The College Fix

You may have heard by now about the high school girls basketball coach in California who presided over a 161-2 victory against an opponent, “one of the most lopsided scores in state history.”

As a result, the coach — Michael Anderson — was suspended for two games. Anderson’s team had previously won a quartet of games “by at least seventy points.”

The coach claims he “wasn’t trying to embarrass anybody,” and that “the game just got away” from him.

Sports TV and radio shows were having a field day debating Anderson and his team’s actions. From what I saw and heard, most were against what he did, some even saying they’d punch him if their kid was on the other team.

Others, however, asked “what was the coach supposed to do with his obviously (very) superior team?”

I come down in the former’s camp.

I was fortunate enough to have coached an incredibly talented girls basketball several years ago. Our smallest margin of victory was twenty-five points, with the highest around forty. Mind you, this was over a three-year span, too.

Did we face some complaints from the other teams? Very rarely. And the reason why is simply basic common sense: Unlike this coach Anderson, we did not keep up a full-court press until we had an enormous lead, we stopped stealing the ball, stopped taking three-point shots, stopped initiating fast breaks, and in the fourth quarter we would cease shooting the ball period unless someone was completely alone under the basket.

Oh, and if our starting players weren’t all on the bench after at least the second quarter, only one of them would be on the floor mixed in with the reserves.

Any player who violated instructions (no fast breaks, no steals, etc.) was immediately taken out and possibly benched for the following game.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, this is called “sportsmanship.”

It seems this term is becoming more forgotten as time goes on. Parents are more involved than ever in their kids’ activities, which means they’re ever more vigilant about each little piece of minutiae of the activity or sport.

Perhaps this is why it’s hard to find decent coaches anymore, as any potential team skipper simply doesn’t want the hassle. As a result, coaches who end up getting hired are too much like Anderson — perhaps “a great X’s and O’s coach … [but] ethically? Not so much.”

Eight and a half years ago I wrote about this very “phenomenon” on my personal blog. See also this piece from five years ago.

Doing a one-eighty but still on the topic of shaming …

Dominique Etzel writing in the University of Washington’s The Daily wants us all … to stop music shaming.

Without hesitation, I pound the “next” button on my iPod the second the boy band shouts and the catchy melody picks up in “She Looks So Perfect” by 5 Seconds of Summer. I turn toward everyone with a nervous laugh and try to defend myself. It makes me cringe to say that a certain band is my “guilty pleasure,” yet I repeat myself every time. It is absurd that we should ever feel guilty about something that simply makes us happy.

I can’t count on one hand the amount of times somebody has told me I have the music taste of a 15-year-old girl. It is almost as if once you leave your teen years behind you aren’t allowed to appreciate the most-popular boy-band ballads or the occasional Justin Bieber throwback.

Too often I refuse to step out of the house in one of my three One Direction concert shirts for fear that people would roll their eyes and scoff in disapproval. I should not be ashamed to represent a band that brings me joy, and nobody should have to live in fear of getting criticized because of their taste in music.

Ms. Etzel goes on to note that “shutting down someone’s music taste could be more harmful than you think” because she quotes a neuroscientist who says that listening to your favorite tunes actually does your body good: “We are all entitled to our own music preference and we need to stop criticizing the things people love.”

Ah yes, the ‘ol “snowflake” response — don’t dare offend anyone. I guess I’ll have to cease mocking my spouse’s predilection for country tunes, then. Nah, because, after all, she 1) knows I do it all in fun, 2) doesn’t let it bother her, and 3) doesn’t care what my opinion is about her taste in music.

My closest buddies often ridicule my favorite band, an eclectic sextet from Venezuela, Los Amigos Invisibles. What do I care? I just mock them back because they can’t understand the lyrics!

Her name is Rio, natch.

I got (and get) grief because I actually like a lot of 80s icons Duran Duran’s music (I’m partial to heavy, funky bass lines and early Duran songs have a lot of them) due to, y’know, DD being a “girls’ band” being the group was made up of five pretty boys. But again, what do I care? Their songs helped me learn to play the bass guitar while in college.

I’m also jeered for my collection of Level 42 albums. “Who?” you may ask.  They had like two top ten hits here in the US in the mid-80s, but were mainly known as a funk-fusion band before going more “pop.”

Should I cease informing fans of rap that Earth, Wind and Fire (another favorite band of mine) are actually much more musically talented than, say, Kanye West? Does this actually … “negate” someone’s inclination for rap?

So, c’mon — is this so-called “music shaming” really a thing? If so, who actually allows scrutinization of their taste in music to make them feel guilty, nervous and/or upset?

With all due respect to Duke University, get over it.

Dave Huber is an assistant editor of  The College Fix. (@ColossusRhodey)

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IMAGES: Eric Langley/Flickr; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery/Flickr