Can We Talk About: Firing the Coach Who Wins By Too Much

There is a psychological epidemic sweeping sports throughout this country, and it is permanently damaging the psyche of our youth: Coaches, teams and players who are getting in hot water for winning by too much.

There was a high school coach in Texas who was canned after his girls basketball team beat a team 100-0. It caused a nationwide firestorm and turned news anchors (I know more about theoretical physics than they do about sports) into armchair coaches. "Shameful", "Disgraceful" and "Unsportsmanlike" the winning team was called. The media reported that the girls on the losing team were severely depressed, and were suffering socially from the loss

Yates high school in Texas is well known for winning by large margins. A coach of a losing team even tried to incite violence against the victors, saying "They better be careful doing that...these kids are from the rough part of town." So what? I can't whoop your ass because your thugs don't like to lose?

This has a personal tinge to it because I have personally been accused of "running up the score" in a football game. I will spare you the details, but rest assured, if I had wanted to score 100 points in the game, I could have. I scored 46 instead, but even that wasn't good enough. I took heat for not pulling my starters early enough, for calling **gasp** an option play with my scrubs against their starters (and scoring). Am I really supposed to tell a player who busts his ass for me day in and day out to just play dead on the field?

People who get beat badly and then cry "sportsmanship" should not be involved in team sports. Period. Go be a golf coach if you want sportsmanship.

What happened to teaching kids who to compete the entire game? That winning big (and losing big) are parts of life? That preparing hard and playing hard are things that you HAVE TO DO in order to win. You don't practice hard+ you don't play hard +your coach doesn't coach hard = you get your ass whooped. If the losing girls on the court were out to play for fun, they should have just played intramurals. Not all athletic activities are meant to be competitive. The Special Olympics aren't supposed to be competitive. The Olympics are.

The person who should have been fired over the 100-0 game should have been the losing coach and the losing teams Athletic Director (AD).

Why? The losing coach obviously wasn't doing his job. I could send a sorry high school basketball team out against UConn...and they wouldn't lose 100-0. Maybe 98-25, but not 100-0. They would find a way to score some points, and keep the ball away from the other team. It's not that hard. And if I really thought we could possibly lose that bad? I would forfeit the game. Honestly, I would. To prevent things like this from happening.

Making the losers the heroes...the pitiful state of society

Lets take another angle on this: Let us say for a minute that the girls in the game were playing their hearts out and and the coach was coaching his ass off (which didn't happen in this case). However, they were so over matched that it would have been more competitive to put a 8 year old in the ring against Mike Tyson. Then what needs to happen is that the AD (the guy who scheduled the game) should be fired. I would not ever put my high school football team up against the LSU Tigers. Why? We might get beat 100-0, and I would not put my players (who I care about) in that situation.

The coach who was fired was right to be unapologetic. His girls played the game the way it was meant to be played. Hard. Fast. Until every whistle and the final buzzer. Apparently, teaching those values that we all grew up with now will cost a coach his job.

Bring on the hate mail

Josh

Monday, January 24, 2011

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Fans Really Don't Give a Shit About Player Safety

Was Cutler Hurt or Injured?

I did not write this article! But it was too damn good to not re-post!

All the furor over Jay Cutler spending the second half on the bench is proof positive that the battle for player safety is an uphill one, and won't be solved with posters and PSAs.

It began almost immediately after Cutler, who had been seen favoring his knee, and was completely ineffective, was benched for Todd Collins. Fans, who will call in sick tomorrow from work with a fever of 99.2, made Cutler the new Bartman. Media members who have never played football in their lives, solemnly proclaimed that you can't stay out of the game if you're still able to stand. And players, other professional football players, accused Cutler of "giving up" and not "gutting it out."

