Editor’s note: This report contains potentially disturbing and offensive language.
New Mexico State football offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tyler Wright’s social media account includes more than 150 social media posts containing offensive language about Africans and African Americans, Latinos, women and the LGBTQ+ community dating back more than 10 years when he was a student and football player at Tarleton State.
Minutes after the Las Cruces Sun-News reported Wright’s social media account history late Friday evening, NMSU athletics director Mario Moccia told the Sun-News that Wright “will not be on the team” while the school reviews the case.
Study regarding Wright’s X accountthe platform formerly known as Twitter discovered several potentially insensitive posts, including that Ugandan warlord and accused war criminal Joseph Kony “should be a college coach” because he “forced thousands of black children to do what he said.” Wright also posted that he would “beat up” his roommate if he was LGBTQ+ and announced that he was going on vacation to Jamaica, using a slur commonly used to refer to black people.
Wright did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Las Cruces Sun-News on Friday evening. N.M. State athletics director Moccia told the Sun-News he was “not aware of anything” regarding Wright’s posts, and then informed the Sun-News that Wright would not be on the team while the matter was being reviewed. Head coach Tony Sanchez also declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the university’s athletics department.
The school is aware of the posts and is looking into the matter, a New Mexico State University spokesman told the Sun-News.
The posts date from 2011 to 2014, when Wright was a wide receiver at Tarleton State in Stephenville, Texas. He became a football intern at the school in 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile and biography on the New Mexico State athletics website. Wright played at Tarleton for four seasons, helping the then-Division II school become Lone Star Conference co-champions in 2013 and had 432 yards rushing in 2014.
The account, currently using the handle @CoachWrightNMSU, was created in July 2010 while Wright was a student at Granbury High School in Granbury, Texas. The account bio includes his current position with the Aggies, as well as photos of the school, logo and the hashtag #AggiesUp under a photo of him in his school uniform and holding a football. The account follows the timeline of his coaching career and includes posts from his tenures at Permian High School from 2015-2018, UT-Permian Basin from 2018-19, TCU from 2019-21 and NM State from 2021-present .
Wright’s posts contain nearly 100 remarks about LGBTQ+ people, including homophobic slurs, more than 60 references to Ugandan warlord Kony – many of which include racist remarks about Africans and African Americans – at least a dozen posts demeaning women, nine posts depicting stereotypes and degrading Latinos and Latinos Latinos and five uses of common racist slurs against Black people.
The posts, which could be considered racist, sexist or homophobic, stopped around the time Wright began his coaching career as the wide receivers coach at Permian High School in Odessa, Texas, in the fall of 2015.
Although Wright’s last personal post was on July 31, he had shared more than 150 posts from other accounts between then and Friday evening.
Wright is in his third season with the Aggies and first as offensive coordinator. He coaches an offense that ranks second to last in yards per game and second to last in points per game among FBS teams this season.
Former NM State coach Jerry Kill hired Wright as tight ends coach and special teams coordinator in 2022 after the two worked together at TCU in 2020-21. Wright was promoted to his current position in January 2024 after Kill was replaced by new Aggies coach Sanchez.
Wright’s annual salary increased from $70,000 to $200,000 on February 1 when he was promoted to his current duties. His contract, which also includes bonus clauses of up to $85,000 a year, runs through June 2026 and includes a provision saying he can be fired for “committing or participating in any act, situation or event” that the school deems for bringing Wright into “public disrepute, scandal or ridicule” or engaging in personal conduct that is offensive to “prevailing social mores and values,” including conduct that reflects “adversely on the reputation of NMSU.”
Wright’s contract, provided to the USA TODAY Sports Network on May 31, was not signed by the coach. The document contains details of all parties who received and signed the contract, excluding Wright. The last entry in the trace says that the contract was completed on March 12.
Wright has been recognized as a rising star in his profession and was elected to the American Football Coaches Association’s 2024 35 Under 35 Coach Leadership Institute, which aims to “identify and develop prominent future leaders in the football coaching profession,” according to AFCA website.
The following statement is posted on the school’s website as NMSU’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity: “New Mexico State University is a proud and committed land-grant, space-grant, Latino and Minority serving institution located in borderland and tribal land regions. With priorities focused on equity and inclusion, NMSU is committed to practices that leverage knowledge emerging from the cross-sectional diversity of our students, staff, faculty and communities we serve and support through outreach and extension, research and teaching.
