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Last week, two girls “hah skrewl” (a little Rush lingo, there) basketball teams played a game.&#160 And one team showed obvious superiority over the other.&#160 Perhaps you heard about it.

Kinda reminded me of some of the games I had to witness between my Arlington Heights Yellow Jackets and Fort Worth Dunbar’s perennial Texas HS champion Wildcats.&#160 (For the Uninitiated&#153, I was the Jackets’ BB manager at the time, so I didn’t have much choice – I had&#160 to watch those debacles.)&#160 In fact, I imagine a few of you SMUT types could probably relate.&#160 Especially those of you who were around for a certain game back in 1989.

Anyway, yesterday – after the head coach expressed disagreement with the wimp-assed apology offered by the school’s excuse-for-a-headmaster – said headmaster canned said coach.

It goes a long way towards showing, IYAM, just how pussified our country has become.&#160 A coach’s team runs it up on an opponent who, quite frankly, shouldn’t even be on the same court with any team in that league in the first place, and that coach gets his ass bitched at and dumped.&#160 Hell&#153 – as much uproar as there is over this nationally, it’s a damned wonder said winning coach hasn’t yet been accused of child abuse.

Don’t get me wrong.&#160 I’m all for sportsmanship.&#160 But I also think that, if you’re going to play, play.&#160 Dallas Academy’s coach could have chosen to take his team off the floor after three quarters – or better yet, refused to come out after halftime – and the score would have automatically become 2-0.&#160 Two-zip doesn’t quite look as imposing as 100-0, y’know?

But DA’s coach didn’t do that.&#160 He kept running them out there, and they kept trying.&#160 And they kept failing.

And there’s no shame in that.

I mean, c’mon.&#160 This is a high-school game, for Cthulu’s sake.&#160 No one’s fewwings&#160 are going to be long-term hurt over this.&#160 No one is going to suffer some sort of psychosis over being on the short end of a 100-0 score.&#160 For there to be this&#160 kind of reaction to the final score – and for the winning coach to lose his job over it – is just flat-out asinine in the extreme.

But that’s what you get when you’ve become a country full of pussies.

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7 responses to “On the 100-0 brouhaha”

1. HDD says:

   January 27, 2009 at 4:38 pm

   The coach’s firing was justified.

   He wasn’t fired for running up the score. He wasn’t fired for bad sportsmanship. He wasn’t fired for anything that had to do with anything he or his team did on the court.

   What he got fired for was the e-mail he sent to the Morning Snooze where he basically un-apologized for his team’s conduct.

   Publicly running one’s mouth to reporters about one’s employer is with-cause termination. Try it at your workplace sometime, and see how it works out for you.

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2. Supreme General Rayegun says:

   January 27, 2009 at 5:10 pm

   HDD,

   While I agree with you in that the coach was likely terminated for sending the email, what Darth is trying to point out (just speculation on my part since I have not spoken directly via subspace comms with Darth) here is that the coach apparently felt the need to HAVE to send that email because said headmaster WAS being a wimp.

   While certainly the coach could have chosen to NOT send the email, I’m sure you can sense that he was being laid out like the proverbial pig with the apple in his mouth just before the royal buffet by his employer issuing that wussified apology. What would be your reaction to having your employer publically hang you out to dry as the “scapegoat du jour” as as apology for a wussified decision by the CEO? Oh, be sure to include the fact that your being the scapegoat is patently unjustified.

   Here’s my thoughts on why the school issued the apology in the first place. Spin up the WayBack Machine&#153 to the late 80s. Political correctness has taken hold and the Texas Dept of Education has just instituted the lovelingly debated (NOT!) OBE standards. OBE for those of you in Rio Linda is “Outcome Based Education”. Yeah, that grand plan to “level the playing field” for education where grades are less important than how the school fairs on state mandated tests (here in Texas they’re called the TACS test (Texas Assessment of Critical Skills)). Teaching and more importantly “LEARNING” are thrown completely out the window to ensure the young skulls full of mush pass those tests to ensure the school district gets MONEY (see where this is going?) for the next school year.

   Okay, jump back to the present. Now we have a bunch of school administrators and district Superintendents that were “educated” under OBE to be basically a bunch of wusses. Because all they ever “learned” was screw educating just make sure we get our slice of the pie. Oh and we can’t forget the auspicious teacher’s union and their mandating to “dumb down” more and more in order to equalize the stupidity. Hence there’s why I see the headmaster felt it was NECESSARY to make said coach mad enough to send the email that eventually got him fired.

   I’m just glad I got my HS education before OBE was put in to place.

