Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear sideline reporter on Thursday night high school football game of the week: Did you really just ask a coach if a player who suffered a concussion in the first half of tonight's game would be back in the second half?

Signed,
HanSen and staff

 

Dear irate mom,
We choose our assignments based on which matchups are the big games of the week, so no, we won't be covering your son's 1-7 team going up against the 3-5 school across town...especially when two unbeaten teams are squaring off the same night.

 

BUT MY KID TRIES HARD, TOO, DAMN IT!

 

Dear irritated cheerleading mom,
I'm sorry that in the course of covering the football game, I got in the way of your little noise makers and their ability to distract the football team while I walked the sidelines. Let me immediately stop doing my job so they can do their kicks, screams and little finger motions. Oh, and before I stop covering the football team (who by the way are actually playing a game and not turning on every adolescent boy in crowd every time they get a peek up your girls' skirts), do you want me to ask the referee to move as well?

Sincerely,
Spartan

 

Dear football team I had to cover today,

Wow. That was a shitty game. You practiced all week for that?

Sincerely,

Schieza

 

Hey coach, I don't mind the first request to send you a copy of a recent game story, but no, I won't send weekly pdfs to you via email. That's what a subscription is for.

 

Where do they put the cheerleaders at this field? On the sideline? Usually, you at least have the width of the track to keep them out of the way.

 

I've been at plenty of small school fields and older fields where there is no track, or even very little room between the sideline and the fence. Hell, on Friday night I covered a game at a private school where there might have been 10-15 feet between the sideline and the fence. In that space were players and cheerleaders, and toward the end zone (which opened onto the adjacent baseball field), some fans camped in lawn chairs.
It's amazing they haven't had a bystander crippled at that place.

 

I was at a game Friday night at a decent school's field (second-biggest class in the state) in which fans were allowed to stand just off the field alongside one of the end zones. One fade route into that corner and 10 people are getting taken out.

 

Serious comment:

Wow, that's a crappy attitude.

Non-serious comment:

They work hard too.

 

In the past, at least, that would have been a legit question.

Besides, you cannot diagnose a concussion on a sideline, even if you are a doctor.

 

Yeah this place was converted from a dirt lot a few years ago. The bleechers are 20 feet from the sidelines to the cheerleaders are almost on the field. The thing that actually pissed me off is that I've walked that sideline for five years and this is the first time a cheer mom has had a problem. My point is if the cheerleaders are doing their jobs they should care more about the crowd than the football players. At least the team isn't very good so the obliteration of scores of fans along the sidelines isn't going to be an issue.