Tennessee’s Rick Barnes Gives Refreshing Answer On Sitting A Player For Not Doing What ‘He’s Paid To Do’

In this era of college athletics and NIL, coaches across the country have tip-toed around the conversation about athletes getting paid, and the ramifications for not doing their job on the court or field. For Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes, he had no problem calling out Chaz Lanier for not doing what he’s ‘paid to do’. 

We are so used to coaches not getting into the dynamics around players getting paid to play a sport in college athletics, that it catches you off-guard when a head coach actually gives a refreshing answer on the dilemma of not curtailing around the fact these star athletes are being paid to do a job. 

For many, it’s still taboo. For Rick Barnes, he’s the type of coach to call it like he sees it, even if that means putting a player in the spotlight, and not for all the right reasons on the court. This was the case on Saturday night following the Tennessee win over Texas, when Barnes was asked about leading-scorer Chaz Lanier. 

Just eleven seconds into the second half, Barnes had drawn up a play for Lanier to shoot the ball, but the Vols star decided he saw something different on the court. This did not sit well with the Vols head coach, who took him out of the game after the play, telling him to take a seat if he wasn’t going to do what he was being paid to do. 

“I took him out, first play of the second half because he didn’t shoot the ball,” Barnes noted postgame. “That play was designed for that shot. And I told him, I said, ‘if you’re not going to do what you’re getting paid to do, you sit over here.’ ‘Cause he is getting paid to do that.”

Tennessee’s Rick Barnes pulled Chaz Lanier from game after not doing what ‘he’s paid to do’ (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

Mick Cronin Could Learn A Lesson From Rick Barnes

As you can tell in the video, it wasn’t as if Barnes was ripping into Chaz Lanier, giving a chuckle at the end of his answer. But the Tennessee head coach was a breath of fresh air while discussing if a player that’s getting paid a good amount of money is not doing what the coaches are asking, you’re going to take a seat and learn a lesson about doing what you’re told. 

One of those coaches that could learn a lesson or two about how to handle some told these situations is UCLA’s Mick Cronin, who recently decided to go scorched earth on his basketball team. The problem with his ‘rant’ following the loss to Michigan on January 8th was that he called his team soft, but didn’t want to talk about the amount of money those guys are getting that he’s berating. 

It most likely would have hit home further if Cronin came out and said something like ‘we have a soft group of players that are getting paid handsomely to play basketball here that aren’t getting the job done’, or something along those lines. 

It’s no secret that star athletes are getting a big check to play collegiate sports, so why not take the approach of someone like Rick Barnes? I’m not implying that every coach needs to sit in every postgame press conference and point out that their team is not living up to the payroll expectations. But there’s a way to send a message through a media setting, as Barnes showed us on Saturday night. 

None of this is going away, especially when revenue-sharing begins, and the schools are the ones cutting a monthly check to the players. We all see how this has turned into an NFL-like situation when it comes to paying athletes, so there’s no reason to hide behind the invisible wall and not have moments like Rick Barnes showed after beating Texas. 

We are living in a whole new world, and the scrutiny is only going to increase in the public setting when these athletes are not only getting paid by the collectives, but now the school itself. 

If you want a lesson on how to approach the conversation on sending a message to a player in a public forum, Rick Barnes laid it out pretty well in Texas.