Hear No Evil is Sometimes the Best Policy
A high school football coach came on the field to speak to his team during a timeout, and his parting words were, “You’ve got to get off your asses and get back in the ballgame!”
The referee stopped the coach as he was leaving the field. “You can’t say ‘ass,’” the official said.
Momentarily taken aback, the coach paused and said, as though the official were joking, “I was using it figuratively. They’re beasts of burden, you know. They’re in the Bible. Lots of holy men rode on them.”
“That’s not what you meant,” the official said. An argument ensued, and the result was a 15-yard penalty on the coach.
Although that may be overstepping the bounds of officiating propriety, the story does illustrate both a fine point and a troublesome point. What percentage of our personalities do we leave in the locker room when we change into a uniform? Also, what are the limits of our own private sense of morality when we officiate?
We react differently to spouses than we do with companions of our own gender. We treat our parents differently than we treat our boss. We deal with strangers differently than we deal with cohorts.
At base, adopting a new persona for special situations is something ordinary citizens do every day. Officials have to do it, too. They have to shed much of their private selves and put on the mantle of neutral arbitrator.
Should you ever listen to a coach berate players? Probably not. It is essentially out of an official’s province. But what if the coach strikes a player?
Personal preference is that all language delivered from coaches to players should be ignored, even though it may be highly disparaging and obscene, but any mauling of a player should be interrupted with a caution: “If you hit a player, Coach, I must report that to the school principal and the state office.”
If a coach is truly out of line with belittling remarks, people connected to the team are going to be more fully aware of it than any official, because they’ve observed it on a regular basis. Explosive coaches are usually bombastic as a habit. If they are truly egregious continually, parents and administrators will be on the alert and are likely to take disciplinary measures.
If officials report blatant manhandling of players, and school authorities wink at it, the athletic program will get what it deserves. But on the field, you do have recourse, although penalizing the players for their coach’s misbehavior should be a last resort.
I officiated for 50 years. I couldn’t count the times I’ve had players say to me, “Don’t pay attention to that guy. We have to listen to him all week. He’s a hopeless jerk.” Aberrant individuals have a way of weeding themselves out of the profession. Before long their pinging will lead to an overhaul.
Written by Jerry Grunska. A frequent contributor to Referee, he lives in Evergreen, Colo. This originally appeared in the 4/03 issue of Referee.
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