When going to a sporting event, it’s not uncommon to see someone make a fool of themselves while in the stands. People love to have fun and they cheer or boo but sometimes someone takes it too far. If that person happens to be the wife of the head coach of one of the teams playing, that’s something else entirely.

Drew Franklin of Kentucky Sports Radio tweeted video of Lynn Marshall, the wife of Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall, exhibiting some questionable behavior during the Wichita State-Kentucky 2nd round NCAA Tournament game.

The original video was posted on Franklin’s Twitter page but it was around that time that the NCAA wanted Franklin to take down the video, to the point where NCAA officials made sure he deleted the offending tweet.

Franklin then elaborated on what happened on Kentucky Sports Radio:

“Someone from the NCAA came and got my name and told me I could no longer tweet about her because “it made her upset.” I guess it didn’t make anyone else upset when she told Malik Monk to get in the weight room or told Isaiah Briscoe to buy some bigger shorts or told Calipari to “shut the f-ck up” or told Roger Ayers he is garbage or any of the other classy things she yelled between F-bombs.”

“The poor security guard made multiple attempts to calm her down before calling for help and then deciding “we have to be delicate because she is the coach’s wife.”

“But I’m the bad guy for drawing attention to her. I guess I deserved the “MOTHER F-CKER!” after the game.”

“I just hope she has a safe trip back to Wichita.”

This is where things begin to unravel for the NCAA. Franklin’s video seemed rather tame and by itself, wouldn’t be anything serious. You could see security telling Marshall to not stand on her chair but that’s more for her safety that she doesn’t fall than anything. But you could tell that Marshall is drunk and according to others (including Franklin), was screaming obscenities toward the referee, Kentucky coach John Calipari and the Kentucky players. Isn’t it a bit strange that instead of dealing with the drunk adult screaming at student-athletes and the officials on the court, the NCAA has a bigger issue with the person bringing this to light?

In addition, the NCAA making Franklin delete the video in question did absolutely nothing and only put gasoline on an already burning fire. If the NCAA hadn’t done anything, Franklin’s video might have gotten a few hundred retweets, maybe have been the talk of Lexington and some sites for a day or so. Now, everyone is talking about it because the NCAA decided to make it a thing and they even failed at that because Franklin said he was going to post it again (which he did).

This story has become so big, I wouldn’t be shocked if this is a topic on sports talk radio shows across the country on Monday and the video gets played on ESPN multiple times throughout the day. By trying to contain something they knew couldn’t be contained because “once something is on the Internet, it’s there forever,” the NCAA only made more people aware about this.

Their best strategy would have been to let the embarrassing moment slide and, as difficult as this would have been, get Marshall out of there before she embarrassed herself even more. Yes, she’s the coach’s wife and it creates a “delicate situation” but she’s also a grown woman who is drunkenly yelling obscenities at a sporting event. I had to throw people out of sporting events for unacceptable behavior when I was in college and it’s not something you really want to do, but it sometimes has to be done. A sporting event where the participants are in their late teens and in their early 20’s. If we expect the student-athletes to be “model citizens,” maybe we should take a hard look at those adults screaming at them who should know better.

At this point, the NCAA’s only course of action would be to revoke Franklin’s credentials and/or the credentials for Kentucky Sports Radio. But as we have learned in the past, that doesn’t work either and will only exacerbate this story even further. The way I see it, Drew Franklin didn’t serve Marshall drinks or get her to act like that. All he did was take the video. And considering Franklin doesn’t work for the NCAA, it’s not really his concern if what he reports puts the NCAA in a positive light or not. He’s there to report what he sees and he reported, it’s called “doing your job.”

[Kentucky Sports Radio]

 

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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