Utah – A youth football halfback in Utah was headed for a touchdown this past Saturday that would have broken a tie in one of the last games of the season. At that moment, the opposing team’s volunteer coach allegedly stepped onto the field in Payson City, Utah, and struck the 13-year-old player down — leading to the coach’s arrest… Nathan Harris, the assistant coach for the Mapleton City’s football team, was thrown out of the game. Harris was arrested that following Monday by the Payson Police. The father of six now faces a second-degree felony child abuse… “From watching the video [of the game] several times and having other people, such as the county attorney, [watch], and putting together witness statements,” said Det. Sgt. Lance Smith of the Payson Police Department, it looked like “the Payson player was running down the sideline and the male individual who was assisting the coaching team struck the boy in the chin with his forearm and backed away and declined to offer any assistance to the boy.”

I’ve been coaching kid’s football now for the better part of eight years now.  And if there’s one philosophy that’s always guided me, it’s the idea that youth football is meant to teach.  It’s about instilling in these boys certain life lessons.  Certain values.  OK, one value: Winning. You want to get ahead in life?  You want to pull the best looking chicks and bone the hottest female teachers when you get to high school? You want to get out from behind your mother’s apron and start being a man?  It all starts with winning on the football field.  And if you’re not willing to do whatever it takes, then hit the bricks, kid.  Football  is for the best of the best.  The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies room.  Sorry mom in the video, but 7th grade football ain’t Toddlers & Tiaras.  Everyone doesn’t get a trophy or a giant sash you can drape around them and tell them they’re special.  Youth football is where your precious snowflake starts learning that there are winners in life and there are losers.  And if your kid wants to be the former instead of the latter, he better keep his goddamned head on a goddamned swivel when he goes in front of the Mapleton City bench as long as there’s a dedicated winner like Nathan Harris patrolling the sidelines.  The only mistake he made was getting caught.  You pull a move like that when the game camera is at your back, not pointing right at you.  I promise you if that was me, I would’ve taken that kid out, smiled while I did it and wouldn’t even have drawn a flag, much less gotten arrested.  C’mon, Coach Harris.  What kind of lessons are you teaching these kids?  Amateur.  @JerryThornton1