In my experience, sports tend to bring out the inner jerk in many people. Is it the competition? The adrenaline? The drive to be the best? The fact that referees can’t see or don’t call everything? The fact that some coaches never bench faster-skating jerks for stripping the puck off fellow teammates? Whatever the reason, stories about jerks in sport could fill a whole shelf of books. If we include professional athletes, a whole library. And we’d have to come up with a new, expanded scale.
For this project, I only observed junior high school sports. Surprisingly, even where the stakes are really low, you can still manage to find some complete jerks.
Do I have to be all sensitive-supportive and mention that for every jerk there’s a really great teammate/coach/fan that has a heart of gold and gives 110 percent for the team and blah, blah, blah? Obviously. If only jerks played sports, nobody else would play with them, and it’d be an all-jerks league. Sports are fun, and lots of nice non-jerks play them. But the purpose of this whole project is to seek out and analyze the bad behavior (see title of science project), so we’ll focus on the jerks.
A) Players
1) Opposing Team Members
Most of the time, it’s fun to imagine the other team as a bunch of jerks. It helps stir up the wanting-to-beat-them feeling. It’s what any decent rivalry is based on. Sometimes, however, the other team really is a bunch of jerks. Take the Violet Mahoney Junior Boys basketball team in our school’s league (the Vile Baloneys, as we have cleverly nicknamed them). While my school team wanders out to warm up in mismatched shorts and ancient jerseys that reach down to our knees, the Baloneys make even warm-up a performance. They explode into the gym with blaring music and slide straight into a very slick and complicated passing drill. They all wear new school sweat suits with their names on the back. Their uniforms fit them, and they all have expensive basketball shoes. They wear matching socks. Some of them wear shooting sleeves and LeBron headbands. We heave up random shots, try to minimize our enormous armholes and fight that sinking, intimidated feeling. We despise them.
I’m not just being mean. They don’t only look like jerks. They really are jerks to play against. First—and this is what sucks the most—they’re really good. They beat us 107-16 last game. But I mean, come on! Right there, running up the score against a lousy team is a jerkish thing to do. It’s just rubbing it in. These guys were pressing and raining in three-pointers when they were up by seventy points. Second, their coach is a jerk. He screams a lot and argues every call, and the team just follows his jerkish lead. Third, it’s not just that the Baloneys are a jerk team as a whole. Each guy on the team is an individual jerk. They shove you when the ref isn’t looking, pull on your jersey, throw out a knee when they’re setting a screen and are generally cheap-shot artists. Especially number five, who usually guards me and who likes to throw an elbow. Just saying.
2) Teammates
Usually, your teammates are your friends. You work together, celebrate victories, overcome defeats, build team spirit, yadda yadda yadda. But sometimes even your own teammates can be total jerks. I’ve already given you the example from my hockey game, but there are lots of other examples.
Take our girls volleyball team. I went to their season-opener game in the interests of science. Mostly nice girls, and they seem to get along pretty well. Except for…one girl. I’ll call her X. She ruins everything for that team. X is, predictably, a jerk to the other team, firing the ball at their legs under the net when they’ve won the point and get to serve again, clapping when they screw up and refusing to shake hands with them. Usual jerk stuff. But she’s also a huge jerk to her own team. The big eye roll or a loud “C’mon!” when a teammate plows a serve into the net, the shoving teammates out of the way to slam the ball over the net, the mean, hissed whispers…Yep, X is pretty much a textbook jerk. The coach, happily a non-jerk, didn’t put up with her for long and benched her. She sat out the last game of the match at the far end of the bench, many empty seats away from the other players. Just a tip—that’s usually the jerk zone.
B) Coaches
Okay, so I’m probably going to get in trouble on this one. But in the pursuit of scientific truth, I have to include a section on whether coaches can be jerks.
Now, adults don’t generally like to criticize coaches, who are often teachers or parents who give up their weekends and evenings to hold practices and attend games and tournaments. My parents are always reminding me that coaches take time away from their own families and friends and are generally very badly paid. Actually, as I understand it, coaches at my level don’t get any money for coaching. Which makes it really amazing that they show up at all, to be honest.
