How to Excrete Excellence: Sports Edition

So there I am, minding my business and checking my e-mail, when I saw this headline:

Unapologetic Coach of 100-0 Win Fired By School

The story, if you're too lazy to click on the link, is this girl's high school basketball team from Dallas beat another team so badly (100-0, as the title suggests) that the girls from the winning team apologized for it. In my head, the apology went a little something like this:

To the team that is still trying to pick up the pieces,

We're terribly sorry we owned you at basketball. Seriously, we didn't mean to take 3-point shot after 3-point shot, especially after it was painfully clear you didn't have a shot in hell at winning. Additionally, we apologize for pulling your pants down, licking the palm of our hands and spanking you over and over again in front of your family, friends and school mates while tears of shame streamed down your (face) cheeks. Our bad.

I get why an apology was necessary. It's high school basketball, not the (W)NBA. The coach refused to apologize though. He said, "Aw hell nah! There's no way I'm apologizing for teaching my players to be awesome, albeit kinda cocky assholes." But to be fired over refusing to apologize? To get shit canned from your job because you taught your players, oh, I don't know, to win? That seems a bit much. Granted, I don't really know much about basketball except for basic Phoenix Suns knowledge all Arizonans are required to know, but I think this might be a little much.



Raja Bell is my favorite because his name is that of my favorite Disney tiger from my favorite, racially stereotypical Disney Movie "Aladdin". Rawr!

Could the coach have told his players to scale it down a bit and stop showing off? Probably. Should he have told his players to at least pretend to be having a hard time for a while and show a little grace? Sure. But that's not how athletics work in the good ol' US of A. Sure, athletes here have talent. Bigger than talent, though, they all have gigantic mouths that run at a million miles an hour so everyone will know how awesome they are.

Here's a breakdown as far as I've been able to tell when it comes to sports in America.

1. Discover a sport your good at.
2. Make playing it your #1 priority. School? Fuck school. You're all about putting a ball through a hoop/putting a ball in another person's hands/messing around with balls in general.
3. Make money off of your ball handling abilities.
4. Become unbelievably cocky about numbers 2 and 3.
5. Film commercials for anything. Literally, anything that will pay you. Ben-gay and Wheaties sponsorships only go so far. Mercedes-Benz and Roy's Auto Body sponsorships last a lifetime.
6. Waste all your money on stupid things, like a football shaped pool or strippers.
7. Fall on hard times.
8. With no education to fall back on (see #2), re-discover love for your sport.
9. Don't call it a comeback (psst- it's a comeback!)
10. Raise children to repeat.

All in all, these girls did what they were coached to do: eat losers for breakfast. The fact that the losers they happened to be munching on were 8 girls from a school that specializes in "learning disorders", well, that's just sports in the USA baby. Is that Nike and Gatorade knocking at the door? I think it is.