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3. HDD says:

   January 27, 2009 at 6:43 pm

   The school SHOULD have apologized for the horrid sportsmanship their COACH displayed. By the coach’s own admission, his PLAYERS did nothing wrong, and played exactly the way their COACH told them to. Bad sportsmanship is bad sportsmanship, no matter how you look at it. But, as has been pointed out, and I wholeheartedly agree with, bad sportsmanship is not, fortunately for most coaches, a termination offense. It’s an offense that merits a “Wow! What asses we were! We’re very sorry we were such bad sports.” That’s it. Which is what the school did. The coach, on the other hand, rushed out and defended his bad sportsmanship, compounding his bad sportsmanship with terminal stupidity.

   There are times when running up the score is not only allowed, it is encouraged. There are also times when a coach has every right to say “It’s not MY job to keep my team from scoring…”, and to keep scoring until the other team stops them. This wasn’t one of those times! This was a time of a coach deciding to take advantage of an obviously FAR inferior team (The Covenant School hasn’t won a game in four years, and has a total attendance, in all grades, smaller than any football team, short of a 7-on-7 team) to pad his ego and resume.

   I will be the first to note that the halftime score was 59-0, meaning Dallas Academy *only* scored 41 in the second half (that’s a score that will win most girls basketball games), meaning they did rein it in, a little. But, from admittedly biased sources, Dallas Academy was running a full court press until the buzzer, and was launching threes when the score was already out of hand. With a 59-0 lead at the half, and an obviously over-matched opponent, there were quite a few things DA’s coach could have done to not exhibit bad sportsmanship, such as pulling his starters and running his normal offense with back-ups, or keeping his starters in and telling them to dribble the air out of the ball every possession. He didn’t choose to do those things. He also could have shown an exceptional level of GOOD sportsmanship, and done things like running the full court press with the intent of fouling his stars out, to give the other team a chance to score from the charity stripe, or, to tell his team to brick some shots from the half-court line, or, better yet, tell them no more threes, and no more breakaways. He didn’t tell his team to do those things, either.

   Instead, he chose to tell his team to humiliate the other team. Victory was a foregone conclusion. The game was probably over about 3 seconds after tip-off (again, Covenant hasn’t won a game in 4 YEARS, and has a total female attendance of 20…), and a 100-0 win counts EXACTLY the same in the final standings as an 80-0 win, or a 59-0 win, or even a 44-43 win. The point of the game was for DA to drop a c-note on the other team. THAT is not sportsmanship, and should NOT be commended, and should be apologized for. After the fact.

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4. Darth Venomous says:

   January 27, 2009 at 7:33 pm

   Spin up the WayBack Machine™ to the late 80s. Political correctness has taken hold and the Texas Dept of Education has just instituted the lovelingly debated (NOT!) OBE standards. OBE for those of you in Rio Linda is “Outcome Based Education”.

   Oh, I can go you one better than that.&#160 Spin up thine Wayback Machine&#153 to the Seventies&#160 and you’ll find Texas schools’ half-assed attempt to spare the kiddies’ (and, by extension, their mommies & daddies) feewings&#160 by instituting a grading system to take the place of the time-honored A-B-C-D-F gold standard.

   Its name?&#160 The dreaded “O-S-L” grading system.&#160 (Outstanding – Satisfactory – Limited).&#160 An idea cooked up, no doubt, by kool-aid drinking devotees of Dr. Spock in an attempt to make the aforementioned kiddos & parent-types feel better&#160 about said kiddos’ tendency towards short-busism.

   But you’re essentially correct about the reasoning behind the post.

   HDD, I am well aware of why Grimes was canned.&#160 He basically got fired for defending his kids when that pansy-assed excuse-for-a-headmaster went and threw them under the bus.

   Good thing it wasn’t me – our esteemed excuse-for-a-headmaster might not have liked my&#160 response to being thrown under the bus like that.

   There are times when running up the score is not only allowed, it is encouraged. There are also times when a coach has every right to say “It’s not MY job to keep my team from scoring…”, and to keep scoring until the other team stops them. This wasn’t one of those times! This was a time of a coach deciding to take advantage of an obviously FAR inferior team (The Covenant School hasn’t won a game in four years, and has a total attendance, in all grades, smaller than any football team, short of a 7-on-7 team) to pad his ego and resume.

