Fired college coach regrets profanity-laced tirade

• By Will Gray
• Dec 8, 2012 12:14 PM ET

A month after Huntingdon College golf coach Matt Mahanic lost his job when his profanity-laced rant to players was leaked to the media, the former coach reflected upon what went wrong.

"In the heat of the moment, did I use language that I shouldn't have? Sure," Mahanic said in an interview with Golfweek. "In looking back, that language got in the way of the message I was trying to get across to my players: that performing well below your potential is unacceptable."

A former player at the Division-III school, based in Montgomery, Ala., Mahanic saw his five-year coaching career undone by a six-minute recording. After his squad finished 11th out of 12 teams in the Gordin Classic in Columbus, Ohio two months ago, he unleashed a tirade on the team bus that included more than 50 f-bombs. Once a recording of the speech gained national media traction, Mahanic was quickly terminated as both coach and director of golf.

"People may hear the recording and think I yelled at those guys every day," he commented. "Coaches know that sometimes the guys need a hug, and sometimes they need to hear the hard truth about their performance."

After winning 17 tournaments during his stint as Huntingdon's coach, Mahanic now hopes to move on from the incident.

"I think people should learn and improve from any situation, positive or negative, and that is what I am doing now," he added.