AS I read and learn more about this avoidable tragedy and the evasions and prevarications of Ateneo de Manila University’s leadership, I keep thinking how this was so emblematic of many key aspects that are wrong in the country. A leadership that protects itself before doing what is right, as shown by that one-week gap between the deaths and a public apology, and the supposed lack of timely communication to the victims’ families. Its sanctimonious failure to live up to its “man for others” motto has been well-covered. Globally, in third-rate organizations, I often see that officers view achieving the office as the achievement, and not what they do in that office. I sense some of that here with their initial officious attitude.
I have hardly dealt with Ateneo since graduating from the university and law school in the 1980s until I set up a scholarship donation in 2011. I have not seen it, but I am told I am on a public board in Ateneo that lists leading individual donors. I dealt with Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, whom I have great respect for and who passed on my interest to Fr. Jett Villarin, who was the school’s president then and a batchmate. I will not repeat what I have previously written when I wanted to continue and increase my commitment, but I was appalled and have not dealt with Ateneo since. I have no personal experience with Fr. Roberto Yap, though he is also a batchmate. I found the articles on this in Vera Files by Antonio Montalvan II, as well as The Manila Times column of Danton Remoto on June 27, well worth reading.
What I have read elsewhere does not analyze how Ateneo leadership’s acceptance of Tab Baldwin’s rotten coaching approach is not just a wrongheaded endorsement of a dated and thoroughly discredited approach to athletics. In my view, it goes further and shows a shocking lack of awareness and critical thinking among the university leadership.
From Rappler’s Dec. 9, 2017 article, titled “Baldwin draws inspiration from Bear Bryant in team system”: “During the 10 months of preparation the Blue Eagles had with their head coach, the UAAP Season 80 champions had to go through their annual rigorous training session in Baler, Aurora, in April 2017... The Blue Eagles unanimously mentioned that the weeklong Baler camp was the worst they had ever experienced in their entire time with Baldwin.
“That was the worst one week of our lives,” Blue Eagles co-captain Mike Nieto described it. The team made a pact to never disclose the details of the camp, but Nieto could say that it was a “life-changing period for the team because of all the hard work and emotions they had to put into that one week.”
Thus, what happened this year is nothing new, and note where the training camp was even back in 2017. This happened over the terms of the last two Ateneo presidents and not some overnight discovery that was impossible to predict or prevent. The article quotes Baldwin being inspired by and using Bear Byrant’s boot camp approach with nothing negative in the article. The author just took what he said for granted, just like Ateneo’s leadership. Yet, what is the reality? Another Rappler article, this time from June 10, 2026: “Philippine Sports Commission Chairman Patrick Gregorio says the alleged bootcamp-style training camp of Ateneo head coach Tab Baldwin is ‘not standard’ based on the rules of the UAAP, PSC and the Palarong Pambansa.”
Oh, if it was merely that. What has been done for decades about the Bear Bryant system that Baldwin admires and copies, and Ateneo’s leadership uncritically letting it continue unabated for a decade? Here is what Google AI provides: “The criticism of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant’s training system primarily centers on its extreme brutality, reliance on fear and intimidation, and archaic medical practices. Critics condemn his methods for prioritizing mental ‘toughening’ over the physical well-being of the athletes.”
Among the key criticisms it cites are “dehydration and heat exhaustion, physical brutality and high attrition, fear and intimidation, and outdated physiological practices.” It quotes Bear Bryant himself going to a reunion 25 years after his infamous 1954 training camp, in which 76 out of 111 players quit. This was way back in 1979, when Yap and Villarin were still in college. Here is what that article cites from a Salon.com article in 2002: “Bryant himself later acknowledged the cruelty of the Junction Boys camp, calling it his biggest regret and even apologizing to the players at a reunion.” His system has been thoroughly discredited and banned in the United States for a long time.
Here is my point: About 10 years ago, Ateneo hired an American coach with questionable methods. He achieved success, but at what cost? Did the leadership of the school do any analysis on his methods, especially for a place that claims to be intellectually rigorous and to teach students to be “a man for others”? Failing that, biased as it may have been, did they look into the warning of his ex-wife? What due diligence, critical thinking or analysis did they do? Probably little at most, perhaps due to confirmation bias and perhaps with the colonial mindset that it was an American coach. Yet here we are in the Philippines, so behind the times and taking in full faith what a minor American coach says and whose methods have been banned elsewhere, even repudiated by the originator of it. Just like the way our Washington Consensus-loving economists adhere to that, even though Washington has abandoned it. This time, unnecessary deaths resulted. Nakakahiya, and Ateneo’s students and constituents deserve better. If this was the government or some public official, I would not be surprised if the university came out with some sanctimonious condemnation, demand accountability and demand that heads must roll. Not so easy to pontificate when it is the other way around, is it?
Who made the most prescient criticism of this Jesuit style of leadership and education? He wrote that Jesuits were still “fifty years behind enlightened secular opinion and science in Europe” — that is a direct quote from his annotations on Antonio de Morga’s “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,” as quoted from Archium Ateneo. Only Ateneo’s most distinguished alumni who presciently realized, for all his praise of Ateneo and Jesuits, accurately observed what Jesuits were like then and, it seems, remains so today. Who was he? Jose Rizal.
The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.