His bellowing speech to the kids was filled with profanities.
The general theme was his team didn't exert enough effort.
When he gave his on-the-record interview, it was a series of useless platitudes about how hard they tried.
Plenty of coaches in Northwest Indiana — and across the state — should take note of what happened last week to Valparaiso football coach Dave Coyle.
An insurrection by his own players ended his five-plus year career as the coach of the Vikings, just two days before the biggest game of the season.
The paradigm of the no-nonsense disciplinarian is slowly vanishing. Players from the NFL to high school understand they have a voice in how they are treated, and they aren't afraid to raise it if cornered.
The player-coach relationship is becoming a partnership, not a dictatorship.
"I think athletes are starting to understand the power of their platform," said Dan Lebowitz, executive director for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "They understand leadership, and they know it's important that a coach isn't there to belittle you or beat you down."
In this instance, it was the violation of a school rule by a player that eventually led to a series of events resulting in Coyle's resignation. Coyle did not respond to a request for comment.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation, a Valparaiso player was absent from school on Oct. 13 because of treatment for an injury.
The player, in violation of the school policy that a student can't attend an extracurricular activity if he missed school, was on the sidelines for a game against Lake Central. Coyle told him to leave the sidelines.
The player returned to celebrate with the team on the field after the Vikings beat the Indians for the Duneland Athletic Conference title.
Furious at what he considered to be a second act of insubordination, Coyle suspended the player in front of the team in what sources described as an over-the-top response. Most players perceived the infraction to be relatively minor.
On Oct. 19, in support of their teammate, a group of seniors left their pads and equipment outside of the coaches' office.
The message was clear: They weren't going to play unless there was some sort of resolution to what they considered to be unfair treatment of a teammate.
According to the parent of a senior on the team, the situation worsened over the weekend, when Coyle didn't offer any type of contrition. Essentially, neither side was budging.
That left school officials with little choice but to replace Coyle with assistant Bill Marshall. Even if school officials were on Coyle's side, they couldn't bring him back.
He had lost the team. They were no longer fully vested in going forward with him as the coach.
Lebowitz uses words like "positive leadership" and a "healthy environment" to describe a model for today's coach. The players might have felt this ideal was broken.
"There was a dynamic where the athletes decided they'd had enough, and they spoke out," he said.
Coyle's resignation wasn't universally embraced. One parent of a player on the team said some "kids were upset" about losing him.
When news of this story started dripping out on Oct. 20, I believed the players and coaches would resolve the issue internally and the school would deal with it after the season.
Instead, the situation spiraled out of control. Valparaiso lost to Penn in the playoffs Friday, ending its season.
By all accounts, Coyle is a universally respected biology teacher who worked tirelessly as a football coach. His whole professional life had been devoted to teaching and coaching.
His transgression likely didn't fit the punishment, but it's a different world we live in now — one where what you say, how you say it and who you say it in front of really does matter.
And an ill-timed tirade can end a tenure in a heartbeat.