Women’s Basketball Coach Resigns After Impregnating One of His Players

The son of legendary coach Pat Summitt screwed up.

Tyler Summitt, the son of legendary Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt, resigned from his job as head coach of Louisiana Tech’s women’s hoops team Thursday. In a statement he admitted to “a relationship that has negatively affected the people I love, respect and care about the most.”

The relationship, it turns out, was with one his players, according to Swish Appeal. And that player is now pregnant.

This is a huge embarrassment for Summitt, who is married and emphasized character when he was hired two years ago. He said at the time that players who didn’t meet the team’s standards of high character “won’t be a Lady Techsters.”

It wasn’t the only time he would cite the importance of virtue. In an interview before his first game as LA Tech’s head coach, he told ESPN, “The number one lesson I’ve learned from my mom is to always do things the right way.”

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And in a 2015 interview with ESPN, he said this while discussing his mother, who is battling Alzheimer’s: “I think she always taught me to do things the right way, no matter what it is, no matter what leader you are or what team or organization. Talent only takes you so far but character keeps you there.”

That last sentence rings particularly true for Summitt, who was hired by LA Tech as a 23-year-old with two years experience as an assistant coach Marquette. If talent is what got him there (debatable, really, given the role his name played in his hiring), it’s a deficiency in character that forced him out