Hurd By The Bay

Nice to see that while I was buried in the boxes of a move, a few things occurred last week that provided faith that perhaps the apocalypse might not be on us. The one that stood out to me:

The acquittal in Louisville, Ky., of high school football coach David Jason Stinson, who had been charged in connection with the death of 15-year-old Max Gilpin from heat stroke in 2008.

We live in a world where high school coaches face more parent interference and less support from their school districts than ever before. To send a message that they can be sued for tragedies that occur in a game or in practice would only add more fuel to the arguments that we're too litigious a people already. Nice to know that some tragedies remain only that ---- tragedies with no explanation and no adequate way to fill in the void created by the pain of them. Much sympathy to Gilpin's family, whose pain must be more than I can imagine, but suing somebody isn't going to make it go away.

Having said that, can we all agree that kids who need an extra drink of water during a hot practice aren't weak? Bodies cry out for what they need. I've never quite seen the benefit of having that body pushed to the edge of collapse. If coaches do practice what they preach, they'll take this lesson and apply it going forward.

By the way, the high school kids in the school district where I live have had to pay $400 to pay football this fall. Yeah, nothing about the way our country and states (in this case, California) do things needs to be changed.

Amazing! On Monday evening, almost four full days removed from the ugliness that ensued on the famous blue-turf field in Boise, Idaho, highlight clips showing the LeGarrette Blount melee were still being shown, and it got me thinking.

At what point will one athlete attempt to kill another one?

Go ahead, call me an alarmist. Nothing I haven't heard before. Besides, I'd be thrilled to look back at this post in a decade and say, "Guilty." In fact, when I mentioned to a few co-workers that not only would such a scenario not surprise me but that we're a helluva lot closer to it than we think, I got that look that says, "How many times were you dropped on your head as a child?"

But having said that, I imagine I would've had the same reaction had I said, not all that long ago, "School shootings will become a regular enough occurrence that they won't shock us."

Anyway, it just seems to me that there is a certain inevitability to the increasing lack of sportmanship we're seeing at every level of sports. Maybe I'm an alarmist, but I also know we live in a society that's among the most violent in a world that has become more and more impersonal with each new "phone" a computer company puts on the market.

Combine that dynamic with a media that markets to the individual more and more, and it's not beyond the realm of craziness to think an athlete will come along who's just narcissistic enough to pack heat to use at a time when things get heated.

I've had the pleasure of meeting more than one sports psychologist during my career, and let's just say it's an idea that's not unique to me. Gun play is a daily occurrence in rough neighborhoods throughout this land of ours, a sad reality that has created generations of youngsters who have become desensitized to the gruesome nature of it. Those who escape it, particularly the athletes, often do so through luck or because of protection provided by those who are wielding the guns in the first place.

But imagine if those voices who have served to protect the athlete suddenly get in his ear with intentions that aren't so pleasant?

Ludicrous? Perhaps. But no more so than the notion that a postgame handshake between college students would set off a free-for-all. Or that the NBA would witness a brawl spill over into its seats, as it did when members of the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons had their throwdown at The Palace in 2005.

Imagine the next one, and then consider the world in which we live. All it takes is one idiot with a lot of athletic ability.

So call me crazy. But given where we've been and where we seem to be headed, I've got an awful feeling I may someday say, "Told you so."