Sports officials being penalised for good behaviour: Sometimes kind deeds invite trouble
Sports related charity is a well known fact, a lot of players, coaches and officials do a lot of good for charity. Exhibition matches are held for various charitable reasons and people in sports regularly donate money and time to help out those less fortunate
than themselves. Recently two interesting and slightly strange stories emerged from the US; one regarding officials who were reprimanded for a good deed and another where a coach was suspended also for a good deed. Hopefully in the future people will plan
their good deeds in advance and let everyone involved know about them, so they do not get penalized for their kind efforts.
The first story comes to us from a high school in Washington in America. It seems officials who were overseeing a game there got caught out for a charitable act they were doing. Firstly the officials had decided to donate their weekly paycheques to support
breast cancer patients and also they decided to use pink whistles for the entire game. The referees being a part of the Pacific Northwest Football Officials Association were informed after the game, in which they used the pink whistles that they were going
to be reprimanded for doing so. They could now face a two game suspension because of using the whistles. The reason given by the association was that whistles are part of the official uniform of the referees and they could only use black ones.
Now this story is interesting for a few reasons. Firstly the association was making the point that they were not informed about the change in whistle colour prior to their use in the game. They said that it would set a bad example for the students if the
referees were seen as being able to do anything they wanted. The referees, on the other hand, stated that nowhere in the official rule book did it say anything about the need to use specifically black whistles. Does this issue really make a difference for
the association, the officials were trying to do something good and should they really be penalised for it. They donated their paycheques already and now they were poised to lose a further two salary cheques because of being suspended. The positive thing about
this is that because of the controversy, the good message behind the use of the whistles has spread a lot further than the referees could have ever hoped it would.
The second interesting charity story gone haywire comes to us from another high school, this time in Florida. The story relates to the head coach of the football team at St. Cloud High School who let a homeless student stay over at his house. Apparently
this was against the rules of the Florida High School Athletic Association which states that under no circumstances can school employees or representatives of a school’s athletic programme offer free or reduced cost housing to a student on their athletic programme.
Even though the rule was put in place in the best interests of the schools in the state it still might have gone overboard in this instance.
The coach in question, Bill Buldini, did not offer the student a place in his home because he thought that he would help the team win or he would score a lot of touchdowns. The coach was genuinely concerned for the young man’s well being and put him up in
his house as a temporary measure. The association stated that it was the State’s duty to provide housing and welfare for its people and not the duty of coaches of school athletic programmes.
Again this issue, like the one mentioned above it, seems to have been blown way out of proportion. Yes, admittedly the coach went against the rules in this regard as did the referees with their pink whistles but the rules may be relaxed in light of extenuating
circumstances. The rules fail to serve their intended purpose and help those in the most need if they cannot be slightly flexible in extreme or exceptional cases. The rules should really be relaxed if the circumstances are meant to do something good in the
world or they are acts of kindness. Sports associations might be better off gauging each case on an individual basis without laying down a blanket rule and then punishing all offenders no matter what their reasons.
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