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Texas State coach Danny Kaspar accused of making racist remarks by former players

Sun Belt Basketball Tournament - Championship

NEW ORLEANS, LA - MARCH 12: Head coach Danny Kaspar of the Texas State Bobcats reacts during the second half of a game against the Troy Trojans in the final round of the Sun Belt Basketball Tournament at UNO Lakefront Arena on March 12, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)

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Texas State head coach Danny Kaspar used racially charged language and created an atmosphere of insensitivity within his program, according to two former players.

Jaylen Shead, a former point guard for the Bobcats, tweeted on Thursday that Kaspar repeatedly made racially-tinged comments at his players, the majority of whom were black.

“I could overlook the way he disregarded the rules and our health,” Shead said in the tweet. “But I could not turn away from the many racially insensitive things that were said to me and other teammates.”

Shead alleged that Kaspar:


  • Once told one of Shead’s teammates to “chase that chicken” to get him to run a suicide faster.
  • Told Shead that he was “running like the cops are behind him” when Shead won a sprint.
  • Told a black player that had a 2.2 GPA that he would be “working at Popeye’s.”
  • When he was unhappy with how hard his team was working, he said “if a brown man with a turbin and AK-47 walked in, I bet y’all would run as fast as you could.”
  • Threatened a player from Europe that he would be deported since the “a lot of the boosters/alumni here are Trump supporters.”

“There is no embellishment in what he said,” Shead’s former teammate, Alex Peacock, told ESPN, adding that he witnessed every one of the interactions.

Perhaps the most controversial statement Kaspar is alleged to have made is threatening to used the n-word if he kept hearing his players use the n-word.

Kaspar accepted the Texas State job in the spring of 2013. He had previously been the head coach at Stephen F. Austin for 13 seasons. Shead began his career at Cal Poly before transferring to Texas State. He left for his final season of eligibility to play for Washington State.

This is not the first time that Kaspar has been involved in an allegation involving the race of his players. In a 2013 lawsuit filed by former Texas State player Basil Brown against the school and Kaspar, among many others, and obtained by NBC Sports, Brown alleges that on at least three occasions, he heard Kaspar tell black teammates that, “you wouldn’t run from the cops in [their hometown] like that.”

Less than two months after Kaspar accepted the Texas State job, he took away Brown’s scholarship for the 2013-14 season and gave it to a white player because, according to the lawsuit, “Reid Koenen happens to be white and [Brown] is black and white players are slower than black players because of race.” The lawsuit added that “race [was] a determining factor” in allocating scholarships.

Brown goes on to allege that Kaspar “scolded” him at a team workout for outplaying Koenen, allegedly saying, “Basil is picking on the slow white boy.” When Kaspar eventually pulled Brown’s scholarship, Brown alleged that the coach told him that he failed to beat out Koenen because, “Reid is a slow white boy and I’m not going to fault him for that.”

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed because it was “too speculative to show that Kaspar removed Brown from the team because he was black.”

Texas State’s athletic director released a statement calling the allegations “deeply troubling” while announcing that the school is launching a formal investigation of Kaspar.