   Funny you should mention that, HDD.&#160 For your edification, here’s a copy of Dallas Academy’s schedule, which can be found here for anyone else who’s interested:

   Date Opponent Time/Results

   12/2/08 at Grand Prairie Advantage Charter 6:00 pm

   12/9/08 * at DeSoto Canterbury 6:00 pm

   12/11/08 at Yavneh Academy L 6 – 55

   12/16/08 vs Waxahachie Eagle Academy 6:00 pm

   1/6/09 * at Waxahachie Prepatory Academy L 4 – 66

   1/9/09 * vs Fairhill L 7 – 49

   1/13/09 * at The Covenant School L 0 – 100

   1/15/09 * vs Cambridge 6:00 pm

   1/23/09 * vs Waxahachie Prepatory Academy 6:00 pm

   1/27/09 * at Fairhill 6:00 pm

   1/30/09 * vs The Covenant School 6:00 pm

   2/3/09 * at Cambridge 6:00 pm

   2/6/09 * vs DeSoto Canterbury 6:00 pm

   Anyone else you wanna throw under the bus there, HDD?&#160 The coach for Fairhill?&#160 Yavneh?&#160 How about Waxy Hatchet Prep – other than Covenant, they laid the biggest smackdown on DA.

   Is everyone in that league unsportsmanlike, then?&#160 Or is it just that Dallas Academy has no business really even fielding a team, never mind being in that league?

   Sorry, no flag for unsportsmanlike here.&#160 If you’re going to field a team that poor, take your lumps and deal with it.&#160 Covenant threw a good man under the bus for no reason.

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5. HDD says:

   January 27, 2009 at 8:11 pm

   You know, when you’re determined to be obtuse, you’re really good at being purposely obtuse.

   If you had any basic math skills, and any ability to think with your head, you would have noticed that Covenant (I got the two schools mixed up in my previous post) won by a margin of 100…which would be 10 points less than their next two highest losing margins, combined.

   Also, if you had ANY observation skills, whatsoever, you would also notice that every other team they had played, for whatever reason, kept the score closER than Covenant did, with no team beating DA by more than 60, and no team shutting them out.

   So, if you’re done being an intentional ass to one of your friends, you’d have the fucking balls to notice that the odds are that the other schools that beat DA did exactly the sportsmanlike things I had suggested!

   Good grief, you’re horrible at proving an argument. You’re as bad as any liberal, and won’t let any facts get in the way of your foot-stomping tantrum.

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6. Darth Venomous says:

   January 27, 2009 at 10:33 pm

   So, if you’re done being an intentional ass to one of your friends, you’d have the fucking balls to notice that the odds are that the other schools that beat DA did exactly the sportsmanlike things I had suggested!

   If I were being an “intentional ass to one of [my] friends”, I’d have saved you the trouble of pointing out that you can’t keep your teams straight – because I would have gone out of my way to do that for you.

   Try to remember that.

   I would also point out that your own&#160 observational skills are somewhat lacking.&#160 To wit:

   Also, if you had ANY observation skills, whatsoever, you would also notice that every other team they had played, for whatever reason, kept the score closER than Covenant did, with no team beating DA by more than 60, and no team shutting them out.

   “No team beating DA by more than 60”?

   Did you not see the Waxy Hatchet score?&#160 You know – the 66-4 massacre?

   Was it your observational skills or your math skills that failed you there, sir?

   What I will&#160 bust you for is not getting the big picture in all this.&#160 How many of those games were within 20 points, which is generally accepted (at least, by NBA standards) as a blowout?&#160 Answer:&#160 Zip.&#160 Zero.&#160 Nada.

   None of the coaches for which scores are posted could be considered as really taking it easy on DA.&#160 I mean, when your margins of defeat are 42, 49 and 62, there doesn’t look like there’s a helluva lot of sportsmanship there – so my question is, why is Micah Grimes being singled out?

   Unless, of course, we look at the common denominator here, which is the fact that Dallas Academy’s girls simply have no basketball talent – and Grimes just paid for that fact with his job.

   Good grief, you’re horrible at proving an argument. You’re as bad as any liberal, and won’t let any facts get in the way of your foot-stomping tantrum.

   Okay, here are a couple of facts&#160 for you, HDD:

   1) There’s no “mercy rule” in TAPPS girls’ basketball.&#160 Grimes could have whomped DA 200-0 had he wanted to, and it would have been well within his right to do so.

   2) Dallas Academy has insufficient talent to compete at the level where it currently finds itself.

   3) Covenant’s half-assed headmaster got his panties in a bunch and overreacted by throwing the Covenant girls and their coach under the bus.&#160 Micah Grimes was fired for defending his girls, nothing else.

   4) “Sportsmanship”, as defined here, is a function of the heart, not the head, since it’s rooted in compassion.&#160 Thus, I am&#160 thinking with my head.

   Which is more than I can say for you.

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7. HDD says:

   January 30, 2009 at 6:24 pm

   Well, I guess ‘sportsmanship’ is one of those things like politeness, dignity, or class: you have to have it to see it.

