Coach who ran illegal play is 'unfit to teach high school in any capacity'

Editor:

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In Billy Byler's Nov 11 column, he described Lakeside High coach Jody Grooms as a model citizen and a high-class person who made a mistake by using an illegal "trick play" in a high school football game. This obviously was not a heat-of-the-moment thing, so let's consider what actually happened.

Grooms designed an illegal play to defeat a group of other people's kids in a high school football game. In order to do this he had to instruct and gain the participation of his players to perform a series of illegal and unethical actions in order to take advantage of the other school.

By the way: These other kids had practiced and worked all year to develop their skills as players, so they could successfully represent their high school team.

I cannot imagine what could be going on in the mind of any person who would concoct such a scheme to take advantage of a bunch of kids from another school for the purposes of securing a victory on a football field. Whatever that is, they have no business influencing kids to help them pull off an illegal and unethical victory.

What if this play had worked and Lakeside had ultimately won the game? Then the film surfaces and we have a Georgia high school football crisis with state wide implications as well as all the ethical issues we are currently dealing with.

Grooms is unfit to teach high school in any capacity. Perhaps he should take his talents to the NFL where his juvenile ideas would also fail, but at least he would be attempting to take advantage of professionals rather than high school kids.

Jim Fulton, Martinez