman as his partner. Eleanor Roosevelt has had lasting impact upon this nation and this world even though some considered her to be less than physcially perfect. That Franklin Roosevelt chose Eleanor spoke well for his depth. If Vanderbilt’s Chancellor does not address this statement by this coach, Vanderbilt, itself, will have lost some degree of credibility.
I hope that young women, today, will reject this kind of vapid thinking from shallow men and place priority upon becoming all that they are capable of becoming to make a positive impact in the world. I hope that they will, also, seek men of substance, and that men of substance will, likewise, seek women of substance to be their life partners.
Not a Serious Interview
May 31st, 2012
11:05 pm
@ Mary Elizabeth – Good comments about the true importance of character.
I suspect the coach will apologize, and spend this season making sure
that he does not offend anyone else. I still say that the statements were
not appropriate, but the entire interview from the start was not a serious
interview ( He still is accountable for what he said as a representative of
Vanderbilt University).
Ben
May 31st, 2012
11:18 pm
One day what’s really important in the world is going to materialize and u people r going to have to reevaluate your prurient sensibilities and call things like they are and in the real world there are physically beautiful people and Medusa like, hideously ugly people in the world we live in. So deal with it.
AlreadySheared
May 31st, 2012
11:44 pm
Just disgusting. Next thing you know, they’ll want to recruit a whole group of gorgeous female students whose whole purpose is to jump around on the sidelines during games in short skirts and scream about how much they want the team to win.
WHAT is this country coming to !?!?
iTiSi
June 1st, 2012
1:08 am
“Already Sheared”, loved your sarcasm, good stuff! Was just thinking if this was something that came out of the White House it would be a totally different story with the liberal manta. You know, those who are overly sensitive, even when a guy is joking around, and just waiting to get their “itty bitty feewings” hurt! Let’s say for example Obama decided to dump Biden to allow for another Vice-Presidential candidate, and made the remark that whoever he picked would have to have a “great-looking wife” or if a female choice, she would have to be a “hot number” herself. All these liberal media type would be saying about Obama, “Awww, that is so cool and he is soooooooo funny”!!!!!!
UGA Student
June 1st, 2012
2:40 am
Franklin SHOULD be held accountable for these remarks…held as a recruiting genius.
He’s managed to get Vanderbilt inside the Top 20 for recruiting so far this cycle. For those of us that have followed football for a decent amount of time in our lives, we know that this is a HUGE deal. Whatever his methodology, I trust it. Especially in the vapid world of high schoolers and athleticism.
Anyone calling for a reprimand or even the firing of Franklin is out of their mind and doesn’t catch the point of how Franklin is helping Vandy. It seems like (to Maureen, at least) this blog wants to view Vandy as wanting to be in the mold of Harvard, where academics are top priority by a large margin over athletics. I see Vandy more desiring to be in the mold of a Stanford, where academics and athletics co-exist in an upper echelon. Franklin is helping to shape Vandy athletic non-department into that.
Balance is key.
Just my opinion… & Go Dawgs!
Twitter mea culpa from Vandy HC for hot wife imbroglio | CollegeFootballTalk
June 1st, 2012
6:40 am
[...] however, didn’t stop the ensuing brouhaha for the married father of two young daughters (pictured). So much so, in fact, that Franklin felt [...]
Mary Elizabeth
June 1st, 2012
7:15 am
This isn’t simply about Vanderbilt or sports. It is about how women are viewed in this world.
bootney farnsworth
June 1st, 2012
7:31 am
so, is HIS wife hot?
if not, he should step in down in favor of the coach who has the hottest wife.
bootney farnsworth
June 1st, 2012
7:33 am
@ UGA student
thank you for providing yet another example of why football should be removed for colleges.
BTW: had he made that crack at Stanford, he’d already be out of his butt.
bootney farnsworth
June 1st, 2012
7:44 am
just curious:
if he’d said all his coaches have to have hot wives who put out for him monthly ?
or they all have to have a certain bust size?
or that coaches who marry ex porn stars get promoted to asst. head coach?
blonde wives get you coordinator spots?
or starting spots are decided by who’s girlfriend does the best lap dance for ole coach?
should the guy be fired? no
should the guy be censured? not at this time, not for just those remarks
should the guy be required to take some classes on impulse control when talking in public? hell yeah. the stupidity of saying this out loud just after Petrino gets run for his actions? Vandy isn’t UGA. they sit right in the middle of Nashville and are not the pride and joy of the Tenn state legislature and citizens.
this idiot have given Vandy a great insight to how his mind works. if Vandy is smart they put him
on the shortest of all possible leashes.
and start putting aside money for when he screws up big time
bootney farnsworth
June 1st, 2012
7:46 am
@ Mary Elizabeth
you need to do more research on FDR. your view of him/that marriage is far more romantic than real.
