Northern Michigan University Athletics
It’s pretty rare for a college football coach to resign in the middle of the season, so there were plenty of questions after Shane Richardson stepped down from his post at Northern Michigan toward the start of November. Now, we have some more insight into what led to that decision after internal documents revealed he was caught assaulting one of his own players.
I have a hard time believing most people reading this are intimately familiar with the football program at Northern Michigan University. The institution of higher learning located in the Upper Peninsula in Marquette is firmly a Hockey School, as the football team hasn’t posted a winning record since 2009 and is clinging to the Division II national championship the Wildcats won all the way back in 1975.
In 2023, Shane Richardson, an NMU alum who played as a linebacker from 1996 to 2000, was hired to replace Kyle Nystrom as the team’s head coach in the hopes he’d be able to inject some new life into the program.
That did not end up being the case, as the man who had gone 39-50 during his nine seasons at the helm at UNC Pembroke had a 1-30 record when he was placed on administrative leave before resigning on November 7th. No explanation was initially offered, but a clearer picture has now emerged.
Shane Richardson resigned as the coach at Northern Michigan over a video of him repeatedly slapping a player
According to Upper Michigan Source, TV6 Sports filed a Freedom of Information Act request on the same day Richardson stepped down, and it obtained the documents it requested a little more than two weeks after it was submitted.
The outlet says the school released a report concerning a video of the coach slapping an unnamed player during an altercation that transpired on October 2nd (two days before the Wildcats dropped to 0-5 on the season with a loss to Saginaw Valley State), saying he “was seen slapping the student three times with enough force that the student’s face was visibly pushed aside.”
Richardson was summoned to a meeting with school officials on November 3rd, where he asserted he made contact with the player in question “out of motivation, not anger” while stressing what he described as a “fun, joking relationship” with members of the team (the report also cites “a series of incidents” where he yelled at players “about being injured”).
Offensive line coach Joe Gatz was also placed on leave before being reinstated, and it appears he was aware of the slapping incident but did not report it to the school. Billy Lindquist has been serving as the head coach since Richardson stepped down, which has seemingly been a welcome change for a team that’s won both of the games he’s coached while “improving” to 3-8 on the year.