A blip on the radar tells you something is there. It doesn’t tell you what.
There was a time when the words we used to describe a sports environment meant one thing.
Abuse meant a fist. Trauma meant something outside the range of what a human being was expected to endure. Toxic meant, well — toxic. Poisonous. Something that damaged the person it touched.
Today, “abuse” is used in reference to a tone of voice. “Trauma” is used to describe the experience of being held accountable. “Toxic” can reference a coach delivering honest feedback that stings.
Nick Haslam, a psychologist at the University of Melbourne, calls this concept creep -the way certain words expand their meaning over time until they cover far more territory than they originally did. There’s an argument that some of that expansion has done real good. It named harms that were once ignored and it gave moral weight to experiences that used to be dismissed.
But there’s a cost, too.
When a word stretches to cover everything, it stops meaning anything specific. And when the alarm word for real danger and the alarm word for ordinary discomfort become the same word, the people responsible for responding to the alarm can no longer tell the difference.
The water has gotten murky.
Here’s what I mean.
Imagine a sonar operator on a ship. A blip appears on the screen. In clear water, they can adjust course, look closer, drop instruments, and figure out what they’re actually dealing with; a school of fish, a reef, perhaps a piece of wreckage. In murky water, none of that works. The blip is all they have.
This is where coaches, athletes, parents, and administrators find themselves right now.
A complaint surfaces. Someone uses one of those stretched words - toxic, abusive, harmful - and a blip appears on the radar.
The blip is real. Something is there.
But what?
Directors and administrators trying to protect their institutions and their athletes default to treating every blip like its a shark and there’s blood in the water. Sound the alarm. Guilty until proven innocent. Option to resign or be fired.
Others - often those who’ve watched a lot of coaches get fired unfairly - are dismissive of the blip. Kids are soft. Parents have an agenda. Look, they’re just upset that they didn’t play — it’ll blow over.
Both responses have the same problem: they draw conclusions before they look at the signal itself. And in college athletics especially, where a formal investigation often follows a complaint, the investigation itself can cause damage that an eventual finding of “no merit” cannot repair; loss of trust, a damaged reputation, and a pervasive fear about when the next accusation will arise.
We need a more objective way for coaches, athletes, parents, and administrators to answer the question the sonar operator first asks - what am I actually looking at?
I’ve been sitting with this for a while and want to introduce something that might help.
I’m calling it BLIPS - a framework I’ve developed with five areas worth looking at when a blip first appears on the radar, before we decide what it is.
B — Behavior. What actually happened? Not “coach lashed out.” What did a coach do, specifically, that would be observable on video had the situation been recorded? Did they slam a clipboard? Get in the face of an athlete while poking a finger in their chest? Make the team run sprints after a controllable mistake? We need objective observations rather than conclusive characterizations.
L — Language. What exactly was said? Not “coach targeted me.” What were the actual words, and did the coach separate the behavior from the person? For example, while both can feel unkind, “That was so stupid” is different from “You’re so stupid”. “That was a lazy pass” is different from “You’re lazy.” This is frequently where what was said and how it was interpreted can vary greatly.
I — Impact. Where did it land? There are three levels worth naming here, because they’re not the same thing:
Discomfort — hard to hear, uncomfortable in the moment, useful in the long run. This is often where challenge lives and is an integral part of growth and development.
Distress — a sustained sense of not being okay, over time, in a pattern. This is often a warning zone signaling that something needs our attention.
Harm — damage that lasts beyond the moment. This is the bright-line zone. Here the intention is malicious and the impact is often observable and measurable. This is when we stop the process immediately and act accordingly.
Not every blip is harm. Not every discomfort is distress. But treating all three as the same thing helps no one - least of all the athletes actually experiencing harm.
P — Pattern. Is this a single incident, or is this a pattern of behavior? A single outburst born of frustration is different from daily rants due to a lack of emotional regulation or control. One sharp comment is different from a series of comments routinely directed at one person. As the saying goes, “Once is a mistake. Twice is a choice.”
S — Skill. What prevents more of this in the future? Sometimes what’s needed is a skill for the coach - delivery, timing, self-awareness, emotional regulation. Sometimes what’s needed is a skill for the athlete to develop - receiving direct feedback, recovering from disappointment, distinguishing “I don’t like this” from “this crossed a line.” Sometimes what’s needed is both.
And sometimes — this is the important part — the situation is past the skill-building zone, and what’s needed is protection. That’s when BLIPS gives way to SafeSport, Title IX, and the mandatory reporting channels that exist for exactly that reason.
BLIPS is a tool for the gray zone. The bright lines are still bright.
The purpose of BLIPS is to give coaches, athletes, parents, and administrators a shared way to look at a concern. The same five questions to help separate the discomfort of growth, from the distress of a tough situation, from the harm that requires intervention. Those are three different things. And treating them similarly is a big part of how the water got so murky.
Ideally, BLIPS protects everyone. Athletes, from true harm getting lost in the noise. Coaches, from enduring unnecessary investigations and premature conclusions. Administrators, from having to make hard decisions with only a partial picture.
While my hope is that BLIPS is helpful when a blip occurs, the ideal is to minimize blips proactively across sport at every level.
I’ve been working on a preseason alignment agreement - a document coaches, athletes, families, and administrators can sign together before the first practice - built around this idea. I’ll share it here in the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading, and please share with anyone who may benefit from the BLIPS framework.
With gratitude,
Betsy
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.