So remember a few months back, when the Blob unfavorably compared Purdue Fort Wayne's deaf ear to Detroit Mercy's more functional one, in regards to the way each handled its women basketball players complaints about their apparently off-the-rails coaches?
Detroit Mercy elected to shut down the season in response to the players' claims of abusive behavior by first-year coach AnnMarie Gilbert. PFW chose to ignore similar charges leveled at its own women's coach, Niecee Nelson, papering over it with a lot of lawyer-speak about an "investigation" that didn't seem very investigative at all.
The upshot: Unlike Detroit Mercy, head coach Niecee Nelsen was allowed to finish out the season, even though PFW had documentation about her abuse from 22 players, staff and parents.
Well. Perhaps the Blob spoke too soon, praising Detroit Mercy at PFW's expense.
It's May now, see, and Detroit Mercy has regained the lead in tone deafness. The women's program there is in shambles; every player on the roster has left or will be leaving, a completely understandable reaction to athletic director Robert Vowels' decision to retain the embattled Gilbert as coach.
According to this story in the Detroit News, Vowels dismissed the players' concerns about Gilbert, saying an "independent investigation" (air quotes the Blob's own) found the allegations of abuse against her "were not substantiated."
In other words: You girls are just makin' this stuff up.
Or, in different other words: Typical emotional women, getting all in a snit because their coach was being tough on them.
Now, that's probably not the way Vowels wanted to come off, and he did a bit of fine papering over himself with some fluent Press Release about how "any concern from a student-athlete about health or safety receives my highest priority," and how "every concern expressed from this team was heard," and blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda.
As it turns out, that "concern" manifested itself most clearly with the decision to shut down the season. Apparently it wasn't a response to the players' concerns; the women wanted to continue the season but would do so only without Gilbert, so Vowels canceled the season instead.
The aforementioned comes from former Detroit Mercy guard Jiera Shears, who became the first player to publicly speak out about all this the other day. Shears claims, among other things, that Gilbert brushed off players' injuries, including Shears' concussion, accusing them of goldbricking and calling them "losers," and "cowards."
Much of it sounds remarkably like the allegations leveled at PFW's Nelson, who gave the school cover to fire her by being a spectacularly awful coach. She was fired at the end of the season after the Mastodons went 22-116 over her five seasons, including 8-74 in conference play.
Which was all the school mentioned when they released her, choosing once again to ignore the multiple allegations against her.
And you wonder why Division I student-athletes are making so much noise these days?
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