The Aggies (1-3) will play New Mexico (0-4) at home on Saturday at 6 p.m.
Posts about Joseph Kony, Africans and African Americans
Between 2012 and 2014, Wright posted about Kony more than 60 times. The vast majority of these posts were created over a two-day period, from March 7 to March 8, 2012, the same week that the “Kony 2012” documentary was released.
Kony founded the Lord’s Resistance Army in 1987, which was designated a terrorist group by the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State. Many governments accuse him of kidnapping children to use as child soldiers or sex slaves, and according to the United Nations, his forces displaced 2 million people between 1986 and 2009
Wright posted remarks detailing Kony’s murders and child abductions, ranging from insensitive remarks or humor about Kony’s war crimes to racial stereotypes.
In addition to commenting that Kony “should be a college coach” because he “talked thousands of black kids into doing what he said,” Wright called Kony “the most influential person of the last 20 years” and “Mr. population control” (sic!). Wright also called him a “rule” (sic) because “Black kids see him a lot.”
He also appeared to celebrate Kony’s killings and the war crimes for which he was indicted by the International Criminal Court, writing that he was “knocking down Africans like bowling pins” (sic).
In another post, Wright claimed that the flurry of posts about Kony was because he “tried to tweet once on behalf of each Kony kid” (sic).
Wright made two posts in 2020 during the protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer that appear to indicate a shift. On May 26 this year, he posted: “People are people regardless of their skin color or origin and they deserve to be treated as such. We need to do better, support each other’s goals, and love each other.” On June 2, he posted a black square to celebrate Blackout Tuesday, a collective social media action to protest racism and police brutality.
Posts about Latinos
Wright posted several derogatory judgments about Latinos and Latinos, and in a May 2012 post, he even referred to himself as “The Whitest Mexican (sic).”
Wright engaged in racial stereotyping in two December 2011 posts in which he demeaned Latinos with profanities for having to teach them English and described them allegedly watching pornographic films on their lunch breaks as “classic.” Wright referred to these people as Mexicans in his posts.
In an April 2012 post, he made a racist remark about Latinos, writing, “Oiled and dark! I look like a Mexican” (sic). Wright, in a December 2013 post, called a group of Mexicans a “Comanche town hall meeting.”
Latinos and Latinos make up the majority in Las Cruces, and according to the 2020 United States Census, 60.33% of the city’s population identifies as such.
Posts containing homophobic slurs and demeaning LGBTQ+ people
Wright used homophobic slurs in several posts, including one of the most popular slurs in regular and shortened form.
Between 2011 and 2013, he published or republished a shortened version of the slur six times. In a November 2012 post about the video game “Madden NFL,” he called his friends the longer version.
Since entering college in the fall of 2011-2014, Wright used the word “gay” 73 times to describe friends, advertisements, websites, clothing and musicians, including the country music band Rascal Flatts. In a May 2012 post, he called the latter “the epitome of gay.”
Between 2012 and 2013, Wright posted or reposted consecutive four-letter homophobic slurs eight times, with most posts using the term to describe friends.
In a March 2012 post, he made a transphobic remark about transgender women by commenting on their body parts.
Posts about women
Wright’s posts included language that was demeaning and perpetuated stereotypes about women.
In March 2012, he published a post saying that women who “can’t make a sandwich” should be better at having sex instead. He also shared another person’s July 2012 post calling women’s sports a “joke.” In an October 2012 post, he noted that he would dress as laundry for Halloween because “women love laundry.”
In a September 2013 post, he described “skipping” girls as “contagious.” In August 2013, he posted that those who have a “naked girl silhouette sticker” on their car are “dubs”, referring to victories.
Use of other insensitive words
Wright used and reposted popular slurs against Black people. He reposted a post from someone whose account X had already been deactivated, referring to the word “Wright” and used it himself in a post about his 2013 vacation to Jamaica.
He also used the word “ghetto” to refer to girls at La Vega High School in Bellmead, Texas, a city where Black people constitute the second largest ethnic group (18.8%), according to the 2020 United States Census.
Wright also used a common slur to refer to people with learning disabilities in a May 2013 post, talking about a girlfriend he appeared to have at the time.
(This story has been updated to add new information and correct an earlier version.)
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