   Dallas Academy knowingly fielded a team which did not have the talent pool from which to draw a competitive team (among the reasons are insufficient students from which to draw from, AND the fact that Dallas Academy specializes in…um…how do we put this? ‘Special needs’ children, who aren’t known for their athletic prowess), that point is easily conceded. Fielding a team for the ‘benefits’ that organized sports provides, without the real chance of being competitive, is a laudable, but, doomed to fail goal. That much is also easily conceded.

   Every team that Dallas Academy has played has beaten them, and probably badly. As you pointed out, a 20 point win is considered a ‘blowout’ by NBA and NCAA standards (if you ignore the absolute values of the scores, the margin of victory in a basketball game and a football game are similar), that point is also easily conceded. With a couple of minutes of searching, by a person who has purposely NOT developed any Internet search skills (me), will also turn up the likelihood of overcoming a large scoring deficit. To date, the largest score margin overcome at the NBA level is something like 35, while the largest margin overcome at the NCAA level is something like 32 (for the record, the largest margin overcome in an NFL game is 35, and in an NCAA football game is right around 31…almost the exact same margins as in basketball). Nowhere have I said it is good sportsmanship to keep a game close, to let the other team have a chance of winning. That’s pathetic. You win, and you win big. The earlier you get the game over with, the less you have to worry. I’m all for that.

   Where the bad sportsmanship comes in is the running up the score, solely to run up the score. You’ve complained about someone doing that to one of your teams, here on this blog, and you called it bad sportsmanship then. The coach of Covenant wasn’t trying to win the game. His team had managed to win the game, statistically speaking, right around the halfway point of the 1st HALF. I’m also all for tacking on some more points after the ‘greatest comeback’ level has been reached, because no one wants to be the answer to that next trivia question. So, go ahead, tack on some more points. Okay, Covenant had reached DOUBLE the largest margin overcome point a couple of minutes into the second half, since they were only 11 points shy of doubling it at the half. I’m still okay with what Covenant was doing.

   Everything after that point *somewhere* around the 70-0 point (that’s a real fuzzy line to be trying to define right now) was just bad sportsmanship. The game was won. The opponent was humiliated. The opponent had no chance of winning. Why keep shooting three pointers? Why keep running the full court press? None of those were necessary for victory (coaches are paid to win games), nor was this a situation where running up the score is not only acceptable, it’s actually encouraged. Why keep it up? Okay, to get the shutout, I can *almost* agree with keeping the pressure up on the defense. It wasn’t Covenant’s job to let Dallas Academy score. I’m okay with that. The full court press is only run to force turnovers. Why keep scoring? The game is already over, and a 100 point win counts the same as a 1 point win. Why keep trying to force turnovers? It’s not like Dallas Academy was a scoring machine. The ONLY reason to keep scoring was to pad stats, which is bad sportsmanship, as you have pointed out here when the same thing was done to one of your teams.

   If I had been the coach of Covenant, I *may* have done the same thing as he did in that game. When I used to make money playing darts, I was known to do things like that to my opponents. Testosterone kicks in, and things like that get forgotten. I can understand that. BUT, the coach didn’t have the common decency to say, AFTER THE FACT, “Wow. That was a really shitty thing I just did to a team that had no real option but to take it.”, and apologize. Since he’s the coach of a Christian team, at a Christian school, it’s not terribly unreasonable for *someone* involved to say “You know, I read in a book somewhere that we really shouldn’t do things to other people that we wouldn’t want done to us…” and apologize for the bad sportsmanship, again, AFTER the fact. Which is what the headmaster of Covenant did…you know, the guy who actually gets to determine what the coach’s duties are? (A coach is NOT actually paid to just win games. He is paid to perform the duties assigned to him by his employer, just like any other employee. Most coaches have ‘Just win games” as their only duty, though.) When the headmaster apologized, the ‘neutral’ (and safest for job security) thing to do was to SHUT HIS FUCKING MOUTH! If he didn’t like what the headmaster was saying to the press, all he had to do was just keep his mouth shut, and not say a word. The guy who was signing his damn paycheck got to say whatever the fuck he wanted to say. It’s his EMPLOYER, after all. When the coach started running his mouth to the Morning Snooze, he instantly committed a with-cause infraction, making the headmaster’s decision about what to do with him real easy. When your employer is trying to decide what action they are going to take with you, if any, it is best to not give them a fucking reason to fire you!

   What the coach did was bad sportsmanship. That, in and of itself, is an iffy reason to fire someone. But, the headmaster, as the employer, had the right to fire the coach for ANY reason. The idiot coach just took the decision out of his hands.

   The headmaster still did the right thing in apologizing. It was bad conduct by his employee. As a Christian, he was under a little bit of a compulsion to apologize for bad behavior by his employee.

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