Chaos
June 1st, 2012
8:53 am
How is this for some perspective?
How many pastors are hired based upon what their wives bring to the table? How many times, and at how many deacon’s or pulpit committee meetings are the pastor’s wives discussed as “part of the package”? Is she attractive? Can she play the piano? Can she sing a good solo? Can she make a mean covered dish for our dinners on the grounds?
I could go on and on…
I don’t condone the coach’s words. They were poorly chosen and certainly indicate his shallowness. But that doesn’t allow us on this board to turn equally shallow.
Vandy is a great institution…so are many, many churches that do just the same type of things when hiring a pastor. Just sayin’
Mary Elizabeth
June 1st, 2012
9:00 am
bootney farnsworth@7:46 am
“@Mary Elizabeth
you need to do more research on FDR. your view of him/that marriage is far more romantic than real.”
==================================
No, Bootney, my words regarding the marriage of FDR and Eleanor were spot on. I never claimed that their marriage was ideal, but it was “real,” in the ways in which I had described it to be. I am very aware of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd’s affair with FDR which Eleanor discovered in 1918, after having been married to FDR for 13 years and having borne him six children, five of whom survived. (I am also aware of the fact that FDR may have later had an affair with his private secretary, Missy LeHand, although that has not been proven.) Eleanor had offered FDR a divorce after the Mercer affair but Franklin’s mother objected and Franklin decided he did not want to break up his family nor ruin his political career. Eleanor agreed to remain in the marriage if FDR never saw Lucy Mercer again. Franklin agreed. They were never sexually intimate again, however.
I do not see any of these players in history as caricatured, card board figures. The fact that FDR was unfaithful does not negate the substance within the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt marriage, imo. He relied upon her. They loved one another in evolving ways. And that love evolved over the years from simply a romantic love to a bond of deeper substance that effected millions of people for the better. Eleanor was his legs where he could not go. She had fought his mother for his right to continue a political career after his polio because she knew that he must continue contributing in the political arena and not simply withdraw from life, (and this was after the Mercer affair). She did not wilt away after knowledge of the affair and became a woman of stature in her own right. When the Democratic convention was split apart over FDR’s choice of VP in one of his terms, he called Eleanor and asked her to fly across the country to address the convention. The transcendent vision she had for the Democratic Party rallied the Democratic delegates to unite for a cause greater than their petty bickerings. She was revered by those delegates as they applauded her speech and they, thereafter, selected FDR’s choice for running mate and the “show went on.” FDR praised his wife in private, after that.
When Eleanor was 19 and Franklin was about 20, he fell in love with Eleanor who was a “tall willowy young woman” who had been educated in England, exposed to society’s social problems there, and had traveled throughout Europe. She was unlike the other debutantes in New York. She had asked him to join her in her charity work among the very poor immigrants of the lower East Side of NYC. That changed him, forever, and he sought Eleanor – precisely because of her substance – to become his wife.
When FDR died in his Warm Springs home in Georgia, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd was with him as well as a cousin. The meeting had been arranged by FDR’s and Eleanor’s daughter, Anna. When Eleanor arrived to take his body by train back to Washington, DC, the cousin told Eleanor of the presence of Lucy Rutherfurd and that it had been arranged by Anna for FDR. Eleanor had said, later, that she felt betrayed both by her husband and daughter and she had been deeply saddened because of it. However, being the calibre of woman that she was, she also said later that she was able to put it all in correct perspective and she knew that a part of FDR needed the charm and joy that Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd had brought to his life. She wrote that she realized that she was meant to be the conscientious force behind him that prodded him on to greater public service for the underprivileged and disenfranchised. Both the charming and the substantive were a part of FDR’s spirit. I do not conceive of marriage as a cookie-cutter, one-dimensional plan for every human being. My previous post was not mainly about FDR and Eleanor, thus, I had to limit my words to demonstrate how their relationship was relevant to the shallow words of the coach at Vanderbilt. Please, reread my words regarding their marriage, from my earlier post, Bootney, and tell me, now, if you disagree that what I had written was not, also, true and “real” of Franklin and Eleanor’s marriage. (Btw, I was glad to read that you essentially agreed with my position regarding the Vanderbilt situation.)
