Last night, former Duke University Men’s Lacrosse Head Coach and current Bryant University Men’s Lacrosse Head Coach Mike Pressler discussed his book, “It’s Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and the Lives it Shattered,” that he co-wrote with sportswriter Don Yaeger. Pressler shared his experiences at the center of the rape accusations his players faced that snowballed into a national media scandal. Pressler also discussed a coach’s duty and responsibility to his players and the relationship between an academic institution and its student athletes.
There was no preparation for what happened, said Pressler. He recounted his thoughts when he first heard the message that informed him of the accusations. “My immediate reaction was absolute outrage, but then I realized there was no way [my players] could have committed this crime,” Pressler told the crowd gathered in Johnson Chapel. “This case reinforced the core values that make us the men that we are.”
Pressler also spoke of coaches’ relationships with players. “As a coach we are entrusted with the greatest resource in our country, the youth of America.” A coach’s job does not merely consist of building a winning team, he said. Rather, a coach’s obligation is “to guide, educate, motivate, support and discipline.”
During the question and answer session that followed his speech, one audience member asked Pressler how culpable he thought coaches were when one of their athletes committed a crime. “If I knew my guys committed this crime, I would turn them over, resign, and recommend they drop the sport,” he responded. “But where is it written in my contract that that’s my responsibility? It’s understood, and I believe that, but it’s not there.” Pressler further posed the question, “How can you hold a coach accountable for things he doesn’t know? How can you hold a math professor accountable for what his students do on Saturday night?”
Pressler addressed his main reasons for documenting and publishing his book that reveals what it was like to be one of 50 people to believe one truth, while 50,000,000 people in the nation believed another, as he put it. “On April 5th, 2006, I had a final meeting with the players, probably one of the most emotional events in my life,” he said. “I made a promise to them. I said, boys, I promise you, I swear to you, I will tell the world someday the truth. That is why I did the book, fulfilling my promise to those players.”
Many students found Pressler’s lecture valuable, particularly how the talk provided important, often excluded, details of the case, such as how the investigating detective had decided to drop the charges three days into the investigation, or how each of the three accused players bail was set at $400,000 while the bail for a murder suspect in Durham averages around $40,000.
“I learned a lot more about the case,” said Andrew Harrison ’10. “It just goes to show how quickly a school can abandon a team and throw them under the bus, as Pressler said.”
Other students who had closely followed the case admired how passionate Pressler is about his former players while others expressed concern over his view of Duke’s athletic culture. “Coach Pressler seemed very sincere about his concerns over the incident but he seemed to lack an awareness of the culture at Duke,” said Jared Crum ’11. Pressler did briefly touch on Duke’s history of athletic teams, sororities and fraternities hiring dancers to entertain at parties. “Two weeks following the accusations, a sorority hired a male dancer for their bid night,” said Pressler. At the time, he did not know that this was something the student body frequently did, he said.
Pressler and Yaeger wrote the book over four months while Pressler was in the midst of his first year at Bryant. But the book was published before the court found the three Duke lacrosse players innocent. The book is due to come out in paperback this summer and will undergo a rewrite to explain the case’s new developments.
Pressler’s appearance at Amherst marked his 11th day on the road that has included stops in Louisiana and New York and appearances at universities and corporate groups. “Speaking at the schools is an education,” Pressler said. “The story hasn’t been fully told yet, and there are so many facets and layers of this to educate with and to make a positive out of this in our lives.”