This wouldn’t be so
bad if they just gave the coach a heads up and said, hey, why not put some of
the second stringers in there. But
somebody felt they had to punish this coach for doing what everyone wants to do
- win.
But apparently, there are those special people who think that winning should
be secondary to a primary goal of
protecting kids from hurt feelings.
It’s absolutely insane that a Long Island high school football coach was suspended
for running up the score on his team’s tough rival. It’s not only insane, it’s stupid. Don’t you think that world champion soccer
teams have hurt feelings when they’ve lost by only one point? This is something that happens
frequently. Do you suppose their
feelings would be less bruised if they lost by three points?
I would go so far as
to say this Texas football win suspension does a great deal of harm. It’s even rather elitist if you ask me. It’s a a sports contest. There
will be a winner and a loser. The loser doesn’t ever feel as good as the
winner. Ask your kid: “How did the game
go?” You will never hear him say: “Great! We almost won!” And then you’d have to think it was maybe
some high school sports commission foisting that illusion upon the kids because
he told the winning coach to lay down on points.
The whole spirit of sports is that you rise up from your failures and do better next
time. You build and rebuild. You take the blows and keep coming. It’s not the scoreboard but your spirit that
stays alive like
the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. They were big losers but we remember them in
eternity, don’t we?
And then as a final thought, I couldn’t help but think how
it would be if a blowout rule were applied to boxing. Your guy is winning handily so, in accordance
with the blowout rule, you tell him to pull his punches, bounce around the ring
a bit, don’t touch the other guy. And
then suddenly the losing fighter launches a lucky big right hand and knocks
your guy lights out.
Whose feelings are saved then? The ‘winner’ lives with
self-delusion, not knowing that his victory was fixed. The ‘loser’ is forever pissed off, bitter,
and betrayed in a fight in which he/she was the superior contestant.
Listen, the boxing world is full of fighters with losses on
their records but who come roaring back and win titles. Losing is part of character building. Why aren’t people satisfied to say “yeah
well, my kids lost but they played with a lot of heart.” A lot of heart. You hear that kind of respect often for the
loser in a boxing match.
What fools are those who think they are helping kids by denying them the chance to rise above their weaknesses?
