A Texas football coach has resigned after reportedly admitting to ordering two players to level a referee during a San Antonio high school football game.
I have to admit, even back when I was playing high school football, we heard Texas had the most hardcore high school football mentality in the country.
But even this is crazy.
Would a high school coach really give an order like this? And why would these young men obey it?
The answer to the first question is: yes. Across this country, we’ve canonized high school football coaches. Sure, to run a successful football team requires expertise and talent, but at the same time, a high school coach is hardly above reproach.
Nearly all my coaches were terrific leaders. In a single-mom home, high school coaches were my substitute dads; their lessons were invaluable to my development. It’s their voices many adults hear in their heads when they need a (figurative) kick in the pants.
But every high school athlete also remembers that errant, transitory assistant coach — usually some rudderless ex-varsity star, festooned with tattoos — who showed up to a few preseason practices, regaled students with his conquests and cursed liberally about his ex-girlfriends. This guy is always popular with the players; they think he’s cool.
Usually, it turns out, he’s not cool.
At some point, unceremoniously, the “cool coach” would disappear with nary an explanation, either on his own or by order of the head coach or athletic director. Don’t believe me? You haven’t heard of a rogue teacher doing anything inappropriate with a student in the last couple of years? Why not an errant coach? An assistant coach can have his own fiefdom out there on the field, away from the monitored school halls.
When we were in high school, the qualifications for assistant coach consisted of having a car, and having free time at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Luckily, ours were good people, who were committed to educating youth and teaching values. But if you’re shocked that any assistant coach could possibly have bad judgment, then maybe you expect too much of a job that depends upon volunteers willing to accept three-figure salaries. Lest you think this is an attack on coaches, it’s not at all. Coaching is a job — like teaching or day care — that can be infiltrated by bad apples.
In the Texas case, assistant coach Mack Breed has reportedly told his school principal that he ordered his players to hit the referee out of anger that the official allegedly used racist language. If so, he has established his culpability.
But what about the culpability of the students? Are they more responsible than the coach? Or were they just following orders?
The question comes down to: Can subordinates be held responsible for merely following orders? And if so, where in the chain of command do we draw the line?
It’s been called the “Superior Orders” defense, and it has been used with limited success for centuries, primarily in the theater of war.
Over time, courts have developed a “manifest illegality” test for the superior orders defense. This limited defense is available only if the defendant did not know and could not reasonably have known that the orders followed were unlawful.
While the “superior orders” defense is mostly raised in military situations, the quasi-command structures of football teams and other organized sports is loosely analogous enough to apply the test: Did the players not know, nor could they reasonably have known, that the order to take a shot at the referee was unlawful?
The answer feels like yes, at first blush. But then again, it’s not like we don’t make allowances for vengeance in sports.
We accept that baseball pitchers sometimes throw at batters or hockey goons are deployed to pick a fight, ostensibly to remedy some past wrong. We accept sports violence motivated purely out of vigilantism. It may garner a penalty, even an ejection, but retribution rarely results in legal trouble outside the game’s jurisdiction.
And if you find yourself saying: “OK, the players go after each other, but the referee has always been off-limits.” Has he really?
You’ve never seen a coach or manager — the leader of a team, in a professional league — get nose to nose, spittle to spittle, with an official? And that’s the pros! Still, the professionals may be safer than the youth leagues, where refs have to worry about being physically assaulted with a deadly parent. The reality is, referees, umpires, even line judges, may be “off-limits,” but only “sort of.”
Likely, sports experts (mostly self-anointed) would probably agree: blindsiding an unsuspecting referee is an aberration, even in one of our most physically violent sports.
What about the fact that they are juveniles?
Michael Moreno is 17, and Victor Rojas is just 15, and were sentenced to 75 days in alternative school after a disciplinary hearing. Recent research on adolescent brain development confirms (largely what we already knew) that juveniles are more impetuous, short-sighted and susceptible to intimidation than adults and therefore inherently less responsible for their acts.
It makes the test more complicated: First, is a 15-year-old mind aware of the “manifest illegality” of this act? Second, if he is aware, then is a juvenile independent enough to disobey direct orders from a highly respected adult “superior”?
Reasonable minds will differ on the culpability of the student-athletes. Some may say they are primarily responsible, others will say they were victims of a coercive authority structure and the strictures of the adolescent mind.
As for the coach? He gave the direct order. He’s an adult. He admitted it. He faces potential liability in his profession and possibly legally, but even harder to quantify is the damage done to young athletes, especially the ones in desperate need of a role model.
