Former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer is in hot water and trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. The Lipscomb Academy football coach lost his shit berating and putting his hands on one of his high school players on the sideline during a game. The incident was caught on video and has gone viral. Dilfer, the starting QB for the Ravens when they won Super Bowl XXXV and former ESPN analyst, has been the head coach at the Nashville school since 2019.
Can watch the altercation here.
The student on the receiving end of Dilfer’s tirade, Beau Dawson, is the son of former NFL kicker Phil Dawson. Dawson serves on Dilfer’s staff at Lipscomb as special teams coordinator. The two former pros were teammates with the Cleveland Browns during their playing days.
Even if Dawson is OK with the reprimanding of his son by Dilfer, it’s not a good look in any way. Most of us understand that this incident would be considered “mild” in another era. Today this just makes Dilfer look like he completely lost his cool, which is precisely what happened. You can’t be on the sidelines pushing kids around. That sort of behavior isn’t acceptable anymore.
Since all the backlash, Dilfer has released a statement taking full responsibility and apologizing for the incident.
“I want to address the incident on our sideline during Friday night’s game vs. Independence that has drawn a lot of attention. First and foremost, I take full responsibility as the head coach and leader of our team for not de-escalating an emotional situation with one of our players, Beau Dawson. Beau is one of our finest student-athletes and embodies all the characteristics we are looking for in our Mustang players. Beau plays the game with the right kind of passion and is an inspiration to our other players.
During a moment of frustration in an attempt to get our team to play with more discipline, I unfairly singled Beau out. Somehow Beau Dawson has been portrayed publicly as the culprit in this situation, when in reality I should have been a better leader and shown greater wisdom and discernment in how I handled this incident. Overall, I could not be more proud of Beau and the rest of our team for how they handle the emotional nature of each game they compete in.”
Imagine a coach like Bobby Knight trying to coach today. He’d be run out of any college he attempted to coach with all he had going on at Indiana. Talk about anger issues, Knight had plenty of them.
It doesn’t matter whether you have a personal relationship with the kid and his parents outside of school. These altercations can’t take place on any level of youth sports. Manhandling someone else’s child can’t be tolerated.
It will be interesting to see what Lipscomb Academy does in response to the altercation. Let’s see if it hands out any type of punishment for Dilfer’s outlandish outburst. I feel they’ll handle this in-house and let Dilfer and Dawson deal with it amongst themselves. If this wasn’t Trent Dilfer, but a coach that hadn’t played NFL or big-time college football, I think the final resolution to this ordeal might turn out a lot different.
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