Queen's coach fired over comments of Guelph's handling of DST allegations

He got fired for calling out all those people that knew about it, just went along with it, and now are pretending to be surprised by all this. Reid, Trent, Hillary, etc. Calling them collaborators is a good analogy.

He got fired for harassing former Guelph athletes who did not know what happened. And for not following what his employer directed him to do.

Stu Lang has donated over $50 Million to the University of Guelph, and has the business school named after him:

https://news.uoguelph.ca/2019/04/university-of-guelph-receives-21-million-giftbusiness-school-new-name/

He also was a major donor to the Richardson Stadium project at Queen's, donating $10 Million to it.

https://www.queensu.ca/connect/richardsonstadium/

He did his undergrad at Queen's, and later served as Guelph's football coach for 6 years starting in 2010.

Just to clear this up, he bet that the top runner from the AUS Matt McNeil would get beat by a top 10 OUA runner Blair Morgan, who was not a Queen's athlete. His point was that the AUS winner was not on par with the top of the OUA. In the end McNeil beat Morgan by one spot, thus basically proving Boyd's point. Boyd outright stated in that thread that he would never place a bet on his own athletes.

https://www.trackie.com/track-and-field/Results/2015-cis-xc-championships/4516/

A rich person protecting their investment by having others thrown under the bus? And administrators on board?

2015CISXC wrote:

Just to clear this up, he bet that the top runner from the AUS Matt McNeil would get beat by a top 10 OUA runner Blair Morgan, who was not a Queen's athlete. His point was that the AUS winner was not on par with the top of the OUA. In the end McNeil beat Morgan by one spot, thus basically proving Boyd's point. Boyd outright stated in that thread that he would never place a bet on his own athletes.

https://www.trackie.com/track-and-field/Results/2015-cis-xc-championships/4516/

Was there not a bet on Wilkie as well? (Who was injured for CIS unfortunatly and did not run well). As I remember, Morgan was a $10.00 side bet.

From reading a little on Ontario employment law, it appears in most circumstances an employer can get rid of an employee who said something the employer does not like, but must comply with notice requirements, and, for longer term employees, must be able to show good cause for the termination. It appears the courts set a high bar for showing good cause. Among the many things I do not know is to what degree an employee can agree to waive the notice and good cause requirements in an employment contract. Are there any Ontario, or at least Canadian, employment law attorneys out there who can comment on whether Queen's could legally terminate as they did, or does the university have legal exposure for wrongful termination? Disclaimer - I am neither Canadian nor an employment law attorney.

Td stocks and bizzcoin wrote:

From reading some of the facebook comments from what presumably got him fired, it appears as if he was trying to shame anyone associated with Guelph for enabling the abusive behavior and culture. That is totally unfair and several individuals were clearly offended. He was way out of line there.

You think shaming anyone who enabled or was involved in sexual assault is unfair?

Come on.

YMMV wrote:

XCC wrote:

Most of the U-sport head coach jobs are full time but maybe not at Queens since they only have a distance program. I am fairly also certain he had another role their in the sociology department at one time.

Looks like he got schooled on sociology big time.

"I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOnTc4FpJcs

Any post that highlights James Honeyman Scott deserves at least a +1

youbetchabootie wrote:

Td stocks and bizzcoin wrote:

From reading some of the facebook comments from what presumably got him fired, it appears as if he was trying to shame anyone associated with Guelph for enabling the abusive behavior and culture. That is totally unfair and several individuals were clearly offended. He was way out of line there.

You think shaming anyone who enabled or was involved in sexual assault is unfair?

Come on.

Nice way of twisting words. Shaming anyone at Guelph is every different than shaming someone who was known to be enabling abuse to happen. Steve isn’t asking questions, he is just saying that they all had to know and in his mind are all guilty. He can have that opinion, but it’s a fairly unreasonable position to take as an outsider who hasn’t asked or listened to anyone directly.

So a former Guelph runner sets up a "conversation" on her very public FB page and SB (Guelph's very strong critic for some time) is invited into this conversation. Coolseat jumps in and turns up the temperature. SB uses a stupid and offensive analogy (took 27 replies to do this in response to others who were far from alter boys and girls in their replies). Former guelph runners share the "prison camp" words with current Athletics AD....he calls and complains to Queen's AD that SB may have typed something badly about Gryphons (sounding a little Trump-esque?). SB gets fired. No, that wasn't coordinated at all! So now it's a full court press by the DST, Speed River and guelph track enablers to change the narrative, deflect, distract, and sneak away without anyone noticing. If SB lawyers up, Guelph AD is insulated by the university, but the others? We'll see if protecting the gryphon brand will be worth it.

