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Utah Coach Suspends all 80 of his football players


KHCast

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Well this is interesting.

 


 

A high school football coach in Utah has taken the unusual step of suspending his entire team, hoping the 80 players might reflect, mature and return to the field with a life lesson in humility, respect and hard work.

Team members at Union High School in Roosevelt were disrespecting teachers, skipping classes, failing courses, and even engaging in cyberbully behavior, head coach Matt Labrum told Deseret News.

He told the entire team to turn in their jerseys and said they could not return to the field until they completed a lengthy community service obligation that included indoor and outdoor physical labor.

“We felt like everything was going in a direction that we didn’t want our young men going,” Mr. Labrum said of his decision. “We felt like we needed to make a stand.”

The message brought tears to the players, but Mr. Labrum said he has only heard words of support from the parents.

“They were in the locker room for a really long time,” said the mother of one player. “They came out and there were tears, Those boys were wrecked. My son got in the car really upset and [said], ‘First of all, there is no football team. It’s been disbanded.’”

The parent said after she learned of the circumstances of the suspensions, that she supported the decision.

“It’s not a punishment,” she said. “It’s a good life lesson.”

School administrators also stood by the coaching staff. Principal Rick Nielsen said the coaches are “just excellent men” and that sometimes “we do think we’re bigger than the game.”



What do you guys think? I do in fact admire what he's doing, however I feel like it's a bit unfair to the players that had nothing to do with the bullying and slacking off. Still, if it strengthens the team and makes the players better people, I guess I can't really complain.
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Hopefully the players come back with a better attitude after the 80 days. If they acted this shitty to begin with, why are they complaining about the removal of the football team?

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however I feel like it's a bit unfair to the players that had nothing to do with the bullying and slacking off.

 

It'd be very hard to run a team on a limited number of players, all it would take is a third of the squad to go. Plus, you could argue they may have been complicit in not attempting to influence their team-mates into good behaviours.

 

(Edited for clarity)

Edited by TheGerkuman
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Good call.  My only experience with such characters are of course the overexaggerated stereotypes in US films and TV, but obviously there's some degree of truth to them.

 

In any context, if someone is being a jerk, cutting off their passion until they prove they can cut it out is an excellent motivator to encourage better behaviour.

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It'd be very hard to run a team on a limited number of players, all it would take is a third of the squad to go. Plus, you could argue they were complicit in not attempting to influence their team-mates into good behaviours.

And how do we know this? For all we know, they could have, and just not have been listened to. I do agree that there would have been no point to just have a few players though.

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Well it is incredibly cruel to just cut off someone's passion/lifeblood for the sake of discipline, from the sound of it there were no other options left so I agree with the sentiment. I genuinely feel sorry for any player who tried to speak out against this stuff and was not listened too, and is now suffering the consequences of something he didn't do though. 

Edited by Chaos Warp
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And how do we know this? For all we know, they could have, and just not have been listened to. I do agree that there would have been no point to just have a few players though.

 

I was just stating a possibility and it came out differently than I meant it to. You're right, we don't know for sure. But I would suspect this to be the case from past experience. Apathy is easier than standing out for doing the right thing.

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Shitty teenagers have a privilege taken away from them, are forced to do community service as punishment, and said coaches have full backing from all of the adults involved? What is there to complain about? This is like the most perfect scenario in the world.

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Shitty teenagers have a privilege taken away from them, are forced to do community service as punishment, and said coaches have full backing from all of the adults involved? What is there to complain about? This is like the most perfect scenario in the world.

Possibly people who didn't do this shit and even may have tried to stop it getting roped into the punishment?

Edited by Chaos Warp
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Possibly people who didn't do this shit and even may have tried to stop it getting roped into the punishment?

 

Quite the assumption that anyone on the team tried actively to stop it by going through the proper channels, such as alerting the coach and other figureheads. That is completely unknown. But even assuming there were people who did, I still hold no sympathy, partly because rooting out corruption in a team and organization sometimes requires taking down those who weren't doing the behavior but still may have been complicit as a lesson, and partly because I don't find the actual punishment as in any way "cruel." Pretty sure worse shit was happening to the people who were being cyber-bullied.

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