Coach Prime has no tolerance for discarded hoodies, dropped shoes, rolled up T-shirts and other items littering the Colorado Buffalos locker room. Some players looked like deer in headlights when he surprised them with a video of the mess during a team meeting earlier this week.
One of his assistants saw the clutter when taking a vendor through the locker room to the equipment room where the coach’s locker room is being redesigned.
“So you was bringing someone who is blessing us, who is taking care of us and they had to walk through that to get to the blessing,” Coach Prime said. “So we know whose lockers those were, correct? But we’re a team, correct? So all of us are going to pay for that, it’s our house. Why would you leave a crib….Some of you were raised like that; your parents let you get down like that. I am not one of those parents. So we going to take care of that after practice today. Normally I would take care of that before but I want a good practice out of you.’’
“Take care of” means the team ran after practice and he warned his players not to quit or suddenly get ill while running. “Your locker is going to be clean as well. We’re not going to live like that. Am I wrong for that?”
“No sir.”
“That don’t make sense, that’s not who we are, is it?”
“No sir.”
“Are we better than that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to be good on the field, off the field and in the community. You’re going to be men. We’re not raising boys, we’re raising men. We good?”
Coach still was perplexed about the messy locker room when he went to get his breakfast.
“How you leave a locker room nasty and funky like that? Any coaches out there do you all allow that? I don’t,” he said to the camera.
His assistant popped in and said, “Now I’m the snitch, I’m the snitch. They gonna be mad at me.”
“Everybody gotta to tell something, gotta tell something,” Coach replied.
This wasn’t the first time Coach Prime called out his players for not respecting the facility. Earlier this year, janitors found an entire toilet wrapped tightly with rolls of toilet paper. He admonished the athletes for disrespecting the janitors who had to clean up the mess, and one of his assistants was asked to check the restrooms to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Boys will be boys but Coach Prime is raising tidy men.