From my 10:24 pm, 5/31/12 post:
“Evidently, Franklin Roosevelt placed more priority on substance than on looks when he chose Eleanor Roosevelt to be his wife, and she helped him to reach higher in establishing human and civil rights for all citizens than he might have achieved with another woman as his partner. Eleanor Roosevelt has had lasting impact upon this nation and this world even though some considered her to be less than physically perfect. That Franklin Roosevelt chose Eleanor spoke well for his depth.”
MannyT
June 1st, 2012
9:00 am
…and coach falls on the plastic knife, (not sword)
http://www.ajc.com/sports/uga/vandy-coach-apologizes-for-1449998.html
He’ll get more positive recruiting mileage than negative out of this.
skipper
June 1st, 2012
9:03 am
Maureen,
No personal attacks from me….just a “reaction to over reaction”. Quite frankly, if we “held accountable” (i.e.-FIRED) EVERYONE WHO MADE A “SUPPOSED” GAFFE, not one teacher, coach, newsperson, ditch digger or brick mason would have a job. Everybody has offended someone before….its life!
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
June 1st, 2012
12:04 pm
@iTiSi
Yet another comment by someone telling us what the “liberals” would do, and as ususal, getting it completely wrong. Just because you are conservative, does not atomatically make anything you disagree with a “liberal” point of view and visa versa… people are a lot more complex than that.
what_what
June 1st, 2012
12:04 pm
first, as always, why doesn’t the ajc allow comments on every story like many papers????
secondly, why did you say “a college noted for its academic excellence”??? does that mean what the coach said is fine if he was not at a good school? Why the distinction? Shouldn’t you have said “can an institution keep a coach on staff………….”…just confused as to your line in the sand as to what is acceptable and what is not.
Can a college noted for its academic excellence keep a coach on staff who says something as bizarre as this: He won’t hire an assistant coach until he checks out the man’s wife to ensure she is good looking.
skipper
June 1st, 2012
2:03 pm
ok ok ok………..Lets now make it a prerequisite that overweight (don’t want to offend fat folks) ugly (don’t want to offend Queen Elizabeth’s daughters) and nasty (see Snooki) will now be offered favoritism in consideration as coaches-wives material. Why are folks hatin’ on pretty folks? Maureen, your pic looks ok, so you should not be offended..
Ashley
June 1st, 2012
2:47 pm
Have coach visit Vandy School of Medicine, to have foot extracted from mouth. We all know coach was hired for his football abilities and the love of smelly lockerrooms and not I.Q.
Archie
June 1st, 2012
4:01 pm
@Mary Elizabeth: You have confirmed what I had sort of suspected for years, that Eleanor was sort of FDR’s “social conscience” during his four terms as president. She made sure a lot of people who normally would have been ignored (or worse) got some advocacy and that was a great contribution she made.
Maureen Downey
June 1st, 2012
4:23 pm
To SouthDawg, Just read you complaint comments in moderation about being moderated.
You may have missed my earlier message, but here it is again on why more comments — including yours — are being moderated:
I am less tolerant of idiocy and personal attacks. Your comment will come down and all subsequent comments will be held in moderation. If your stuff is not posting, that is why. This blog is not a public square; it is a living room. As I have said many times, spit on the floor or put your muddy feet up and you will not be invited back. My feelings will not be hurt if you move to a different education blog.
And, by the way, SouthDawg, in response to your comment in moderation: In the latest reader numbers, Get Schooled is the 4th most well read blog on AJC.com, after three of the longstanding sports blogs. Got those new numbers two days ago, and I am delighted with them. The folks who actually post comments to a blog represent only a fraction of the readers. Readers are what matter most. Postings are great, but you want high readership.
Contrary to your contention, I believe the increased moderation of oafish comments is playing a role in raising readership.
Maureen
skipper
June 1st, 2012
5:18 pm
@SouthDawg,
You just toted a butt whoopin’……………
Mary Elizabeth
June 1st, 2012
6:55 pm
Archie, 4:01 p.m.
Well said, and thank you.
HS Math Teacher
June 1st, 2012
7:16 pm
Wow. It seems that the good state of Tennessee hired two cannon mouths around the same time period. Tennessee’s former head coach, who told a South Carolina recruit who decided to stay at home and be a Gamecock, to just stay down in SC, and maybe end up pumping gas for a living. Now, this character at Vandy.
