It was an odd time to fire a basketball coach, in the middle of October with a prospective season up in the air, but ostensibly set to start before the year is out. Why would Penn State ask Patrick Chambers for his resignation now?
The partial answer is, that the more you dig down about the behavior of Chambers with his former players and assistant coaches who’ve rotated in and out of State College during his nine years, the more you find people who are willing to speak negatively about the way they feel about him.
Call it verbal abuse, rule through fear, apprehension about an emotional explosion, what have you. Chambers has built up enough enemies that when an extensive Penn State internal investigation got rolling this past summer and confidentiality was guaranteed, plenty of venom was loosed upon the PSU head coach whose tenure began in 2011.
I’ve spoken to a number of former Penn State assistant coaches, players and their parents since the allegations of racially charged rhetoric from ex-PSU guard Rasir Bolton, now at Iowa State, were published on July 6. And several cited encounters with Chambers that went beyond any racial component and simply focused on the coach’s hair-trigger temper and arbitrary eruptions that left them filled with contempt.
None chose to be identified in print, in general saying they were done with the experience and simply wished to move on with their lives. But in my conversations, two former PSU assistants who worked under Chambers independently referred to him with the expletive: “He’s an ass—-”.
According to those with whom I spoke directly and were interviewed in the investigation, the questions revolved around various verbal abuse of and questionable comments to players and coaches, some examining the racial component and some not.
But it didn’t end there. Two of those interviewed told me they were asked about the existence of any recruiting irregularities by Penn State. Both told me they said they did not know specifically of any such improprieties.
I asked athletic director Sandy Barbour during her brief video conference on Wednesday if she could confirm that any such violations were asked about by the investigators or whether such revelations were material in Chambers’ resignation. She responded:
“We’re not going to get into the details of this, but NCAA matters were not part of this.” Whether she meant part of the investigation or part of a decision to ask for Chambers’ resignation was unclear. Barbour took only six questions and the media conference was then abruptly terminated.
Whatever Barbour and PSU president Eric Barron learned from a report submitted to them two weeks ago, it was enough to confront Chambers. He officially submitted his resignation and informed his players at about 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Barbour said.
Sources who were interviewed told me the investigation was directed and interviews were performed by PSU athletic integrity officer Robert Boland and PSU vice president for affirmative action Suzanne Adair.
Calls were made throughout July and August to former PSU players, some parents and former PSU assistant coaches. They were asked a barrage of questions by Boland and Adair. PennLive spoke to several of those interviewed and some sessions lasted close to an hour. One former PSU assistant to whom I spoke said the investigation was so extensive that ex-team members began reaching out to him:
“Players have been calling me. They’re digging back deep and they’re calling everyone. They’ve been calling anybody and everybody, player-wise.”
The investigation began shortly after Bolton’s comments were published by reporter Jesse Washington of the Disney-owned website The Undefeated for a story published on July 6. In Washington’s essay, Bolton said that Chambers came to him during a downturn in the then-freshman’s performance and said to him:
“I want to be a stress reliever for you. You can talk to me about anything. I need to get some of this pressure off you. I want to loosen the noose that’s around your neck.”
Those comments had been told to me previously but off-the-record by Bolton’s father Ray when his son transferred from PSU.
Penn State coach Patrick Chambers resigned on Wednesday after an internal investigation revolving around, but not limited to, racially insensitive comments.
In a very brief video conference Tuesday evening, Barbour refused to specify exactly what was the tipping point in the report. But she did acknowledge that a new accusation was made that had not been known before:
“The allegation was previously unknown to Penn State and was independent and unrelated to The Undefeated article.
Many of Chambers’ former players either tweeted out support for Chambers after the Bolton story or issued statements of praise. But the comment to Bolton resonated with just-graduated guard Josh Reaves. He recently finished his first pro season split between the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and their farm club in the G-League.
Reaves left PSU with considerable acrimony toward Chambers and rebuffed the coach’s attempts to contact him after the end of his final season in 2019 and graduation.
He made assertions to me in a story also published July 6 that Chambers tried to patch up the rift with Bolton at the time by coming to him. Reaves was not receptive:
“I remember when it happened, he called me into a meeting with him. I don’t know whether he was trying to cover it up, or what he wanted to do. But he called me into his office asking me to, like, help clarify what he was trying to say. And then, he just made it worse. Because he then told me something that wasn’t as bad, but still bad.
“He ended up saying: ‘That’s not what I meant to say. I tried to say, I wanted to be in the field with him.’ Which really isn’t any better because that’s just dumb.”
I tried to clarify: Like a fellow slave in the cotton fields?
“I guess so. I don’t know. That’s how I took it, how I interpreted it. Which was wrong. It’s just wrong.”
Those interviewed in the PSU investigation told me the general tone of the questions revolved around Chambers’ demeanor, language and any abusive episodes – player-staff incidents that may have happened, how players and staff members were treated, the culture and climate of the program under his command.
The interviews invariably included queries about whether Chambers used any racially tinged rhetoric. They also touched on his behavior during games, his combustibility during staff meetings, whether he targeted and ranted at soft-spoken players and whether he exhibited an arrogance and inflated ego suggesting infallibility. One former assistant told me Chambers’ explosive and sometimes arbitrary behavior alienated some coaches, players and game officials:
“He sort of blacks out sometimes and screams crazy things during games. It’s easy to hate Pat.
“We would laugh as a staff about some of the things he did. But it was nothing out of the ordinary.”
Chambers was heading into the penultimate year of a contract extension signed after the 2018 NIT championship that sources indicate paid him in the vicinity of $1.1 million annually with a $300,000 buyout, lowest compensation figures of any Big Ten coach.
His 2020 team was certainly headed to the NCAA tournament for the first time in his Penn State tenure before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled it.
