Coverage and Recruiting Habits Mean Athletes are More Entitled Than Ever

Ezekial Elliot with the CFB Playoff Trophy. 

Ezekiel Elliott’s outburst after Ohio State’s loss to Michigan State last week falls in line with the idea that today’s generation of athletes are more entitled than ever, and only care about their agenda than their team and coaching staff.

“I think I do deserve more than 11 carries,” Elliott told reporters after Ohio State lost its first game of the season, a 17-14 defeat against Michigan State in Columbus. “I think I really do. I can’t speak for the play calling, I don’t know what was going on or what they were seeing, but honestly, it didn’t work out. It wasn’t working.”

Elliott’s press conference ended with him announcing his intentions to leave Ohio State at the end of the year. “This will be my last game in the ‘Shoe,” he said. “There’s no chance of me coming back next year. I have to make the most of my time left. I just want to thank Buckeye Nation for making this place so special and I’m sorry about tonight.”

That’s a total of nine mentions of “I” to go along with two times of “my” and one of “me”, just in those two responses.



Elliott later apologized to coach Urban Meyer and the Ohio State fans for wearing his emotions on his sleeve. Meyer did not issue a suspension with the rivalry game with Michigan coming up this Saturday. “Zeke has always been a very emotional competitor,” said Meyer, who added that Elliott is a good student and a loyal and selfless member of the team.

“It’s done,” he said.

Is it? Meyer may have tried to close the door on this controversy but Elliott’s comments will fester. In today’s age of social media with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, athletes are lot more expressive about themselves than they were even a decade ago. Beginning with their traveling youth football days and accentuated in ballyhooed press conferences announcing their college choice, athletes become a focus of attention well before playing a snap at places like Ohio State.

“I think (Elliott) said what a lot of people were scared to say,” Ohio State defensive end Joey Bosa told reporters.

Without any disciplinary action that we know of – maybe Elliott will have to run sprints in the closed practices – will athletes be as afraid in the future?

Legendary baseball coach Augie Garrido touched on the subject of the growing trend of college athlete entitlement in a speech earlier this year during Cal State Fullerton’s annual Dinner with the Titans banquet. Garrido, a loquacious coach who is in his 19th year at Texas after two stints at Fullerton, received most applause when he mentioned, “The biggest thing wrong with college baseball today is entitlement.”

Current Texas and former Fullerton head baseball coach, Augie Garrido.

“In 1975, my first year at Cal State Fullerton, we made it to the College World Series,” he continued. “We had a guy named Dave Robb who had played second base all season and when we got to Omaha we moved him to first base. He told me, ‘Whatever helps the team coach.’

“If I did that today, the player would look at me and say, ‘Are you kidding me? I’ve got four select team coaches, three professional scouts and my mailman who used to play Triple-A baseball telling me that my future is at second base. What are you doing to me?'”

Is there a solution to this trend? The sobering answer is no. Coaches have succumbed to the idea of letting an athlete be who he or she is as long as the behavior does not break team rules or adversely affect the outcome of competition.

Former Illinois Head Coach Tim Beckman (via sportsmockery.com)

Players can revolt and have a coach fired as we witnessed before this season with the ouster of Tim Beckman as Illinois’ head coach.

The root of allowing athletes to have a voice, no matter how extreme it might be: Saving face on recruiting. If Meyer went public, announcing Elliott would be suspended from the Michigan game and that he won’t tolerate such comments, the fallout would be athletes scrutinizing him in return. While parents or coaching peers may have liked that kind of reaction from Meyer, athletes across the board (in college and high school) would question why he came down so hard on Elliott when Elliott was only speaking his mind.

It’s a slippery slope and it’s falling the way of athletes gaining more of a sense of entitlement, right or wrong.