Let's be clear here: we're not debating Jay Cutler's toughness. What really matters is that his sitting out was considered almost universally a measure of his toughness, and that perceived lack of toughness is a bad thing.
At that moment, when Todd Collins lined up behind center, we didn't know a thing about Cutler's condition. Not a damn thing. (Parenthetically, sideline reporters are the most useless convention in sports. Normally they give us pointless fluff we don't need, and the one time the world wants to know what's going on on the sidelines, they were nowhere to be found.) Perhaps the lower leg was hanging on by a sinew. Perhaps the kneecap had shattered into bonedust. Perhaps he had an owie and needed a Band-Aid. We didn't know. All we knew is that his health, his safety, his comfort in the remaining 50 years of his life should have taken a backseat to him gritting it out and getting back on that field.

Toughness is a positive, right? We want our players to play through pain, for winning to be the only thing that matters. We do. And that's fine, even if we want that at their physical expense; football is human cockfighting. But no more pretending we give a toss about the combatants, when we — even other players, especially other players — heap criticism on them for eschewing a shot at glory for their own selfish needs like "wanting to be able to walk when they're 60."

This is why the concussion awareness the league is attempting to build is good, but insufficient. The culture of the game coming before the player is too entrenched: a warrior mentality that makes players who know they just got knocked dizzy try to hide it from their training staff. Yes, they know that going back in the game might have huge repercussions down the line. But they know that if they sit out, they will have to face their disapproving teammates in the locker room. Read about how Cutler's eyes welled with tears when told about his contemporaries' criticisms, and ask which means more to them in that moment?

--Deadspin.com

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Can We Talk About: Fair-Weather Fans.

"My friends cousins girlfriend is from Pittsburgh!"

Let me set up a scenario:

A good looking blond is in the bar, wearing a Dallas Cowboys Jersey on a Sunday afternoon during football season. You start up a conversation with her, with the talk eventually coming to her jersey.

"That a really nice Emmitt Smith jersey, he was a great player!"

"Oh.......yeah!" (Twirls blonde hair, clearly doesn't know who Emmitt Smith is) "I got this from the store at the mall!"

"Oh yeah? I might get one! (You hate the Cowboys) Are you from Dallas?"

"No."

"Oh, was your family from Dallas?"

"No."

Have you ever been to Dallas?"

"No."

"Have you ever been to Texas?"

"Umm...I saw pictures of it, it looks nice!"

"So...."

"But I really like their uniforms!"

Their favorite player? The guy with the long hair!!

Stop right there. Move away from her. Do not have sex with her. You might have a kid with this horrible human being. A kid you would want to leave at the mall. I don't care how hot she looks through your beer goggles. If that piece of trash is your best option...go to another bar.

I'm pretty sure it is illegal (or it should be) to root for a team unless one of the following are true:

1) You are from that area
2) You currently live in that area
3) Your parents or uncles are from there AND they trained you since birth to root for the team. (That's the limit. No "2nd cousins, twice removed")
4) You have a really good reason (You like their style of offense, You like their 3-3-5 Stack defense, You've always been a fan of the Coach, etc.)

If none of the above are true, you are a douche if you root for any of the following teams:

Pittsburgh Steelers
Dallas Cowboys
Boston Red Sox
New England Patriots
Boston Celtics
New York Yankees
Texas Football
Florida Gator Football
Duke Basketball (And you can't spell Coach K's last name)
Miami Heat (Come the fuck on)
LA Lakers

For the record, I root for the Washington Redskins (I live in Virginia), the Seattle Seahawks (I was born in Seattle), the Washington Huskies (My parents went there), the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Navy Midshipmen (I like the flexbone-based triple option).

We all suck. But when they eventually win something...it will be all the much sweeter. When the Washington Huskies beat the hated USC Trojans last fall, I nearly streaked my neighborhood in sheer joy. When your bandwagon team wins? You try to act excited...but it had all the feelings of bad sex. Yeah, it was good...but who gives a shit?

So if you are a Steeler fan who has absolutely no ties to the state of Pennsylvania, please...go play marco-polo on the freeway.

Bring on the hate mail...

Josh
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I stayed up on Monday to watch a pathetic excuse for a supposed national championship game, played between Cam $200,000 Newton and the Oregon cheerleading squad (which I might add is ridiculously hot).

