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| They can be wild |
I have not read any accounts suggesting that Page showed signs of cognitive issues as a result of playing football, as a lineman for many years. So, that was a blessing. He played at Notre Dame before becoming a Viking.
Years ago the MN Supreme Court tread into the news in an awkward way, due to an unusual back and forth with Dean Johnson. The court did what I deemed unusual: issue a public statement to the media as it tried to extricate itself from some spilled milk, as it were.
The matter began as the surreptitious tape recording of comments made by Johnson, then an important state lawmaker, to a group of ministers. Johnson appeared to get nicked politically. He was able to "parachute" just like political VIP predecessor Wendell Anderson, onto the U of M board of regents.
An issue with layers
At present the state supreme court is in the news again. I consider it a troubling matter. On a knee-jerk level it is easy to sympathize with what the Court did. We might think "way to go" regarding a decision that appears to rein in those pestering high school sports parents.
High school sports parents! They can drive coaches nuts, right? They can affect coaches' "job security," right? The whole issue is of course more complicated and has multiple aspects for sober consideration.
We can peel this apart in several ways. Let's consider that coaches do their work in a fishbowl. They wouldn't be compensated for coaching kids if their "product" wasn't out there for public consumption. It is the essence of "public" events. I had a friend in Hoffman once who said of the home football games "this is Friday night in Hoffman." The school has no problem taking in revenue from excited spectators.
The price paid for this is that coaches and athletic directors can in fact be on the hot seat. There is pressure to be felt managing any product that is out there for public consumption. Is the Minnesota Supreme Court catering to the base impulse to get upset with sports parents/fans who may "hector" too much? The people who wear the robes need to be more cautious.
I remember when the old Roy Firestone show on ESPN had a leading baseball umpire as a guest. Firestone kept prodding the guy on whether a World Series game caused any special emotions to be felt by an umpire. "Aren't you thrilled" or "aren't you in awe?" etc. The umpire didn't budge and finally, after a pause, he said to Roy "you'd make a terrible umpire."
The message: be dispassionate.
Our Stevens County has a history of sports-based grievances or even rumors becoming known. You are probably thinking that a line must be drawn between common sports chatter re. coaches, and the more hurtful, let's say salacious rumors. But our county has a history where truly salacious rumors circulated and they were not off base. The Hancock girls basketball coach of many years ago is the example here.
We can discuss this openly because he did end up in prison. So propriety is moot. A couple young people had to speak out about his wrongdoing. A long-time teacher friend of mine who worked there, informed me that nothing short of a student coming forward would have caused any action to be taken. So finally it happened and it was a good thing.
The Star Tribune gave the conviction some coverage. And I remember a headline, actually a sub-head, that read as follows and I'm pretty sure this is word-for-word: "Rumors of misconduct had been circulating for years."
When you analyze the Minnesota Supreme Court's recent ruling, you'd have to wonder if the coach, minus any legal charges, could have taken action against anyone known to speak the "rumors."
The Strib describes the Minnesota Supreme Court decision as a "game changer." The court ruled that high school coaches are not "public figures." People familiar with mass communications law know this is a huge deal for allowing defamation actions. The body of the article further describes the court action as "groundbreaking."
Let's tamp down any impulse to applaud this on a gut level. "Oh, those pesky sports parents." We need to be more like the umpire on Firestone's show who was incredulous about suggestions that we cave to base feelings.
The Strib article reported that "parents and others" don't have legal protection to "make false claims" about high school coaches. Can I suggest we could drive a truck through that? First off, why is a line being drawn for any reason between "parents and others?" Some of the most emotionally involved fans can be non-parents. To specify "parents" is to suggest they are a unique organism in this. On a subtle level, it perhaps suggests that parents ought to be stigmatized as a special creature known to be gadflies for coaches, which I'm sure they can be.
So, is there an impulse here to sort of quarantine the parents, to suggest to them to just "shut up?" Shall we applaud? However, we cannot lump all contrary sentiment toward sports parents in the same way. The "rumors" about the Hancock coach ended up being true. The fact they were circulating might have been a factor in ultimately influencing certain kids to speak up.
Would we have wanted members of the public to be intimidated, out of fear of legal action, into taking the hush-hush approach?
Do coaches want their cake and to eat it too? Sports events are by definition public. Sports is not a necessary part of our civic life, or of the education of our young people really. It's frosting. It's a way to combat boredom or the toll of a long and dreary winter.
Re. the high school in Morris
Stevens County history also includes a movement that publicly dissed the Morris athletic director (actually "activities director") in the late 1980s. A document was formally presented to the Morris school board. It was called a "statement of concern" although the AD's friends and supporters called it a "petition" because that word suggested something petty.
