"Not unless you can take me on!!!"

-The words of a Bellevue junior football coach after I told him to shut up, as he yelled at me and the other officials (mostly at me) during the 4th quarter of todays game. Awesome. It only took 6 weekends of refereeing to be threatened with physical violence. I'm kind of surprised actually, that it took that long.

This post is about football.

I'm kind of saturated by it in life. I make game films of High School football games on friday nights, I run around on saturdays refereeing little kids games, and then I watch college football with my dad. Though I can't always tune in on Sundays, I'm in a fantasy football league for pro football.

Maybe it's a guy thing, but I really like it. I played growing up, so it's great.

Back on the subject of Jr. Football, which was really fun when I was a youth, I am sometimes actually horrified at the coaches. Now my dad was a coach, so I am a little biased, cause he was one of the greats. But the coaching these days sucks, to put it bluntly. Not that kids don't learn the game of football, or even that they aren't good at teaching fundamentals. The coaching staffs are just all populated by jerks. Really really loud jerks. (feel free to imagine I used a much more colorful and less flattering word)

Now, as a referee, I've come to accept that I will be maligned. And while I'm clearly the only objective person in the entire stadium (besides the other refs), that doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. All referees miss calls, and that's just the way it goes, and the game happens how they call it, and that's that. This is less apparent in pro football with the advent of video replay, but in other sports, like Baseball, human error is a longstanding tradition of the game. You'd think people would learn to live with it.

But I've never been treated worse in my entire life as a human being than at the hands of coaches in the peewee football system, particularly by coaches from either Bellevue or Mercer Island (rich and spoiled, big sense of entitlement, i can say it cause I'm from Bellevue). And this actually leads to my second point. First, MOST coaches are jerks. Second, ALL coaches are full of crap, even the ones that act nice; the day I hear a coach call a penalty on his own team is the day I will repent of that assertion, not before. I really can't believe some of their arguments, and I always consider the responses I could make but wisely attempt to keep quiet. Imagine if you will, a coach is in my face arguing, and here's what goes through my mind:

"What is the point of this conversation? I don't want to talk to this jerk. He either wants me to A) Reverse the call, which I'm not going to do. B) Feel bad, which I'm also not going to do C) admit that I am somehow biased against his team, which is the opposite of truth, I am in fact the only unbiased person in this stadium." At that point I usually employ one of my favorite self-quotes: "Why'd you even talk?"

Now just pretend it's not an in your face argument, but he just makes offhand remarks about MY lack of judgment in officiating the game. He either A) Thinks I'm hard of hearing, false B) Thinks that treating me like a piece of crap is going to sway me over to his side, false or C) Thinks that this could be considered 'helpful' in any way, false.

And the biggest temptation in all this isn't to yell back (oops, guilty), or give them penalties for their ridiculous and embarrassing behavior. The temptation is to scorn them when they make a bad call as a coach. In the same game in which I was threatened, the coach of the winning team was up by 10 with 3 minutes remaining. Rather than run the clock out, he calls a pass play, resulting in an interception. "COACH!! What were you THINKING? Only a complete MORON would call that kind of play." I stifle this thought in my brain before my mouth gets any crazy ideas.

Now there's no way around it, I'm basically getting paid to absorb the abuse of these men acting out their psychological disorders on the children's playing field, which is a shame for 2 reasons, 1) I think it has a horrible affect on the kids, and 2) because all of them are fabulously successful off the field, and I'm nothing compared to them in normal life. But here, and here alone where I have been given a modicum of responsiblity and authority, these men act like spoiled children, whining like mules for what is one of the least significant accomplishments with regard to eternity. To be thought of as a winner by a bunch of 8-year-olds. Wow. And the way some of them talk to the kids, it's painful. It actually reminds me of Pete Holmes impersonating an adult talking to a child Check him out on CH Live. Some of these coaches sound exactly like that.

Anyways, anyways. I also go to high school football games. These are a whole new world of fun and stupidity. It's hilarious how people get so worked up about it all. The Band, the food, the cheerleaders and drill team, the lights. The ridiculous fans, parents and high school students. It's all so funny, but the game itself is so fun to watch.

So, I guess that is all the reasons I shouldn't be into this game, but I am, cause it's a great game.

SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!