FOOTBALL season is here. As if you needed the reminder. The post-season for Major League Baseball starts in a few days, too. Hockey season never seems to end. And basketball, at least the professional kind, starts again next month.
So what’s in the news?
Well, there have been some particularly nasty, and illegal, hits on the football field the last few weeks, followed by thousands of dollars in fines for NFL players.
A couple of professional basketball players are bickering in cyberspace about who should be considered among the best players in their sport.
Somebody had his jaw broken during a fight at a hockey game in Toronto last weekend. But since when is that news? (“I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.”)
Those who rule college football are said to be easing up on the punishment handed to Penn State last year after an assistant coach’s child-rape case. Reports say the school is going to get back some athletic scholarships it lost after the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
A player for the San Francisco 49ers played a game last week only a few days after being arrested for DUI and pot possession. Another player for the Baltimore Ravens was injured in a fight with a stripper early Monday morning. The NFL is in court itself, fighting with some singer/entertainer/don’t-ask-us who may have waved a middle finger during the Super Bowl’s half-time show last year.
Yes, this is the time of year when sports and athletes are in the news.
And so enter Matt Labrum, football coach at Union High School in Roosevelt, Utah.
IT SEEMS that some guidance counselors at Union High went to Coach Labrum and his assistants last week with complaints that players on the football team were using some social media site or another to bully a student. Whatever website the kids were using allows for anonymous postings, so the culprits couldn’t be caught. His players had other troubles as well, including grades (the not-so-good kind) and disrespecting their teachers in the classroom.
“We felt like everything was going in a direction that we didn’t want our young men going,” the coach told the press. “We felt like we needed to make a stand.”
So he suspended the entire team. But only for a few days.
It wasn’t entirely a joke.The coach made all his players turn in their equipment and uniforms. The next day he had them pulling weeds in a nearby neighborhood instead of practicing. The coach had the team elect new captains, too. And he came up with a plan that the players had to follow to get back on the field, a plan that included writing reports (writing! oh no!) and more community service.
NOBODY is going to give Matt Labrum a medal for bravery for handing out a suspension to his team that only lasted a few days. But the scare tactic may have worked. The kids on the football team say they’ll shape up.
“I still have a love for it and everything,” said a senior running back. “But it helped me realize, it’s not all about football.”
It’s not all about football.
Imagine that.
Also, not one parent complained. And the school administration had the coach’s back the whole way.
Imagine that!
People will tell you that the difference between a good coach and a great one is that the great ones improve not only their kids’ play, but their character, too.
No telling how Coach Labrum’s team will do this year. But he might have done his players a world of good. Let’s hope so.
Would the articles in today’s sports section be much different if every player had had a coach like Matt Labrum in high school? Maybe the stories would have a lot more to do with . . . sports. And not the police blotter.
Imagine that, too.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 09/28/2013