Earlier this month at John Jay High School in San Antonio, Texas, a football game turned into target practice for some of the school's players directed by assistant coach Mack Breed, an alumnus and former quarterback of the football team who joined the staff in 2010, but this is his first time in the spotlight after he apparently instructed players to go after a game official. Allegedly, Breed heard that referee Robert Watts said racial slurs to several of the John Jay players during the game.

Coach Breed

According to Michael Moreno and Victor Rojas, the two players that targeted Watts and appeared on CNN for an interview, heard on the sideline that Coach Breed instructed some of the other players to go after Watts for his comments and racial slurs. Moreno and Rojas allegedly did not hear these instructions directly from Coach Breed, but they were instructed by other players to follow through with the plan and hit Watts from behind. Watts, completely blindsided from the attack, was hit by one player first and fell to the ground. A second player then dove on top of Watts when he was on the ground and “speared him in the back with his helmet."

The ever-changing story comes from multiple sides of this targeting, as there are three parties saying different things. According to Coach Breed, one of his African American players was ejected from the game, and soon thereafter Watts threatened another African American player on the team and said, "Throw the f***ing ball at me again, n****r." Breed insisted that he was angry about the course of events during the game, but never explicitly told any of his players to target Watts.

As told by Eliot C. McLaughlin of CNN, Watts completely and utterly denied issuing any racial slurs during the game. While he is recovering from post-concussion syndrome, his lawyer is insisting that Watts stands by his statement that no racial slurs or comments were made during the game.

The players themselves, on the other hand, said that some of them heard Watts say various racial slurs directed at the African American and Hispanic players on the team. Although everyone but one player, Moreno, denied ever hearing Coach Breed explicitly give orders to hit Watts, they all acknowledged that they heard directly or were told that Watts was issuing racist remarks.

ESPN writers John Barr and Michael Sciollo tackled some of the interview aired on ABC News with the two players guilty of attacking the game official. Moreno is the only player who insisted that Breed told him to intentionally knock Watts over, claiming that while on the sidelines, Coach Breed said, "You need to hit the ref. He needs to pay the price." Moreno and Rojas claimed that they were just doing what they were told and would, in fact, apologize for their actions as they know they were in the wrong.

Watts is supposedly considering filing several lawsuits against the players and Coach Breed, and one of his attorneys said the following to press: "These students aren't toddlers. These are crimes that no one should shrug their shoulders and walk away from. This isn't a case of boys will be boys," he said. "Every crime that was committed should be prosecuted."

Football games at the high school level and up are environments full of rivalry, pride, competition, and emotion. Perhaps this game got too crazy and out of control for the officials to handle, or perhaps Watts was the instigator and brought the John Jay team and Coach Breed to a tipping point. Even if Watts said these racist slurs and made some bad calls, the hit and attack on him from behind was unwarranted and wrong. While the two boys acknowledged this is true, they claimed they were doing what they were told and asserted that Watts was guilty of his racist comments.

Coach Breed has become less of a major player in this incident as the focus has shifted to the two boys that attacked Watts, but let us not forget he is the one that allegedly gave permission for the violence to be carried out. It’s hard to say if Moreno interpreted his words as instructions or if they were, in fact, explicit instructions because both parties have conflicting accounts of what happened before the attack.

At any rate, this has brought an abundance of bad press to the John Jay High School football program and school district, and it has many people in the sports world talking about the impressionable nature of players and how coaches may take advantage of this. There are thousands of wonderful coaches across the country that instill important, powerful values and life lessons on players and impact their lives positively. There are, however, coaches that are on the other end of the spectrum, using their players to carry out actions of violence such as this, using teams and players to profit from, and pushing kids to the point of injury.

The focus, although there are many focuses in this case, should really be on the environment created by the coaching staff and older players on the John Jay football team and why even a single player or coach would think this attack was in good taste. Emotions and athletics go hand-in-hand, but sports are not meant to breed violence and hate.

Although this is an unfortunate event, it is a teaching moment for players and coaches all around the country to maintain sportsmanship and integrity on and off the field. A game is just a game, and a sport is just a sport. Absolutely no issue of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender should ever have an influence on how a player is treated or how a game is played.