All-area team complaints: How do you respond?

Our honorable mention list includes anyone nominated by his or her coach.

If you're talking about a track and field performance list, include the No. 1 mark from your coverage area in each event from the state meet -- or if you cover one county, maybe the county meet if that's different. But for us, that's separate from honorable mention and the extended list (which is kept private from readers) is the basis for choosing our first and second teams.

We publish a similar performance list with our all-area swim teams.

 

In golf and track, the numbers are pretty much the story. Why rely on the coach to nominate (assuming you have the data)?

 

Yes, performance lists.

We have schools across multiple classes at my shop, and in golf we have schools across two sections in one of the classes.

 

Put out our all-area football team over the weekend. The way we do it is have a player of the year, then fill out the team. It's a chance to recognize one more kid. Because the POY was a QB, we needed another to take his spot.

Dickhead assistant coach from POY's school argues that POY should also be the QB on the team, that it's just a "participation trophy" for the alternate QB, who likely would have been POY in any other year.

I kind of know the coach. His dad owns a big restaurant in town and had two sons very involved in sports. Legend has it that, before I got here, dad wrote an eight-page letter detailing why his son should have been the POY one year. So the apple didn't fall far.

It took everything in my power not to go back, find out what year he made second-team all-state, which would have been pretty simple, and asked if he liked getting his "participation trophy."

 

If your response was anything other than, "Why do you give the first shit?" then you should feel shame.

 

Because this school is your typical affluent douchebag school that never gets enough credit.

 

Personal opinion: if you only have one player per position, you need to recognize only one player per position. Your stance also opens up possibility for family of alternate RB or WR to complain about why you made an exception for the QB position but not other positions.

As for second-team all-state, clearly there are two teams and not one team +1 like you made your team.

 

If the POY was a running back, we'd add another running back. Like a second team, it recognizes others who weren't the best at that position. In our case, one player.

 

Next year when a RB wins POY, you'll get complaints from QB2's mommy that you dropped a QB spot from last year and that it was personal yadda yadda yadda

 

We had a dad write a pretty heated email one year over his son's omission from our All-Area football team where he called us, among other things, a "bunch of fat mongoloid shit dicks" who "wouldn't know football if it hit you in the pussy" and "probably played with dolls growing up and like men". (For the record, dad's little angel was the third-leading rusher on a team that went 1-9.

Our assistant sports editor shot him an email back inviting him to come say it to our faces if he felt that strongly, not thinking anything of it. Big mistake. Dad showed up at our offices the next night at around 11:30, car was still running with his kids inside and he kept ringing the bell and trying to open the double doors. Kept screaming, "tell my fucking son!" Our ASE shoved open the doors, knocking dad to the sidewalk, mounted on top of him and threw about 6-7 punches square on the nose before we broke up the fight. Dad lay there like a slug, bleeding all over the front of his shirt. Also reeked of booze. The poor kid was mortified, I think he ended up driving dad home.

Every couple of months we get an expletive-laced call from an unknown number who sounds like the dad drunk as hell.

 

Who holds their all-area football team until mid-January?

 

People whose state holds championships right before Christmas?