(meet the squad wish I was getting recruited)
Forgoing sleep to stay up til Midnight may or may not be in the top ten regrets of my life. Oregon has had great results this year with the spread offense which I will give them all the credit in the world for.
But WTF were they thinking you cannot read a fucking Defensive Tackle, especially on the Goal Line especially if his name is Nick Fairley.

(Meet Nick)
Oregon has a unique offensive system in which they tend to read the Defensive Ends to see if they are crashing or if they are staying home. If they Crash then the QB takes the Ball and runs to the outside if they stay home the QB gives. This is a concept that works well when you have more speed, then your opponent and you are reading him for OUTSIDE runs.
        Here is the thought process that the coach's went through. Nick Fairely is the best Auburn player so lets see if we can read him. Well here is where the problems started. First he's a Defensive Tackle which means he's on the inside of In practice for 37 Days they probably but some donk Dlineman in there that wasn't allowed to hit the quarterback. So when they let him run free the read was easy the QB didn't have to worry about getting planted additionally, the lineman didn't posses the speed and vision that Nick does, so in practice everything worked okay and they thought they had something special.
           Well game time comes about and Nick is meaner, faster and with better vision and understanding than Oregon anticipated so now on runs were they are suppose to read Fairley he is right in their face giving them a variety of looks, he was so fast and could turn his shoulders so quickly that it looked like he was going for the runnning back instead he massacred the QB on the goaline.
           Well wait a second......maybe the Spread Running offensive with all its lateral X's and O's is horrible on the goaline in general. What Oregon needed was a power goaline game to punch it in, as well as get it out of the endzone (the safety). The Oregon spread offense is a cool looking offense with their cards of Erin Andrews, Battleships and assorted Lego pieces which everyone seems to love, but near the goaline you need to posses a power game that will solidify your game. TCU would have done better btw.

Drew

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Everybody gets a Trophy

Alright I'll come out and admit it even before we get started. I sucked at Little League, as do most kids in America, I learned early in life that baseball wasn't my sport. But this issue shows the problem with the American psyche. This issue is the original reason that we started this blog, so I'm going to try to give it justice.

Everyone getting a trophy is leading our country into being a nation of pussies. Life is about winners and losers, there are people in this world that make a hell of a lot of money, people that do okay, people that slave for the man and get shitted on (me, Kevin, Josh), and people that live under bridges and have no teeth (hopefully this is never us, but life has no guarantees). This is the truth: winners in life, on the baseball field, in the classroom, making music etc. are motivated by several different things but perhaps the greatest is the fear or the lesson learned from failure.

            Failure is the greatest lesson in life ask any great leader, business person, athlete, priest, anyone.....failure teaches us what we need to work on, what we need to improve etc. I know that these kids are only 9, 10, 11, and 12 years old, and I'm not advocating that the last place team should stand there as the winners through rocks at them.  But the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, last place teams should have it explained to them that they didn't do well (aka they sucked, you don't tell a 9-12 year old this though you think it) and what they need to work on for next time, in a positive manner but you do not reward someone for losing or failing.

          This bullshit pussy idea that everyone is a winner no matter how they act or what they do started in little league with this bullshit, but now is continuing slowly into our society. Now in some high schools they don't have a failing grade saying that rather students will move on at their own pace.  This is a novel idea, but you can't tell a 14-17 year old that if they don't try at all they can't fail, it doesn't prepare them at all for life, not to mention that you aren't going to learn shit.

            Take yourself back to when you where in high school imagine that your teacher tells you, that no matter what you do you cannot fail, would you ever learn anything or just try to hang out, and look cool.

            Imagine Thomas Edison just giving up on making a fucking light bulb (it took him hundreds of failures) maybe we should have given him a trophy every time.

             You wonder why our nation is heading toward a nation of obese, uneducated, slobs that can't move out of their mother's basement at the age of 30. I'll tell you because no one has kicked them in the ass and told them that if you want to survive in this world you have to succeed, and the only way you succeed is by learning from failures, correcting them and improving yourself.

Drew

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