The e-mail linked above got Michael Kinahan, a girl's soccer coach, forced out of his job as a hard-nosed coach of a team he dubbed "Green Death", before the season began. Key text from the e-mail below:
The kids will run, they will fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it’s good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding). If the refs can’t handle a little criticism, then they should turn in their whistle. The sooner they figure out how to make a decision and live with the consequences the better. My heckling of the refs is actually helping them develop as people. The political correctness police are not welcome on my sidelines. America’s youth is becoming fat, lazy and non-competitive because competition is viewed as “bad”. I argue that competition is good and is important to the evolution of our species and our survival in what has become an increasingly competitive global economy and dangerous world. Second place trophies are nothing to be proud of as they serve only as a reminder that you missed your goal; their only useful purpose is as an inspiration to do that next set of reps. Do you go to a job interview and not care about winning? Don’t animals eat what they kill (and yes, someone actually kills the meat we eat too – it isn’t grown in plastic wrap)? And speaking of meat, I expect that the ladies be put on a diet of fish, undercooked red meat and lots of veggies. No junk food. Protein shakes are encouraged, and while blood doping and HGH use is frowned upon, there is no testing policy. And at the risk of stating the obvious, blue slushies are for winners.
These are my views and not necessarily the views of the league (but they should be). I recognize that my school of thought may be an ideological shift from conventional norms. But it is imperative that we all fight the good fight, get involved now and resist the urge to become sweat-xedo-wearing yuppies who sit on the sidelines in their LL Bean chairs sipping mocha-latte-half-caf-chinos while discussing reality TV and home decorating with other feeble-minded folks. I want to hear cheering, I want to hear encouragement, I want to get the team pumped up at each and every game and know they are playing for something.
I think a) he took it too far without any sort of wink/nudge and b) the sort of soft, comfort-zone driven mentality that led to the hearty backlash is one of the reasons why the United States gets their asses kicked at World Cup soccer every four years.
(No, I’m not counting the fledgling women’s world cup because the U.S. is the only country whose nation’s girls and women seriously participate in the sport en masse, and therefore own a massive advantage. The WWC is a glorified exhibition designed to put the U.S. women over and will be for at least the next 20 years.)
Also, the guy may have helped his case with a few extra paragraph breaks. Holy manifesto, Batman.
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