USAToday- Tennessee State defensive end Latrelle Lee was dismissed from the team and expelled from school Saturday night after he hit Tigers head strength coach T.J. Greenstone twice in the head and knocked him to the turf on the sideline.
TSU athletics director Teresa Phillips confirmed to The Tennessean that coach Rod Reed kicked Lee, a senior from Dothan, Ala., off the team. Lee, 22, was expelled from the university on Monday. -------- I think it's pretty obvious that Tennessee State did the right thing in cutting a player that wound up and blindsided one of his coaches with a sucker punch while he was roaming the sidelines in the middle of the game. I'm not going to pretend to to be an expert on what type of behavior is allowable within college football programs, but I would imagine there's a steadfast rule throughout all of collegiate athletics that slugging an authority figure for any reason whatsoever is worthy of harsh disciplinary action. So while you might think expulsion is a little excessive for something that happened in the heat of the moment during a football game, it's probably best to keep someone that didn't hesitate to swing on this guy away from other students and faculty...
(Photo: Tennessee State Athletics)
Now, that being said, I think the Tigers should probably be in the market for another strength and conditioning coach as well. That's partly because T.J. Greenstone almost had to say something over-the-top to elicit an instinctual reaction of physical assault from an inactive player, but it's mostly because the one character trait that a strength and conditioning coach absolutely has to possess is the untested ability to intimidate. This sounds weird to say this about a guy that got clocked upside the head when he wasn't looking, but by seeming like a worthy adversary - if only for one second - he wasn't doing his job. There's just no way he can walk back into that locker room after getting buckled by a 22 year old, and have other 18-22 year olds take him seriously as he screams in their face and tries to stack 45-pound plates past the peak of their exhaustion. Everything I know about strength and conditioning coaches leads me to believe they are all complete lunatics, and everything I know about lunatics leads me to believe they can better take even the most unexpected of punches. There's no shame in not being psychopath, but - as a former defensive tackle - T.J. Greenstone might be better off reviewing tape as a line coach, because he doesn't appear to have anywhere near enough screws loose to run purely on adrenaline at all times.
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