Monday, July 30, 2007

I am personally placing a hundred-dollar bounty on the head of Tim McCracken. He's the head coach and chief punk on that Syracuse team.


I've been participating in a running debate on a couple of sites about this video of a controversial play in youth football for the last couple of days and have to say the biggest disappointment is just how many jerks there are that tend to defend the coach's asshattery as teaching the other team a lesson or some other such nonsense.

Parents get their kids involved in team sports for a lot of reasons. Overall I think we hope the kids will continue to value athletics, working as a team and sportsmanship through their lives. All of the good stuff that comes out of team sports. (I know there's a dark side but as well but I'm speaking in the ideal here.)

The only way kids will take those lessons particularly at a young age is if they have fun at the sport in question and don't burn out on it. "Fun" is tough to qualify. I'm sure the players on the team that executed the "wrong ball" play in the video above thought it was just hysterical. The other team - not so much. We could argue the minutiae of rules as to why that play should be allowed until we're blue in the face but I would say that in the bigger picture anything that causes a bunch of kids on a team to want to hang up their helmets for good because they realize adults are asshats should not be allowed.

Kids have fun when things are COMPETITIVE. That doesn't mean politically correct, not keeping score nonsense or any of the things I've been accused of in arguing for sportsmanship and against the attitudes like what led to that play in the last couple of days. "Competitive" means the teams are more or less evenly matched so that the score isn't necessarilly a foregone conclusion.

That's why kids on the playground instinctually pick teams more and less equally matched. That's why youth leagues don't schedule 8th grade teams against 5th grade teams.

Guys like the coach who actually participated in the play if you listen to the audio are jerks. They're ruining youth sports. Their sorry attitude is the same thing that leads to parents losing their temper and all the other things that are taking away from the games these days.

I would really like them to find another hobby besides coaching youth football.

6 comments:

Swinebread said...

There are a lot of problems in youth sports...

Don Snabulus said...

There are several problems with this scenario.

1. If the opposing coach had been equally ruthless with the rules, the offensive line would have been sitting ducks and injuries could have occurred with some effective sticks to the people standing up. The offensive coach put his players at risk.

2. The referees should have said, "Live ball!" when they knew people weren't reacting properly.

3. It looks like the center started to stand up before snapping the ball. That should have resulted in a false start penalty.

4. There is no rule against using pepper mace on the other team, but that doesn't mean it can be done.

5. When the referees heard, "Wrong Ball" they should have whistled the play dead because that is a legitimate rules dispute. It seems as though they agreed to not act beforehand.

In other words, it took a lot of "looking the other way" for all this to occur. It appears that the whole lot of them have a bad understanding of what the rules are.

Dean Wormer said...

There are several problems with this scenario.

1. If the opposing coach had been equally ruthless with the rules, the offensive line would have been sitting ducks and injuries could have occurred with some effective sticks to the people standing up. The offensive coach put his players at risk.


Exactly. Not to mention the QB who could've been legitimately stuck in the back as he was walking to the sideline.

2. The referees should have said, "Live ball!" when they knew people weren't reacting properly.

Specially in youth sports.

3. It looks like the center started to stand up before snapping the ball. That should have resulted in a false start penalty.

That's a great catch.

4. There is no rule against using pepper mace on the other team, but that doesn't mean it can be done.

There are a lot of internet tough guys who wouldn't have a problem with that either.

5. When the referees heard, "Wrong Ball" they should have whistled the play dead because that is a legitimate rules dispute. It seems as though they agreed to not act beforehand.

That's another good point. Refs are provided by home teams at youth games and are usually from the high school team of that school.

There's some ref collusion their and I hope they canned his butt for that.

In other words, it took a lot of "looking the other way" for all this to occur. It appears that the whole lot of them have a bad understanding of what the rules are.

Yep. I looked around for a while this mornting to see if there were any news stories about this nonsense but couldn't find anything. I bet you anything that team was fined and had to forfeit. If there's any justice, anyways.

Overdroid said...

Sure, but if Bill Murray had coached them to do that because they were a bunch of underdogs - then it would be cool.

Don Snabulus said...

OD,

Are you saying, "It just doesn't matter?"

Overdroid said...

It JUST doesn't matter. They should have pulled the other teams pants down and then run for a TD.