Creighton Coach Greg McDermott Apologized For Telling His Players To ‘Stay On The Plantation’

Greg McDermott has been the head coach at Creighton for a decade now after previous jobs at Iowa State and Northern Iowa. His Blue Jays program reached its most prominent point when he coached his son, Indiana Pacers forward Doug McDermott, at the start of the last decade.

On Tuesday, McDermott made national news when he posted an apology to his Twitter account regarding a horrible analogy he used when speaking to the team after a recent loss, when he told them, “Guys, we got to stick together. We need both feet in. I need everybody to stay on the plantation. I can’t have anybody leave the plantation.”

Telling a team comprised of many young Black men to “stay on the plantation,” is an awful thing to say, and while McDermott insists he has never used that analogy before and recognized his mistake immediately, he will have a long way to go with his players to show them he understands why what he said was wildly inappropriate.

Creighton says it is a “personal matter” and any discipline will be handled privately, but noted that an apology can only be the start of righting this wrong.

It remains rather incredible how often this seems to happen with coaches, particularly at the college level. It seems that his players have been willing to confront him about this, and as he notes, it’s on him to show the work that he’ll learn and grow from this in order to regain the trust of the locker room this season and beyond.