I’ll be honest with you — I don’t envy high school football coaches.
I don’t envy anyone, actually, who makes it their profession to handle, nurture and even corral the emotions of large groups of teenagers these days.
I respect them. Boy, do I respect them. As a parent of an almost-13-year-old boy and a former youth pastor, I can relate to the ones who do it.
As the husband of a wife who works directly with those who help shape the educational experience, I empathize with them. As a senior pastor, I pray for them, and as a sportswriter, I admire them and look for the best and most positive ways to tell their stories and the stories of the young athletes they coach.
But as a straight up, regular old human being, I definitely don’t envy them. Not in the least. Because you who work with kids, coaching them, teaching them, disciplining them, you have an enormous and increasingly tough job.
I’ve been covering sports — mainly high school sports — in the south for about 15 years now. And I can say I’ve never seen a more “fight happy” generation of students than what I see now.
Now I’m not gonna be that old, fogey kinda guy who tries to pretend that “back in my day” none of these things happened.
They did. And with decent regularity. I remember certain schools back in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska not being permitted to play each other in sports like football or basketball — the sports that drew the biggest crowds — because of threats of violence. Sometimes it was gang violence spilling over from the streets into the places of competition.
Sometimes it was just kids who just plain didn’t like each other. But it happened. But now? Not only does it seem to happen more, but it happens in a way where, instead of trying to break it up, student — and sadly, some adults alike — are trying to encourage it and make it go viral.
The very first week of this school year in the Augusta area and this football season seems to have been a tone setter, but not in a good way.
From the Josey shooting to the Butler fight and the Burke County threats during Week 1, to the Cross Creek-Savannah tussle that prematurely ended their game and kept both schools off the field this Friday to even last night at the Evans-Grovetown game, it just feels like tempers and tensions have been at all-time highs.
After Friday night’s Evans-Grovetown game, during what I call the “sportsmanship line” when players and coaches shake hands after a game, something happened that caused a short-lived skirmish between a few players on either side. It was short-lived because the coaches and staffs for both teams quickly broke it up and got their teams as far away from each other as possible.
Then, as I walked out of the stadium back to my car, I witnessed another burst. This one looked like it was between two young ladies, while several adults were feverishly trying to pull them apart.
I heard an adult emphatically tell one of them, “Go home! Go home! Calm down and go home now!” I saw another somewhat older adult who was aiding in the separation doubled over in fatigue and what seemed like relief after diffusing the situation.
Relief, perhaps because the tiff got squashed just as a cacophony of teens who heard the sounds of a fight rushed over, cell phone cameras and social media livestreams on ready, so they could see it, record it and egg it on.
That’s what makes things now so different than it was just 20 years ago.
Back then, if there was a fight, it happened, it was over. You talked about it at home. Maybe it’s the topic of discussion among your circle of friends or when you get back to school on Monday, but then after a few days, it would die off.
Now, the lure of trying to catch everything on camera for posting on social media and the attraction of going viral makes these kinds of things more, well…attractive. The fact that parents now are seen publicly encouraging such action — whether in the live moment or via their crude comments on social media — makes the problem exponentially worse and all the more dangerous because that signals that some kids are probably not getting the level of accountability they need for their actions at home.
Not only that, but the fact that we are now incessantly fed footage of people’s viral fights — even at sports venues and contests — programs the minds of young, impressionable students to think that this is the way to show you’re tough, to prove your strength, to let people know that you’re no punk.
Problem is, it’s not. In fact, the overwhelming evidence suggests that being quick to fight it out does nothing but make a problem worse — both for kids involved and the ones trying to extinguish the proverbial fires.
For two weeks straight I’ve been grilled by school officials about my presence on the sideline as a sports reporter. Despite camera, cell phone and press pass on my person, I was given the third degree about my whereabouts.
Who are you? Why are you here? Who do you represent? Did you get any clearance to be on this sideline? Have you talked with the principal or athletic director in advance?
I’ll be honest — at first, it perturbed me a bit. As earlier stated, I’m no rookie at this. I’ve been covering high school sports in Georgia for almost two decades now. It used to be that as long as I had a proper press credential from my media outlet, and I was able to show that, I was good.
The only time things got more complicated was during high profile events like a star-studded showcase or GHSA state playoff or state championship games, where extra credentialing was required for sideline access.
But upon further review, I can’t even get upset about the extra caution.
In this social media age, everybody has a camera. And I do mean, everybody. Whether it’s a professional setup with the big boy lenses or your latest Android or iPhone device equipped with a camera that, if you know how to use it, can give a basic DSLR digital camera a run for its money, everyone has something to record the action. And lots of people nowadays try to pose themselves as working for some media outlet in order to simply be able to say they have sideline access to a game.
Back in the day, it was much easier to tell who was truly at work for a legit media outlet. Now, not so much.
As a result, it’s incumbent upon school officials now to be as prudent as possible in protecting their kids and coaches from opportunists looking to either egg on a terse situation, or at the least, be in position to record and spread it far and wide, often without providing helpful context for the situation — thus putting athletes, coaches and school staffs in danger of being misrepresented in a viral event.
Because once a thing goes viral, you can’t take it back. And even if someone seeks to correct an erroneous report, we all know that truth never travels as fast or as far as fiction.
I can see a day quickly approaching when that extra step of credentialing once reserved for only the highest of high profile games and events will now be required for access to two below average teams playing non-region contests that mean next to nothing beyond the moment itself.
And I can’t say I blame them. But it hurts everyone. Because not only does it make it harder for well-intended journalists and storytellers to do their job, it adds layers of duties to already overwhelmed and grossly underpaid coaching and school staffs/faculty. It also cheapens the experience for athletes who enjoy the exposure of having their best plays chronicled and shared online as they’re happening.
But, as much as I hate to say it, we’ve kind of created this monster ourselves. We’ve given cerebrally undeveloped kids free, 24-hour access to the kind of media we used to have to pay a pretty penny for once upon a time. They also have mechanisms at their fingertips that give them power to control narratives, no matter how incorrect or inaccurate those narratives may be.
Often, as journalists in this era, instead of providing you the details of a story firsthand, we’re scrambling to find ways to properly and more responsibly repackage a narrative that’s already been released by the hands of those who probably aren’t highly skilled at doing so. They’re just pointing their cameras at whatever looks like it could be juicy and throwing it out there for people all over the world to come to their own conclusions about what they see.
That’s dangerous. But it’s currently where we are. So even if it makes my job as a true journalist more difficult, I won’t be mad at whatever schools decide to do in the near future to better protect their kids and coaches from being the victim of a viral moment.
It’s sad that it’s come to this, but here we are. And again, those of you who work in these venues with our students, while I definitely don’t envy you, I’ll certainly be cooperative with you from my place as a journalist. I also be praying for you — beyond Sunday mornings.
Gabriel Stovall is the sports editor for The Augusta Press. He can be reached at gabriel@theaugustapress.com
