Inside City Hall
27 August, 2008

In the beginning was God and football. God is where my drug problem began. Mom drug us all to church every Sunday. Football was sort of like the air we breathed, it was there. If you had any size, or had an older brother who played in high school, you played football. I had no choice in the matter, so I played football.

Even though football was a tradition, it was not yet in the realm of the highest order. Coaches still had to teach a class or two and players were just normal kids who had to pass their grades like everyone else.

News of a football player in trouble was rare. Professional and even college football players were role models in those days. But the mystique and charm of Friday night lights eventually changed the world of high school football. Professional teams demanded bigger and faster college players. College coaches scouted for the Blue Chip players out of high school. High school coaches were then forced to follow a different game plan. Two-a-days turned into pro-like all day training camps where high school kids were expected to live and breathe football.

These boys could no longer be kids or regular students. They became demi-gods in cleats. Since they were no longer ordinary kids they could not be bothered with normal stuff like, homework, rules and manners. They were given a lot of freedom with no responsibility to go with it. K+F-R=trouble. No rocket science here, just common sense.

As a city judge I have seen the tragic results of this practice. Some of these boys were tutored to become good high school players without teaching them a thing about respect for others or how to act in the presence of others. When kids test third grade they act third grade, except on the football field: where they have the physiques of young men. (Third graders are apt to don a beach towel and pretend it is a super-heroe cape. Then he's ready to announce to everyone he sees: "I am a football hero. I played for Munday, we are state champs." ) *

When we take a child out of this environment who has never learned respect and responsibility and turn him loose in the world we can expect trouble. Our city policemen will back me up here, because these kids are their job security. These kids cannot handle time-on-their-hands (freedom), they don’t know what to do with all this time.

You’ve all heard of WWJD, right. Meaning no disrespect to the original “J” here, but for this column I want to change it to me: What Would Judge Do? Judge Roy Bean, that is. I often ask other judges what they do to handle these problems in their towns. I get answers that would surprise some of you: it takes tough love; send them all to jail; put them to work on a chain gang. It’s a cold, hard fact that most of these boys are now old enough to be tried as adults. For some of them this will mean some hard prison time for the stuff they have gotten into. In prison they won’t have to worry about having freedom to burn.

Judge Bean’s courtroom was his place of business as well as his home. He had no jail: so he fined, dismissed or turned thieves back over to the ones they stole from. If a horse thief still had the horse, he could give it back and Bean would dismiss the case. If he had sold the horse, the original owner could take him and hang him. Remember now, this was in a different time, and place. That area of Texas was known as the Badlands. Bean was known to have staked prisoners out in the hot desert sun for their fines. What would he do with these former high school foot heroes?

*This sentence added after publication. There is so much to say about this subject. I was shocked to hear that if a student tests third grade, then third grade work is all he needs to do for graduation. Someone please tell me that I heard wrong about this. Are our schools really this bad off?