Dan Hurley’s ‘head-butt’ showed Black coaches aren’t given the same grace as white coaches

The UConn-Duke game on Sunday night was one for the ages. A last-second game winner from freshman Braylon Mullins took down the top-seeded Blue Devils, who at one point had led by 19 points. It is a moment that will be replayed over and over for years to come.

However, something strange happened after Mullins’s shot. UConn’s head coach Dan Hurley approached referee Roger Ayers and touched foreheads with the official while glaring into his eyes. It wasn’t quite the “head-butt” some called it on social media but it was an eye-catching scene. For his part, Ayers told ESPN the incident was “absolutely nothing” but it wouldn’t have been unusual for Hurley to be given a technical foul, which would have given Duke free throws and a chance to win the game with 0.4 seconds left.

This wasn’t Hurley’s first brush with controversy. Earlier this month, he was fined for “unsportsmanlike conduct” after confronting an official at a game against Marquette. In 2025, he taunted Creighton fans after a UConn victory. Later that season, after UConn were beaten by Florida in the NCAA Tournament, he approached Baylor players as they prepared for their game and told them: “I hope [the referees] don’t [expletive] you like they effed us”.

Hurley is largely forgiven for all this. He is called “passionate”, “eccentric” or “fiery”.

There are other examples out there. Rick Pitino is a brilliant coach but his career would have been sunk long ago if he was Black. The most prominent of his missteps came from his time at Louisville where his former assistant coach, Andre McGee, was accused of paying for escorts to strip and have sex with players and recruits. McGee was put on probation by the NCAA and his appeal failed. Pitino was never accused of being involved in the scheme but the NCAA admonished him for “failing in his responsibility to monitor the activities of [McGee]”. Louisville subsequently fired him but rather than ending his career he is now coaching another prominent program, St John’s. A Black coach in that situation? He never would have coached a major team again.

The reason is that the rules are different for Black people in every aspect of society. And that goes all the way to the top.

Barack Obama had to be perfect to become president of the United States: an Ivy League eduction at Columbia and Harvard, where he became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review. One wife, two daughters with that same wife, and zero scandals.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. But wait, there’s more. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting E Jean Carroll in a New York department store dressing room in the 1990s. In fact, more than 20 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, all of which he has denied.

That’s a list that would have kept a Black person from even being considered as president of McDonald’s, let alone president of the United States. The fallout for Trump? He’s been elected president twice.

• Etan Thomas played in the NBA from 2000 through 2011. He is a published author, podcaster, poet, activist and motivational speaker.