Former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer is in hot water and is trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. The Lipscomb Academy football coach lost his shit by picking up and putting his hands on one of his high school players during a game. The incident was seen on video and has gone viral. Dilfer, the Ravens ’starting QB when he won Super Bowl XXXV and a former ESPN analyst, has been the head coach of the Nashville school since 2019.
You can see the altercation here.
The student who received Dilfer’s diatribe, Beau Dawson, is the son of former Dawler, an NFL kicker. Dawson is a member of Dilfer’s staff at Lipscomb as a special teams coordinator. The two former professionals were teammates with the Cleveland Browns during their playing days.
Even if Dawson is okay with Dilfer’s recrimination of his son, it’s not a good image. Most of us understand that this incident would be considered “mild” in another era. Today this makes Dilfer seem to have lost his temper, which is precisely what happened. You can’t be on the sidelines pushing kids. This type of behavior is no longer acceptable.
Because the whole reaction, Dilfer issued a statement taking full responsibility and apologizing for the incident.
“I want to address the incident that cost us during Friday night’s game against independence that has attracted a lot of attention. First of all, I take full responsibility as head coach and leader of our team for not slowing down a emotional situation with one of our players, Beau Dawson Beau is one of our best student-athletes and embodies all the features we are looking for in our Mustang players. Beau plays the game with the right kind of passion and is an inspiration for to our other players.
During a moment of frustration at trying to get our team to play with more discipline, I unfairly distinguished Beau. Somehow, Beau Dawson has been publicly portrayed as the culprit in this situation, when in fact he should have been a better leader and shown greater wisdom and discernment in the way I handled this incident. Overall, I couldn’t be more proud of Beau and the rest of our team for how they handle the emotional nature of every game they compete in. “
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Imagine a coach like Bobby Knight trying to train today. He would have been left without any college trying to train with everything he had in Indiana. Let’s talk about anger issues, Knight had a lot of them.
It doesn’t matter if you have a personal relationship with the child and their parents outside of school. These altercations cannot take place any youth sports level. Manipulation of another’s children cannot be tolerated.
It will be interesting to see what Lipscomb Academy does in response to the alteration. Let’s see if he deals some kind of punishment Dilfer’s extravagant outburst. I think they will take care of that at home and allow Dilfer and Dawson to do it together. If it wasn’t Trent Dilfer, but a coach who hadn’t played in the NFL or high-profile college football, I think the final resolution of this ordeal could be very different.