Tell me this story isn't true. Please.
A former NFL tight-end, now Pee Wee football coach, beat a father who came to pick up his son after practice, and put him in the hospital.
That's Jeremy Brigham, pictured right, with John Madden, and solo below. Brigham was a tight-end for the Oakland Raiders from 1998 to 2002. Now he's a coach for a Pee Wee Football team of 10 and 11-year-olds in Pleasanton, Ca.
SUCH WONDERFUL ADULT ROLE MODELS
The last time I wrote an Ethic Soup post about an altercation between the coach of a kids' team and a dad, it was the dad who sucker-punched the coach. That's when I added a page on Sports Parents' Code of Ethics and a page on Little League Parents' Pledge.
But this time, it's the other way around.
Brigham sent a dad to the hospital after beating on him. Yes, this ex-pro football player, who is 6-6 and whose playing weight was 255 pounds, was unhappy with Scott Haggerty, a father and formerly assistant coach of his son's Pee Wee team. By the way, Brigham is 34 years old, while Haggerty (pictured left), a greying Alameda County Supervisor looks anywhere from 20 to 30 years older. They look as if they could be father and son.
According to San Francisco Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross, the Brigham's pee wee Cowboys team walloped their opponent, 38-0 last weekend.
At a coaches meeting the following day, the losing coach walked up to Brigham and joked, "Haggerty gave me all your plays."
IT WASN'T LITERAL, YAHOO
Of course, were that true the score would have been turned around. But still, Brigham took this comment literally, or perhaps it just provided him with an excuse to plow into Haggerty. Which he did, the next day when Haggerty showed up at the football field to pick up his kid from practice.
"The next thing he knew," Matier & Ross report Haggerty saying, "Brigham had knocked his BlackBerry from his hand and was pulling him over a 4-foot-fence as he punched him on the back of the head."
In one of those stranger-than-fiction incidents, in the Cowboys' next game, Haggerty's son suffered a serious neck injury and had to be airlifted to a hospital. Now, both he and his son are wearing neck braces. Apparently, Brigham was suspended for one game.
OAKLAND RAIDERS' LEGACY
Why does this sound so familiar? Brigham sounds a lot like the Oakland Raiders Coach Tom Cable (pictured left), a big man who hits people who are much smaller than him -- fracturing the jaw of his assistant coach Randy Hanson and hitting his ex-wives and recent ex-girl friend.. The women's separate interviews with ESPN were aired Sunday in which they said Cable physically abused them during their relationships with him.
VIOLENCE IS OKAY, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN ?
But Cable has yet to be punished -- not by the Napa district attorney who refused to charge Cable with a crime for Hanson's injury, not by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis, not by the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The similarity of off-the-field violent behavior that sends their victims to the hospital by Cable and Brigham suggests a legacy of violence for both the NFL and particularly the Oakland Raiders.
KIDS WATCH TV & SIGNS OF APPROVAL
Mothers (and hopefully fathers) don't let your children grow up to be violent men because they watch the pros on TV. You know their hero worship of athletes influences their own behavior. You know it and you have to step in and do something yourselves! You surely can't trust the NFL to do anything.
WHY IS THERE SILENCE?
And the other pro players? Have you noticed how not one has stepped up to say they think this violent off-the-field behavior is wrong? Nope, not a one. Their silence suggests approval.
TO READ "COACHES' CODE OF ETHICS -- National Youth Sports Coaches Assn" CLICK HERE.
by Sharon McEachern
While it might seem that somebody punched somebody else in this altercation, the truth is that no one was actually hurt, although Supervisor Haggerty was seen wearing a neck brace, presumably to win sympathy after starting the altercation. It's easy to pick sides, but please interview the witnesses before attempting to harm the head coach of the pee wee football league, who is utterly blameless, and was baited by the county supervisor, who was fired for verbally abusing the youngsters.
Posted by: rrrustee | November 19, 2009 at 09:44 AM
Glad you commented rrrustee. Whenever there is a fight, seldom is anyone "utterly blameless," as you claim for Jeremy Brigham. How do you know all this inside information, you claim as fact? And just because someone wears a neck brace does not mean they are NOT hurt and faking it -- lots of folks wearing the device really are injured. If you have proof that my facts are wrong, please show it.
Posted by: Sharon McEachern | November 19, 2009 at 11:06 AM