So most people like my parents are just very, very—almost tearfully—grateful that they don’t have to be the one showing up for the six am hockey practice or playing keep-away basketball with a gym full of hyper five-year-olds. Yes, coaches deserve a lot of praise for what they do. But I’ve strayed here from the focus of this project. The question is, can coaches be jerks?
I have personally never had a coach who was a jerk. There was an assistant coach on my hockey team (let’s be honest—he was a dad who wanted the coachlike authority but none of the pressure) when I was eight who would push us onto the ice during line changes, so that we’d go sprawling on our skinny eight-year-old legs. He claimed it was just to “start us off.” He was an idiot (but probably only a 3 or 4 on the scale), but otherwise, I’ve been pretty lucky.
My brother Joe? Not so lucky. He had a soccer coach a couple of summers ago who was unbelievable. I’m talking off the Jerk-O-Meter, ranting, cheating, hypercompetitive lunatic jerk. Coaching six-year-olds! Here’s a tip. If a coach ever SCREAMS at a six-year-old, he’s a complete jerk. This guy would scribble out complicated “plays” on clipboards and then yell at the team to “run the offense! RUN. THE. OFFENSE!” Sir, you have only two players willing to even get on the field, because the others have either quit, are crying or are hiding behind their parents’ legs.
Incidentally, this coach’s daughter was a total cheater too, once scoring a goal by throwing the ball into the opposing net while the ref wasn’t looking. The coach saw it, but whooped and hand-slapped as if it was a genuine, non-cheater goal. Which raises once again the important scientific question of whether jerkishness is a trait passed down from parent to child, from generation to generation. (See Chapter 6.) Anyway, long story short, the team folded and the league had to call in counselors mid-season. Joe hasn’t touched a soccer ball since.
C) Fans
Whether they are friends or family members, fans are a huge part of any game. That’s why playing at home gives a team a 27 percent increased chance of winning. Twenty-seven percent! Okay, I made up that percentage, but I’m sure it’s somewhere around that. Ever hear of home-field advantage? It’s not actually the field that’s the advantage. I used to think that too. Turns out it’s mostly the fans.
Speaking from a junior high sports perspective, most of our fans are parents who clap politely and yell “good try” even when it wasn’t. Sometimes groups of friends come out and act stupid, but in a fun way. Sometimes things turn ugly. And here we have to talk about Mrs. Malinowski. I can use her real name because the Malinowskis moved away last year. Far, far away.
CASE STUDY #5
The Fan Who Cost Us the Game
Subject: Mrs. Malinowski, Stuart’s mom
Laboratory: Our school gym, our final basketball game last season (this case study is from memory, but it was a very, very memorable game)
Experiment: Despite Stuart Malinowski’s hiding the fact that he made the junior basketball team and deliberately shredding all paperwork about game times and tournament schedules, his mom somehow managed to show up for everything. She seemed like a normal mom if you saw her driving their van or chatting with a teacher, but man, get her in a gym or an arena and she was a complete monster. I knew this from early hockey days when she would bang her feet on the bleachers so loudly that you could feel
the vibrations through your skates on the ice. Also, she used an air horn, which didn’t do anything other than make kids on both teams startle, skitter and fall. Anyway, this case study details (again, from memory, which might be seen by some people as impressive) an episode from our final game of the season. Our record to this point was 0-12. This was our big chance, and we were desperate to end the season with a win in front of our own few loyal and long-suffering fans.
Observations: We’re playing the second-worst team in the league, and the game is tied 46-46. There are eight seconds on the clock, and everyone is very tense as we come out of a time-out—everyone including Mrs. Malinowski, who has been growling and yelling at the ref the whole game and annoying and embarrassing everyone around her so that she is sitting alone in a little empty clearing on the bleachers. The other, normal parents end up sitting in another area of the gym in order to lower their blood pressure and watch the game in peace. So our team inbounds the ball, a guy on the other team tries to steal it, and things explode.
