This was the case at my Illinois high school in the 80s, which took football pretty seriously. All the coaches either taught drivers’ ed or gym.
At our school, it was gym, driver’s ed or history teachers who were the coaches
I don’t think it is so black and white. I think you can indeed define success through winning with a High School level sports program, that doesn’t preclude caring about health and academics, nor does it mean you have to inappropriately put those things as lower in priority to football.
That was mostly true at my high school in West Virginia. The varsity football coach taught gym, the varsity basketball coach taught driver’s ed. But the JV basketball and JV football coaches were actual teachers (math and history, respectively).
At my school, the history teacher was one of the football coaches and also the driver’s ed instructor. Our PE teacher was the other football coach. I think one was the varsity coach and the other was the JV coach. Very small school in the 80s. I was about 80 lbs so I didn’t play football.
Yeah, the teachers who coached at my school were all over the place. Boy’s basketball was a gym teacher, but girl’s basketball was one of the art teachers, football had a head coach (when I was there) who was actually a math teacher at the junior high (he had been my football coach in junior high, but took a job coaching the high school team while he continued teaching math at the junior high–he was a good math teacher), the wrestling coach was a history teacher, the assistant wrestling coach was the same guy who coached football, the track coaches were actually a mixture of the head coaches of the other sports–our football coach coached track sports like shotput and discus, one of the basketball coaches coached cross country and other running events.
I actually think the boy’s basketball coach as gym coach was the only one of that nature we had, but even he I honestly can’t describe as a “fake” teacher. I had him for PE and he actually took it really seriously, like he would give speeches about the importance of exercise in living a healthy life, adding years to your life, he actually gave pretty serious lessons on the best knowledge of the era in terms of conditioning and nutrition. Which most people I’ve known have said their PE teachers handed out basketballs and then disappeared, so I think ours was a cut above.
I don’t think all coaches had to be teachers in the area I grew up in though, our baseball coach for example was not a member of the teaching staff.
Your statements are contradictory. It is black and white if you define success as winning. You either win or you lose, you either succeed or you fail. There are no in betweens.
If you define success as having a group of young athletes who learn and practice sportsmanship, while also caring about their futures and academics, then winning is simply a bonus, not the goal.
My AP (advanced placement; college-level) US History teacher in high school was our football coach. He was a great history teacher. He also was the person watching the kids for Saturday School the one time I ever got sent. He was shocked to see me there since I was one of his best students, but it was because I missed school one day when my alarm clock broke, I missed the bus, and had no way to get to school without walking for 2 hours. I even had a note from my parents confirming that the story wasn’t BS but my school didn’t care. My teacher thought it was funny and shrugged it off, and I just spent my time getting my weekend homework done and reading a novel. He was a cool guy.
That is not the case, no. For example it’s reasonable to say that a business typically defines success as generating a profit. That does not follow that a business also does not care about behaving ethically.
I suspect you’re talking past each other a bit. If I’m not mistaken, k9bfriender, you are talking about a situation where a school really only cares about winning and everything else is secondary, correct? Martin_Hyde, that is different from a school that cares about winning but cares more about developing the kids properly. I don’t think you two disagree.
Except he didn’t say “in my faith.” According to the link,
He {player’s attorney] said the player told head coach Wattley at least 10 times that he did not eat pork because he and his family are members of the Hebrew Israeli religious faith, which strictly forbids the consumption of pork or pork residue.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the coaches thought “Hebrew Israel” meant “Jewish.” If they did and continued to insist he eat the pizza when “residue from the pork clearly remained,” that’s still anti-semitism.
T
There isn’t any indication whatsoever that a coach told him he could “pick off the cheese with the pepperoni grease,” and in fact it was the fact he was coerced into eating the pork residue that was so egregious.
Athletic director is a real job.
But the coach is not the athletic director - according to that same article, the high school athletic director is named Greg Malone.
“Well look, I already told you! I deal with the God-damned teachers so that the coaches don’t have to! I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!”
Ah. That is interesting then. I reread it and you’re right. When I saw it I thought the other guy was district AD and this guy was the site AD. Malone has retired since then, new guy is Antonio Hall per the school site.
Hell if I know what that job does, as neither one is also a building administrator.
More likely there are a handful of varsity-only coaches (maybe even just one), and a bunch of assistants who double up as the coaches of the lower level teams.
Often the JV will practice with the varsity team, and there’s a lot of overlap on the depth charts as well. For example, the varsity first and second strings might be varsity-only, but the third stringers are also JV first stringers primarily. This is so the younger players get some playing time against their contemporaries, instead of just being a backup who rarely if ever gets to play.
So with that in mind, the linebackers coach might also serve as the JV head coach/DC. Similarly, the backs coach might be the JV offensive coordinator. And so on… And the freshman team might just have 2-3 coaches in total.
It’s rarely the case that a school would have a complete dedicated coaching staff for each level of the sport- that’s too expensive, and would require too many coaches vs. teachers, even for schools in rural Texas.
A business is not viable if it does not generate at least some profit. As the late great Dave Thomas said, “Profit is not a dirty word.” However, if a business defines success based on the size of its bottom line, then it will not behave in an ethical fashion.
For instance, I opened my business with success being defined as creating a company that I would want to work for. In that respect, I’m pretty successful. As far as profit, eh, I’m doing okay. I could make more money if I cared less about the well being of my employees and the quality of my services.
I’ve worked for a number of companies that considered their profit to be their measure of success, and they did not behave at all ethically, and did not even behave legally when they thought they could get away with it.
I’m talking about if success is defined as winning, as opposed to educating young athletes in sportsmanship and academics.
IMHO, this school focuses on winning to the detriment of the athletes involved.
Far from it… they’re effectively a hate group themselves. They’ve got some Wesley Snipes level crazy going on.
That doesn’t necessarily seem like anti-Semitism to me. Jewish soldiers have to work on the Sabbath; that doesn’t make the U.S. military anti-Semitic. What the coaches did certainly seems abusive, but I’m just not sure it rises to the level of anti-Semitism, per se.
From the article that’s now been linked twice in this thread:
Look, I’m not saying my fanciful speculation is what happened; far from it. I’m just saying that there are scenarios where the student’s account is largely accurate, but, contrary to a number of speculations and accusations in this thread, there was no intent by the coaches to force the student to eat pork specifically because that would violate his religion.
Even in that best case scenario, what the coaches did still seems abusive and inexcusable. And, as I’ve indicated several times, I’m certainly not ruling out anti-Semitism playing a role, just that it’s not clearly evidenced from the reports I’ve seen. And, again, I think it’s worth pointing out that from the reports I’ve seen, even the student’s family’s attorney isn’t alleging that the student was forced to eat pork because of his faith.
Ya, I’m pretty sure that would be illegal in Colorado and California. Most states require no less than 1 adult per 30 students so 3 would be a bare minimum and assuming someone got hurt or a coach was needed away from the field 4 would be the safe minimum.
Certainly spitting into the wind with me. Even aside from your lack of knowledge of just the supervisory requirements having coaches help people learn specific skills is a good thing. I’m sure you believe that two guys can run a track team too and teach and supervise all of the different skill sets at play. Pointing a kid a piece of equipment and saying figure it out I’ll be over here if you need me isn’t helpful and certainly isn’t