Coaches who lost their minds during press conferences

Postgame press conferences have always been an entertaining platform for coaches to field questions from media members that are eager to write stories. It’s an interesting time to catch them, as the contest recently ended, and their emotions are still returning to baseline levels. We’ll take a look back at some of the most memorable meltdowns by coaches in these settings. All meltdowns can be found on YouTube.

Players respect when coaches have their back in public, which is essentially what Gundy tried to do for a quarterback he benched at Oklahoma State University in 2007. However, Gundy went to great lengths to articulate that media members shouldn’t go after college students.

He emphatically proclaimed, “I’m a man, I’m 40!” to the press that day, which is still remembered to this day. Surprisingly, the quarterback he went to bat for had mixed feelings on the rant. Bobby Reid told ESPN the following year that the incident changed his life for the worse.

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The Arizona Cardinals head coach was fuming after the team blew a 23-3 lead against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football in 2006.

Green passionately yelled out, “They are who we thought they were, and we let them off the hook!”. The microphone in front of Green was also smacked in a fit of rage. Fox Sports looked back on the 10-year anniversary of the event in 2016.

There’s nothing more agitating to coaches than losing a playoff game because of a bad call. Former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher felt his team got the short end of the stick in a postseason contest against the Tennessee Titans. With his always rigid scowl, Cowher proclaimed that the calls at the end of that game were nothing short of “ludicrous.”

For a variety of different reasons, Belichick’s press conferences have become a staple of his personality. He usually looks less than thrilled to be there, and is content with giving terse responses to thoughtful questions.

In a 2014 press conference, he dodged a plethora of questions by repeating “On to Cincinnati”, as they were playing the Bengals the following week. The Boston Herald cites this quote as one of Belichick's most famous quips.

If there was one thing Mora was, it was honest. He was appalled by a question asked about the Indianapolis Colts’ playoff fortunes after they fell to a 4-6 record in 2001.

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Mora responded incredulously by saying, “playoffs?!, playoffs?!”. They were the farthest thing from his mind after a dismal regular season performance. The Ringer wrote a piece about how the rant continues to live on.

“You play to win the game!” is a phrase associated with Edwards, the former head coach of the New York Jets. He was asked a question about whether his main players would suit up in a contest that had little to no playoff implications in 2002.

Showing a ton of outward integrity, Edwards would not entertain playing at anything less than 100%.

Borseth was the head coach of the University of Michigan’s women’s basketball team, and was furious about the way a 2008 game was officiated. He sprinted to the podium and banged on the desk, bemoaning the lack of calls that went the Wolverines’ way. He would later apologize for his outburst, but the tirade made for an instant viral classic.

This was one of the more bizarre events in sports history. UMass basketball coach John Calipari was in the middle of his press conference, when Temple coach John Chaney stormed in and accused the former of abusing the referees in 1994.

The two men had to be physically separated in order to prevent an altercation. The Courier Journal remembered the event 30 years later in February 2024.

McRae was the manager of the Kansas City Royals in 1993, and took offense to being questioned about a lineup decision. He lost it, throwing everything that was on the table in every direction, some of which hit members of the media at the press conference. It was a rough season, as McRae would get ejected from eight games that year.

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