Last weekend at a youth football game a referee was attacked by both players and coaches after a disputed call. The referee had water bottles thrown at him, and eventually a player in full gear except for his helmet ran at the referee at full speed and tackled him to the ground. While on the ground, the man was kicked at by coaches and what looks to be family members.

Where has the common courtesy and respect for authority gone in this country? This is just wrong for a multitude of reasons, and if charges are not brought against the coaches and other attackers it will then be a huge mistake and a miscarriage of justice. Will we have to station police at youth sporting events as a result?

Sarasota Assault

This is America. America is about winning at any cost. What's sportsmanship got to do with anything?

(sarcasm implied)

Sg

I'd say amongst some of us, yes...and leave it at that.

he probably asked for it by the way he was dressed

Florida is not part of America.

Update:

Three coaches and one player are being charged with felonies. In Florida it is a Felony to attack a sporting event official.

Also, the team has been kicked out of the league due to a zero tolerance policy against this sort of thing.

Hopefully some, if not all of the kids will be absorbed into other teams, where maybe there will be much better role models for them to learn from.

When I was in little league baseball we had a young 21 year old coach and most of the other coaches whom were all older didn't like our coach because they thought he was a wise assed, long haired hippy and because we would win the championship every year. One season a rival coaches grown twenty something year old son would hang around our practices bantering with our coach. Finally he didn't like what he heard and tried to run off with a bag of our gear. Our coach yelled at us to "sick him" and we did. This must have been surreal to watch as our entire team ran this big dude down, took him to the ground and started kicking the crap out of him. Afterwards our coach couldn't stop laughing but kept saying he probably wouldn't be coaching anymore. We never heard anything more about it and went on to win another championship.

I was going to say something about how this sort of thing is perfectly normal and generally accepted in Florida, but I think you said it better.

It's too bad the "good" players suffer the punishment as well.

"Da ref blowded the whistle too soon."

Damn..it seems like once the white guy does anything to protect himself....it was game on for the whole entire tribe to kick his ass. I wouldn't live there for $100,000 a year. Or try reffin one of their games for $500.

Comes from a guy that used to ref basketball in a prison. I seen it many times before.