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Texas school district suspends two football players for tackling the referee
By now even the most casual sports fan has seen the video of two Texas high school football players intentionally targeting a referee during a game last Friday.
The video clip, which has had more than six million views on Youtube, shows the umpire watching a play begin, then one player slamming into him from behind, causing his head to snap back as he falls face forward. A second player comes in seconds later and dives into the ref's back, leading with his helmet.
The game took place in Marble Falls, located about 90 miles north of San Antonio. Since the incident has become national news, the two players have been suspended from John Jay High School and the incident will be treated as an assault on a school official, according to the school district. The players have since accused the official of directing racial slurs at them, a charge the referee's attorney has denied.
According to an Associated Press story, the two players "were feeling lots of frustration by what they perceived to be missed or wrong calls by the refs." The students allege that assistant coach Mack Breed, 29, said "that guy needs to pay for cheating us" or words to that effect. Breed has been placed on paid leave by the school district while it investigates the matter.
Also according to the AP story, the investigation will take at least a week to complete and the two players could be charged with misdemeanor assault.
One school official who attended the game told the AP that tensions between John Jay and Marble Falls high schools were high, including punches thrown, late hits and ejections before the Jay players slammed into the umpire. Another official called the late-game atmosphere as being "out of control" and "a time bomb waiting to happen. And it did."
Reaction from Chattanooga-area coaches and officials to the incident has ranged from shock to anger:
"If we were recruiting a kid and they did something like that, we'd be done with them. They would have zero shot of us recruiting them again. They should never be allowed to play a down of football again."
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach Russ Huesman
"I was in total shock when I saw it. Even before we heard that an assistant might have said something to them, I felt like somebody had told them to do that. To me it's a sign of the decay in our country by some when an authority figure is attacked. They should prosecute the kids and anybody involved to the fullest."
- East Hamilton coach Ted Gatewood
"It was sickening to watch. I don't care what happened or what was said before the play. We'll use it as a teaching moment to remind our kids that something like that would never be tolerated."
- Boyd-Buchanan coach Grant Reynolds
"My first thought was those kids were told to do that by a coach. That doesn't excuse what they did, but you could tell just by how blatant it was. That first kid took off like a heat-seeking missile to hit the official. I know us coaches can get on officials sometimes, but you have to remember those guys have a life and a family and a job beyond the game. They're just out there doing the best they can and helping the game."
- Howard coach Mark Teague
"I felt like it was criminal, to be honest. We've already discussed it among our association, and if that happened in a game here we would cancel the game from that point. It would then be up to the state to decide if the team that had a player hit an official had to forfeit, but our crew would cancel the game and be out of there. That's how we would handle it, whether it was a player, coach or fan from any team."
- Kirk Lewis, head of the Southeast Tennessee Football Officials Association
"It was painful to watch. It was also obviously intentional, and what made it even worse was the second kid coming in the way he did. We had something similar happen about 20 years ago where a fan came on the field and hit an official at Red Bank. It's scary."
- Bill Cole, varsity assigning officer