MRS. MALINOWSKI (screaming). FOUL!!! YOU COMPLETE MORON! ARE YOU ACTUALLY A REFEREE? WHEN ARE YOU EVER GOING TO CALL SOMETHING?
REF (quietly, looking grim and obviously at the end of his patience). Coach, control your fans.
(Coach looks uneasily at the bleachers and wipes a hand across his face. He too has been rattled by Mrs.Malinowski’s game-long screaming. He clears his throat.)
COACH. Okay, everyone calm down.
(As though all the fans are part of the problem. This is a classic, nonconfrontational way of dealing with jerks.)
MRS. MALINOWSKI (quieter). I’ll calm down when this joker learns how to use his whistle…
(The other team gets to inbound the ball now, with six seconds left. As they approach our basket, Stuart Malinowski, who’s tall but hopeless, sort of swipes at the ball, gets his giraffe legs all tangled and crumples.)
MRS. MALINOWSKI (on her feet). OFFENSIVE FOUL! OFFENSIVE FOUL! DO YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO SEE BLOOD BEFORE YOU’LL BLOW THAT WHISTLE??
REF (turning immediately to our coach). Technical foul, blue team. And that fan is out of the gym. Now.
Yes, we get a foul as a team because one player’s parent is a jerk. How fair is that? Their team gets their best shooter to take the foul shot, and despite Mrs. Malinowski yelling “MISS, MISS, MISS!” over her shoulder as another parent pulls her out of the gym, he makes the shot. We lose the game. Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Malinowski.
Conclusions: Obviously, fans can be jerks who ruin the fun of a game and can even lose a game for you.
Poor Stuart stammered out an apology to the whole team, but nobody blamed him. He couldn’t do anything about his mom. He was a good guy. He couldn’t help it that his mom was a complete jerk. And you can’t judge a kid by his jerk parents. (See Chapter 6.)
D) Referees As the last case study
As the last case study demonstrates, being a referee is not always an enjoyable job. In fact, I don’t know why anybody becomes a ref. Everybody complains about the ref and how the game was reffed. The losing team blames its lousy game on the refs. You get screamed at by people like Mrs. Malinowski. It just seems like a ton of stress, even though, unlike coaches, refs get paid.
Most refs seem to deal quite well with being disliked and treated with suspicion. These are the refs who try to call games fairly, according to the rules, and who manage to keep a cone of ref dignity around them. A player comes at you to complain? The good refs look away and put up their hand, like “talk to my hand, you whiner.” A coach screams at you from the bench? Dignified ref calmly makes a hand signal to throw him out of the game. Refs are big on the hand signals. So instead of roaring, “Hey! Jerk coach! Shut up! You’ve been screaming all game long and I’ve had it!” the ref just calmly makes a T sign, one hand on top of the other. Problem solved. Calmness, fairness, consistency and cool, secret hand signals. That’s reffing.
But every once in a while you come across a ref who hasn’t read the same manual as the others. One of our basketball refs this year clearly didn’t understand the ref code. And he seemed to be having a really bad day—or else his hair-trigger temper was just normal for him.
So here’s a sample of how the game went (it’s not a big enough deal to turn it into a scientific case study).
REF. Out of bounds! Yellow ball!
ONE OF OUR FANS (calling out normally, not aggressively). What? He wasn’t out of bounds!
REF (turning menacingly to the crowd, his face red). WHO SAID THAT? WHO? ARE YOU KIDDING??? HIS FOOT WAS RIGHT ON THE LINE!
(The game continues uneasily.)
REF. FOUL, number eight! Push!
(We all look around, confused, because number eight is me, and I’m alone on the other side of the key from the action, in my avoid-the-action spot. Did he mean number eighteen? Twenty-eight?)
ME. Um, sir, I think there’s been a mistake. I was way over there on the other side of the key…
REF. NO BACK CHAT, NUMBER EIGHT, OR I’LL THROW YOU OUT OF THE GAME!
