When colleague Rick McGowan sent me a couple of links - from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald - with stories about St. George's, which pulled out of its game against Independent School League rival Lawrence Academy, I didn't give much thought. Still, I asked Rick to call Dragons coach John Mackay to get his side of the story.
But I was surprised to see just how big of a deal it was - not only in New England, but internationally. After a quick Google search, I saw that the story was picked by by blogs in Arizona and even Canada.
Lawrence, which has demolished ISL competition with its postgraduate-laden team, has four players heading to Division I BCS schools next fall, and there was a safety concern on the part of Mackay and the people at St. George's.
Fair enough.
Apparently, though, that wasn't good enough for a lot of the morons with a computer. Some of the blog posts and reader comments were shocking, to say the least. Armchair quarterbacks, recounting their days on the gridiron (a la Al Bundy at Polk High) chimed with some ridiculous thinking.
Eric Ortiz, a blogger from NESN, writes, "Pop Warner, Knute Rockne and Vince Lombardi are rolling over in their graves. Bill Belichick just got so mad he threatened to reacquire Randy Moss and trade him again.
"Imagine if the 2001 New England Patriots had taken that attitude against the 'Greatest Show on Turf' Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. There never would have been a dynasty in Foxboro."
Can you believe this guy actually gets paid by NESN?
A writer from It's Always Sunny in Detroit says, "St. George's School (R.I.) decided to take their ball and go home instead of lining up to play Lawrence Academy (Mass.) on Monday. The St. George Girlymen were scared off by the size of the Lawrence Academy players."
From JockPost.com: "Rhode Island: not only are they the smallest state in the Union, they are also the biggest (expletive). I guess this is obvious given the size of their state, but I just realized it based on the size of their hearts.
"Friday, St. George’s in Rhode Island (which will run a cool $44k/year for a boarding student) cancelled their football game against Lawrence Academy (Mass.) due to fear of injury."
In the reader comments of this post (written as is; so much for grammar): "the school who cancelled should just close its entire athletic program. in fact, the athletic director and president and head coach of the football team should all kill themselves. so should every player and parent. and everyone that knows any of them. and people who owe them money. suicide is much more respectable than living with the shame."
What's a shame is that thoughts like this actually exist.
Apparently, St. George's isn't the only school to complain about the practices of Lawrence Academy football. I commend Mackay and the school for making this decision, which by and large, was frowned upon.
But it teaches the kids to quit when they face adversity, detractors will say. What does Lawrence Academy gain by smashing another ISL opponent? Want to talk about lessons? Why doesn't LA go find an opponent comparable in talent and play that team? Go out of league and play Everett, play Brockton or play a prep school with the same ideology, which is build a juggernaut of a program.
Student-athletes at St. George's have a lot to look forward to in life, and they can do so without the fear of being injured by a vastly superior football team.
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A week after that game was scheduled to be played, I'm still torn about the issue.
What most of these Internet clowns fail to grasp, or realize is that St. George's tried to get this game off the books long before the season started - last fall, in fact. It wasn't a snap decision after seeing how Lawrence dismantled its first couple opponents.
My initial reaction, similar to the thousands of idiotic proclamations on the Web, is that St. George's should have kept the game. After all, what's the worst that could happen? You get beat down for a half, and then, you'd hope, Lawrence calls off the dogs and puts in its J.V.
On the other hand, I've never played or coached football, so it's hard to judge exactly how much of a safety issue the game could be. Obviously football is inherently violent and comes with a constant risk of injury. But if Mackay thought a game against Lawrence increased that risk significantly, I'd have to take his word for it.
Regardless, the online backlash has been nothing short of absurd. As Scott alluded to, any moron with a computer can make public his or her opinion, no matter how uninformed or stupid. What's even sadder is that some of these morons (i.e. Ortiz on NESN) are paid to offer their stupid, uninformed opinions.
I have no problem with people opining that St. George's should have played the game. The manner in which some have made their opinions known, however, is utterly inappropriate.
Kind of makes me wish I could find these people and smack some sense into them.
That anonymity, of course, is why such blog posts and reader comments exist. No one would say such things to someone’s face.
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