Pat Chambers resigns as Penn State head coach amidst misconduct investigation

Pat Chambers has resigned after nine seasons as the head coach at Penn State, the school announced in a statement Wednesday. Chambers has been under investigation by the school’s Affirmative Action and Athletics Integrity offices for misconduct allegations brought forward by former players in a story by The Undefeated.

According to PennLive’s David Jones, the school spoke to many players and coaches regarding Chambers’ behavior and treatment of them and also may have been looking into some “recruiting irregularities.” The original story was sparked by a July 2020 statement from former PSU player Rasir Bolton, who revealed the reason he had transferred was because of an incident with Chambers in which the coach had made a racial insensitive remark that referenced placing a noose around Bolton’s neck. Bolton claimed that neither Chambers nor any administrators he had spoken to ever apologized to him or his family and Chambers had made matters worse by telling the rest of the team that Bolton was not “loyal” or “all in.”

The alleged incident with Bolton occurred just after Chambers had been suspended for one game by the school after TV cameras caught him pushing one of his players in a huddle during a Big Ten game against Michigan (Jan 3, 2019).

On the court, Chambers has had some success but his teams consistently finished in the bottom half of the conference. We have had Chambers consistently on our Hot Seat Report for several years, citing both the mediocre results and the off-court issues.

VP of Intercollegiate Athletics Sandy Barbour has chosen assistant Jim Ferry, the former head coach at both Duquesne and LIU, as the Nittany Lions’ interim head coach for the 2020-21 season.

credit to Getty Images for the photo