1) I can't believe he was fired. I can't believe they wouldn't just suspend him or something. Are these full time jobs?

2) That being said, when you are told something by your boss, you need to obey it for the most part, but do we know if he kept posting after they warned him to stop?

Awesome questions. Do you know of any running sites that publish stories about the sport who could research them? Because those would be useful in pursuit of this knowledge. Maybe someday, I guess.

Immediately preceding the "prison camp" analogy, SB made another comparison relating to spousal abuse.:

Steve Boyd

...While the role of student athletes in covering for DST in the recruiting process would be well down the list-- because they were themselves were victims-- it is not insignificant. Like the abused spouse who hides her partner's abuse against the kids, the behaviour of Guelph athletes who either said nothing or who actively recruited high schoolers with the knowledge that they too might end up being abused is understandable in many ways, it still does play a role in continuing the abusive situation. To the extent that they too received a good (winning) they are also culpable.

Steve Boyd

Another somewhat dramatic way of looking at it is this: Everyone is a prison camp is a victim, but there are also collaborators.

rojo wrote:

Wow. This is crazy.

1) I can't believe he was fired. I can't believe they wouldn't just suspend him or something. Are these full time jobs?

2) That being said, when you are told something by your boss, you need to obey it for the most part, but do we know if he kept posting after they warned him to stop?

3) Some of his arguments were not sound in my mind. No, you don't strip someone of titles because the coach is an alleged sexual predator. Where would we draw the line? What about adultery? Yes, some people are collaborators but most weren't.

I agree that isolated misconduct of a coach which is completely unrelated to rules of the sport and provides no competitive advantage isn't a reason to punish a team or strip titles. But this situation is much more. The university was aware of the allegations that their coach sexually assaulted an athlete and did nothing. They allowed him to continue to coach and allegedly sexually assault at least one more athlete.

An action like vacating titles would serve as punishment for the university for their inaction. They chose to allow a very successful coach (multiple consecutive national championships) to continue to coach and therefore continued to put athletes at risk.

I think the Penn State/Sandusky scandal is quite comparable. Certainly you could debate how similar or dissimilar the offences were, but basically sexual assault of minors by coaching staff, university was made aware and did nothing, and more victims were harmed due to the inaction.

Among other things, part of the punishment for PSU was vacating all wins, conference championships, etc. from the time that the university was made aware of the allegations.

So it's not an unreasonable suggestion at all.

so analogies shouldn't be used anymore to try to get those blinded by DST's team success to see the point? the only thing offensive in cherrypicking SB's numerous posts is trying to paint him to serve the gryphons' narrative.

there are other examples where teams were punished for past infractions that didn't involve any sort of abusive behaviour towards individuals. The NCAA handed SMU the "death penalty" in 1987 for repeated recruiting violations. The University of Waterloo immediately suspended the team for the steroid scandal for an entire year. Universities and sporting bodies take strong action when its' called for. Instead of being proactive, guelph admin and AC needed some sort of smoking gun to justify action......13 years and the wagon circling is still happening. Now they successfully made SB the story. Truly disgusting. Reid C admitted in the original G&M story that he contributed to the "crazy Megan" rumour and knew about the article for months. Now he's claiming he knew nothing? He tried to reach out to MB in late December because he's a good guy? LOL. how do some of these people live with themselves!

DLR > SH > GC wrote:

YMMV wrote:

Looks like he got schooled on sociology big time.

"I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOnTc4FpJcs

Any post that highlights James Honeyman Scott deserves at least a +1

And Chrissybabe at her caterwauling best!

See...I said in another thread that track/xc coach in Canadian post-secondary institutions was akin to being a garbage collector but nobody took me seriously!!

These analogies are a big part of what some found objectionable and may have precipitated Boyd's dismissal. "Mr. Boyd's comments follow a pattern of objectionable social media commentary spanning several years, about which he had previously been formally cautioned," Prof. Tom Harris, Queen's interim provost, said in a statement Thursday. "Mr. Boyd failed to heed repeated warnings from the administration to stop his reckless social media activities." "Queen's University fully supports Canada's Safe Sport actions to prevent abuse, harassment and bullying. The university had no choice but to take assertive action in this instance to make it clear that Mr. Boyd's berating and victim-blaming comments do not reflect the values of the university and we certainly do not condone them."https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/queens-track-and-field-steve-boyd-fired-1.5470721

danewrunner wrote:

so analogies shouldn't be used anymore to try to get those blinded by DST's team success to see the point? the only thing offensive in cherrypicking SB's numerous posts is trying to paint him to serve the gryphons' narrative.