It's fine if you wanted to consider that document "petty." That's your opinion. A great many Morris people had signed it. It was easy to interpret the document as being skeptical of the person's basic qualities because it asserted "the athletic director should be a positive and enthusiastic person." A jab at the person's character? Well yes, it would seem.
People on the other side of the fence from the "statement of concern" reportedly alleged factual misstatements in the document. If such alleged misstatements could be argued formally, there you have a mix that could cause a legal action to be taken, right?
Of course I think all this is preposterous. Surely the incidents in Morris and Hancock were unpleasant. So, what am I concluding? Really, that leaders in sports programs are in fact "public figures," yes on a micro level but that's the world in which we live in Morris MN. The public often swarms to high school sports events. I worked around sports parents in my years with the Morris newspaper, could write a book about the petty concerns and gossip. This is simply part of the human condition.
Former columnist Doug Grow of the Strib described sports as "the toy department." Within newspapers that is.
Nothing in our democracy is at stake with how kids' sports programs are managed. Coaches and athletic directors work "in the arena." Surely they know this reality when they enter the field.
MN Supreme Court vs. Johnson
When the Minnesota Supreme Court is in the news, most likely it's because there is something contentious or questionable. Or at least embarrassing? In the case of Dean Johnson, it all seemed rather amusing in the end. The court may have been caught with their pants down. Maybe a justice did say something in a private conversation that wasn't according to Hoyle.
When the court came forward with a very rare public statement, saying in effect that Johnson was full of bullcrap, it was strange. Why? I would argue that when a party is innocent, the inclination is to just say nothing. Let other parties flail away. When the dust cleared I was inclined to believe Johnson's version, not that I thought it was a hugely big deal.
The suggestion was that the court was "tipping its hand" on how a ruling would likely be made, a faux pas which I guess in legal circles should cause the transgressors to be struck by lightning. However, I could trust the supreme court to ultimately rule in a proper manner.
Johnson would later claim, as I recall, he "had witnesses."
I'm sure the court means no harm in its current judgment to allow coaches to sue parents/fans for defamation. But did they really pause in a sober way to peel through the various levels of this decision, its total ramifications? "Salacious rumors" might have helped put the Hancock coach in prison. Sometimes there is more to these things than meets the eye.
Don't be like Roy Firestone, whose claim to fame as entertainer, I'll remind you, was his impression of Keith Jackson. I remember Arsenio Hall practically falling off the couch with laughter at this.
I hope Alan Page is continuing to do OK, not showing signs of CTE.
We cannot strip away the Hancock coach's wrongdoing as we remember him, but wasn't it something how his teams could fill the UMM P.E. Center, to the tune of something like 2000 fans? Wasn't it rather a phenomenon? I remember standing along the concourse with Skip Sherstad and we noted how committed the small schools were to such activities. Our museum could do an exhibit. Hancock principal Roger Clarke's son would play the electric guitar as the Owl mascot dashed to center court to lead a cheer.
Addendum: I remember after the whole Hancock coach thing had blown over, I was talking with a Morris main street businessperson about this, someone with ties to Hancock. I asked why things took so long to reach a head. The answer: "He won." And to think I once helped to feed the sports monster with my media work. Oh, the new Morris paper is out today! Free copies were available at the entry to DeToy's. Yes, free, unless that was a mistake. I was told I could take one. The pages are bigger. I notice some of the Alexandria ad circular stuff is still in there. The content looks encouraging although we're just at the start of this transition to new ownership. I would suggest it will still be an uphill battle, due to the forces that continue to work against the print media. It is great to see the Morris paper published at Quinco Press in Lowry again. It's sad to think that Forum Communications never behaved like they had their heart in being here. I tried giving them the benefit of the doubt. Foolish me.
Addendum #2: Just got a look at today's Strib and saw item about how High School League is facing financial issues. So here's an alert: Be aware that the MSHSL will pull any and all strings to extract money from you. They'll grab you by the ankles and hold you upside down, I guess. I didn't know the state cross country meet was free to watch. And yet we're expected to pay to see a junior high band concert. BTW I have heard about an alleged "trick" some people use to get into those concerts free: they'll present a $100 bill, and of course the school doesn't want to deal with change, so the easiest course is to just wave the people in. Oh, I would never get in like that, not that I have a drawerful of $100 bills. Concerts were free when I was school-age. One factor in rising costs: concussion insurance. Well, I guess we can deduce a pretty logical suggestion from that: no more football. My parents were so incredibly wise - they said don't even consider football.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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