I’ll bet this rogue’s assistant coaches won’t be taking their wives over to his 4th of July wienie roast.
HS Math Teacher
June 1st, 2012
7:33 pm
testing….1,2,3,4…
bu2
June 1st, 2012
10:05 pm
Reality is better looking women AND men are more likely to be hired. Its not sexist (although the Vandy coach stretches it by including the wives).
Good Mother
June 3rd, 2012
1:20 pm
Let’s turn the tables. What if the Vandy coached picked the assistant coaches based on the assistant coach’s looks? An argument can be made that these coaches are on TV and must be photogenic to make the school look good. A man who isn’t physically attractive doesn’t have the confidence to recruit. He’s got to look good to really be good, right?
If he’d said that, he would have been fired.
But it’s Ok to judge a woman by her looks, right?
Pigs.
Just Pigs.
Football breeds pigs.
Ronin
June 4th, 2012
12:40 am
Maureen, You pull more traffic than Jay Bookman? I see you noted three sport blogs. I know what happens when you assume, but thought Jay was pulling in 4x the comments. However, it may appear, not more views. He has an entrenched group of bloggers.
Just wondering.
Last point, apparently the weather in San Diego cleared up and Ron Burgundy is out of the cage.
Good Mother
June 4th, 2012
7:46 am
The coach’s comments were not a gaffe. He revealed his true feelings. A gaffe is a mistake, an honest mistake. This coach said what he meant and should be fired.
Mary Elizabeth
June 4th, 2012
8:04 am
“What if the Vandy coached [sic] picked the assistant coaches based on the assistant coach’s looks?. . .He’s got to look good to really be good, right?
If he’d said that, he would have been fired. But it’s Ok to judge a woman by her looks, right?”
=========================================
Besides placing values on looks rather than on substance, assistant coaches should be chosen
based on their own merits and not on the merits of their wives, whatever one deems valuable. A wife should not be considered simply as an accoutrement to her husband. She should be thought of as being a mature woman, with full personal autonomy, both by herself and by others.
Regarding the element of judging by one’s looks, here is an analogy, by example. The success of the Jimmy Carter presidency should be determined by his vision and policies, and their effects on the nation and the world, and not on the merits or demerits of his brother, Billy, or of his mother, Lillian, or of his wife, Rosalynn. And, certainly, Carter’s looks – or the looks of any of his family members – should not have any bearing on judging the merits of Carter’s presidency. That a football coach would think, otherwise, in his/her area of expertise informs citizens of the depth of that football culture. Are the values of that football culture the ones we wish to teach our young to appreciate and to perpetuate within our nation and our world, into the future, or do we wish, as a people, to evolve past this limited way of perceiving?
Mary Elizabeth
June 4th, 2012
9:30 am
Post Script to my 8:04 am post.
I had written this closing line at 8:04 am: “Are the values of that football culture the ones we wish to teach our young to appreciate and to perpetuate within our nation and our world, into the future, or do we wish, as a people, to evolve past (beyond) this limited way of perceiving?”
=======================================
When I wrote the words “limited way of perceiving,” above, I was thinking, specifically, of the placing of value upon the relatively superficial concept of looks. There are many attributes within the “football culture” which are worthy of perpetuating, such as fostering self-discipline and excellence in performance.
However, upon more reflection, perhaps, as citizens, we should begin to consider what degree of competition versus what degree of cooperation we wish to perpetuate within societies. Perhaps, it is time to question whether the more “muscular” concepts of power, dominance, winning, and wealth (which football brings to colleges and universities) are the values most to be sought within our nation, as opposed to the values of cooperation, egalitarianism, and intellectual and spiritual development. It is interesting that the valuing of looks (which is a form of personal power) seems, often, to be a priority within the arenas of life which place priority upon power, a hierarchial way of seeing.
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/competition-vs-cooperation/
Ronin
June 5th, 2012
10:10 am
Good Mother @ 7:46. “. This coach said what he meant and should be fired.” This probably was not a Joe Biden moment and he probably did meant it. Was it wise to say it in public, probably not.
However, you have to understand, it’s not just football where this happens, it’s business and government as well, so, hold your horses about putting ole James on the chopping block.
While the visually repugnant may not like it, “pretty people” have more opportunities. It happens all the time, every day of the year, people are judged or profiled by how they look.
Maybe it was a learning moment for ole James, maybe not.