Ed Reed out at Bethune-Cookman after just 25 days, blasts school in rant
Ed Reed’s first head coaching job is over before it started.
The former NFL star is out as the coach at Bethune-Cookman, just 25 days after being hired by the HBCU. Reed, 44, said the university declined to ratify his contract and “won’t make good” on the agreement the two sides had in principle. He also blasted the administration in a fiery rant on Saturday, during which he slammed a football and the Daytona Beach, Florida school.
“My vision is probably moving too fast for a lot of people,” Reed said, in part, in a video he posted to Instagram. “I’m not withdrawing my name as they say. They don’t want me here. They do not want me because I tell the truth.
“It hurts. This hurt because people don’t care about these kids like I do and they should be the ones leaving not me, ’cause I don’t want to.”
Reed, who was hired on Dec. 27 and announced his departure on Twitter, explained that there was a breakdown with the administration.
“Bethune-Cookman University has been working with my legal team to craft contract terms with the language and resources we knew were needed to build a successful football program,” Reed wrote on Twitter. “It’s my desire to not only coach football, but to be an agent of change that most people just talk about being. However, after weeks of negotiations I’ve been informed that the University won’t be ratifying my contract and won’t make good on the agreement we had in principle, which had provisions and resources best needed to support the student athletes.”
He called the situation “extremely disappointing.”
The news comes less than a week after Reed went on a profanity-laced tirade in an Instagram story in which he complained about the conditions at Bethune-Cookman, including trash allegedly being prevalent around the campus.
“I’m waking out here with the football team picking up trash,” he shouted in the now-viral video. “I should leave, I’m not even under contract yet! … These motherf–kers didn’t even clean my goddamn office when I got here!”
He later apologized, saying his “language and tone were unacceptable as a father, coach and leader.”
Reed, a member of the Pro Football and College Football Hall of Fame who spent the first 11 years of his 12-year NFL career with the Ravens before brief stints with the Texans and Jets, didn’t hold back on Saturday, though.
“I got the receipts,” he said during the 15-minute rant. “They got all kinds of stuff goin’ on ’round here. Hoarding these buildings with nothing but trash in them. And Deion [Sanders] was right, and I know I’m right. They got some people in here who be snitching to they ass.”
At one point, Sanders, whom Colorado hired as its head coach in December, called someone in the room during Reed’s rant in what appeared to be a show of support. But it appears the relationship between Reed, who spent the last three seasons in an off-field role for his alma mater, Miami, and Bethune-Cookman has soured.
Reed was set to replace Terry Sims, who was fired in November after seven seasons at Bethune-Cookman.
