Mike Leach has not yet coached a football game at Mississippi State, but he has already undermined the university’s long-held reputation for progressivism through athletics in a state with a painful racial history.

After sharing a meme on Twitter of a woman knitting a noose, Leach, 59, this week was ordered by university officials to undergo sensitivity training, including museum visits and “listening sessions” with students, alumni and community groups. At least one player has said he will transfer because he considers Leach’s apology insincere and the university’s response insufficient.

“That’s the prime example of why I need to leave Mississippi,” the player, Fabien Lovett, said.

Leach, who was hired from Washington State in January, ignited the controversy last week with a coronavirus-related meme — which he later deleted — that featured a black-and-white image of an older white woman with knitting needles. The caption read, “After 2 weeks of quarantine with her husband, Gertrude decided to knit him a scarf.”

But the woman was knitting a noose, not a scarf, evoking the Deep South’s brutal history of lynching black people. Leach apologized the next day with a tweet that said: “I sincerely regret if my choice of images in my tweets were found offensive. I had no intention of offending anyone.”