We played very quiet, don’t-upset-the-ref basketball that game.
CHAPTER 8
Jerks in a Crisis
Crisis situations—like fires, accidents and medical emergencies—are those rare events that happen quickly and demand lightning-fast responses. These situations cause teachers and principals to totally freak out and make parents even more anxious and worried than they usually are. Those same events exhilarate junior high students, liven up boring day-to-day routines, spark way more interesting texting and often lead to classes getting canceled.
Scientifically speaking, crisis situations provide the most pure setting in which to observe human behavior, as the combination of stress, fear and action tends to turn some people into running, screaming, wild-eyed animals. These are the situations in which heroes step up. They are also the situations in which jerks are revealed.
Amazingly, even though crisis situations are very rare—months and even years can go by without one—there are two video case studies in this section. Two! They both happened in the same week, and before anyone gets any ideas, I didn’t cause either of them. Both of these events were unplanned, obviously. Our teacher knew there would be a fire drill sometime that day, and she gave Spin, my research assistant, a heads-up so that he could have his camera ready when the alarm went off. But in the second case study, it was cool-headed, scientific, quick thinking that enabled the episode to be captured on camera.
CASE STUDY #6
The Fire-Drill Drama
Subjects: The students in 8E
Laboratory: Their classroom
Experiment: This case study examines a grade-eight class’s response to a routine fire drill. We’ve been practicing what to do in the event of a fire since kindergarten—that’s every year for nine long years. Everyone knows the drill by now—single file, walk quickly but no running, last person shuts the door, gather on the lawn to get counted, joke around excitedly until they turn off that deafening alarm. You might think fire drills have become so routine and automatic that they aren’t really even technically crisis situations anymore. Wrong. This case study shows how a jerk exploits the opportunity of a routine fire drill to create a crisis for his own jerkish purposes.
My friend Spin volunteered to help research this topic because:
1) the “Can Animals Be Jerks?” topic (his first choice) was already done;
2) he has a new cell phone with a good video cam (we call it the Spin-cam);
3) we have a nice teacher, who agreed, in the interests of science, to let Spin film the fire drill.
Even though it was incredibly time-consuming, I have typed out everything that happens in these short video segments, because meticulous, accurate documentation of detail is so very important to any scientific study. And also because Spin can’t figure out how to download the videos so I can provide a link instead of writing it all out.
Observations: (Spin’s head appears. He is apparently in the boys’ locker room.)
&
nbsp; SPIN. Finally found a quiet spot to practice using the Spin-cam…seems to be working. (Useless shot panning across some chipped, dented lockers.) Okay, operational. (Back to Spin’s head.) Well, Luke Spinelli here. I just thought since I wouldn’t get a chance to do a formal intro to this case study, I’d say a few words now. Our teacher knows that I’m helping J.J. do research on crisis situations, and, sadly, this fire drill appears to be the closest we’re getting to a real crisis. A fire drill is sort of a fake crisis, but you never know—there might be some excitement. In grade five, Dwayne Hepner freaked out all the teachers by going missing during the drill. They eventually found him wolfing down desserts from other kids’ lunches. Anyway, here’s hoping this drill is, uh (looks down at words written on his hand), illuminating and highly groundbreaking, scientifically speaking. Is that right, J.J.?
ME. Shut up, Spin, and get to the video.
(The video stops, then pops to life again, showing Mrs. Driscoll at the front of Spin’s class.)
MRS. DRISCOLL. So, class, I think we’re done with the analysis of this nov—
ALARM. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAA!
(You have to imagine that this goes on for the entire video. Why are all these case studies so loud?)
SPIN (with Spin-cam focused uselessly on the intercom). Here we go! Man, that’s loud…I can feel it in my chest!
(The camera scans the class. Everyone is standing up, scrambling to grab their cell phones and iPods even though nine years of drills have told them to leave everything behind. They start to shuffle over to the door. Contrary to training, they are moving neither quickly nor in an orderly fashion.)
On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk Page 4
