UNC Football Hires Former Illinois Coach Accused of Mistreating Players to...Work with Players

Apparently looking to invite criticism, the North Carolina Tar Heels football team has hired disgraced former Illinois football coach Tim Beckman to be a "volunteer assistant" coach.

Beckman was fired from Illinois last year for his inappropriate treatment of players. Here's a recap of some of the things he did:

• Refused to allow some players to go through concussion protocol
• "Didn't believe in hamstring injuries"
• Demeaned injured players in order to get players to stop reporting injuries
• Ran players off even when they were still on scholarship

The findings by the university were so stark that they felt they needed to get rid of Beckman as quickly as possible, regardless of the on-field repercussions, and fired him a week before the start of the 2015 season. But apparently this is someone who UNC coach Larry Fedora thinks should be around college football players again.

This is clearly a morally bankrupt move, but that is no surprise in the morally bankrupt realm of college sports—a multi-billion-dollar industry whose "firms" are obsessed with winning, but disingenuously claim they are not running a business. It's why former Baylor coach Art Briles—who presided over one of the worst sexual assault scandals in college sports history—will soon have a job again: because he's a brilliant offensive mind.

But there's where the Tim Beckman hire makes no sense: Tim Beckman does not have a great football mind. He is very good at creating nonsensical acronyms, but he is not very good at winning football games. He went just 4-20 in Big Ten play with Illinois, beating just two teams with winning records. His most-remembered on-field moment is when he was trampled by a ref, then penalized for it.

There is a reason Beckman can only land a "volunteer" job. Even in an industry that doesn't give two shits about your character—from college to the NFL—he can't land a paying job. He cannot help North Carolina win games. (He knows Fedora from when they coached together at Oklahoma State, so perhaps it's a friend helping out another friend).

Moreover, Beckman can't really do anything at UNC. Volunteer coaches can't actually coach in college football, so he will probably be designated as an analyst, consultant, or some other meaningless term.

Yet, here is Tim Beckman—bad person and bad football coach—working on a staff with the same subset of athletes he was fired for abusing. There truly is nothing that can get you blacklisted from college sports.

[News-Gazette]