Audibles

I don't know about other places in the country, but in Massachusetts, high school football season, having been postponed due to covid, is on.

Normally, I don't pay much - make that any - attention to football, especially of the high school variety. This is Massachusetts. Sure, high school football is a thing, but it's not exactly Friday Night Lights around here. 

But a local football game incident has been attracting a good deal of attention - attention that has (so far) resulted in a high school football coach being fired and some games being canceled.

The reason? The team had been using a number of Jewish-related terms to call their plays. Their audibles included dreidel, rabbi, and - WAIT FOR IT - Auschwitz.

Unless it was somehow being used to demean Jews, I'm guessing that dreidel alone would have probably been given a pass. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel. I made it out of clay. Kind of fun, even. 

Even rabbi I can see. Snarky, maybe. But also maybe they were using other religious figure terms: bishop, reverend, nun. High school kids poking a bit of fun at religion? Meh.

But Auschwitz? AUSCHWITZ?

I what way can that ever be construed as appropriate? It's not exactly like Peyton Manning hollering "Omaha."

The opposing team reported it and things took off from there.

Now high school kids can be thoughtless and truly and utterly a-holey. And a lot of them like to push buttons - and boundaries, to do things a bit edgy and transgressive. When they start edging towards the border of decency, that's when the adults in the room (or on the field) need to step in.

The coach was aware of the audibles the team was using. He may have thought they were "only" using them during practice. But he admits that he knew. And did nothing until it was reported.  

Anyway, the opposing team's athletic director let the town's school superintendent know about it. And the next thing you know, that little dreidel was spinning out of control. Everyone from state legislators to sports columnists to the Anti Defamation League were weighing in. 

There was a lot of yack about anti-Semitic language. I don't know but "dreidel" and "rabbi", unless used with bad intent or fake old-school Brooklyn accents or coupled with truly anti-Semitic words, would be considered anti-Semitic. But there's really no getting around Auschwitz.

The news perhaps got bigger play because the town involved was Duxbury (a.k.a., Deluxebury) an affluent oceanside community south of Boston known for, among other things, the excellence of its high school football team and the snotty, preppy blue-eyed douchebaggery of a lot of the kids in town. 

The coach, Dave Maimaron, issued the usual after the fact (i.e., got caught) apology:

“I want to extend my apology for the insensitive, crass, and inappropriate language used in the game on March 12,” Maimaron said in a Monday statement to the Globe. “The use of this language was careless, unnecessary and most importantly hurtful on its face — inexcusable … We have taken responsibility for the incident.” (Source: Boston Globe)

And now he's no longer the coach, fired even though he'd amassed quite a winning record, and, since taking over as coach in 2005, had lead his teams to five Super Bowl (state championships) in their division. 

What's wrong with this guy - also a teacher in the Duxbury schools - that he wouldn't have told these kids to knock it off? And I'm not letting these kids off the hook, either. What's wrong with them?

Although I did read that about one-third of Massachusetts residents under the age of 40 weren't quite sure what Auschwitz is, it's hard to believe that students at Duxbury High School aren't aware of the Holocaust. Surely they read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl somewhere along the way. Anne was just 15 when she died. High school age. Maybe a little younger than whoever was calling the audibles for the Duxbury Green Dragons. Kid sister age. JV player age.

And it's hard to believe that students at Duxbury High School don't know the meaning of Auschwitz. If they don't, maybe they should take a look around the Auschwitz Museum's website. It's closed to visitors due to covid, but they might want to consider a visit someday. (I've been.) Or, closer to home, go to the Holocaust Museum in DC. (I haven't been. Yet.)

It's interesting (but not surprising, of course) that the survivors of the death camps, including Auschwitz, skewed young and male. Often the age of the kids on a high school football team. They were younger, fitter, more resilient than others - fit enough to be set to hideous and unimaginable tasks that let them live, at least for a while . In reading survivor accounts, I've been struck by the fact that when a father and son both survived the camps, the father often died shortly after liberation. After all, he'd done what he could to make sure his son made it to safety, but hadn't been able to save the rest of his family. The fathers could let go, give up, now that they knew their sons had survived. Maybe the team would find this interesting?

I do wonder whether there's any way to reach these football kids. (And I believe that most of them are probably reachable, if only someone can figure out how.)

A few weeks ago, NBA player Meyers Leonard uttered an anti-Semitic slur. Julian Edelman, a star for the New England Patriots who's Jewish, sent him an open letter:

I get the sense that you didn't use that word out of hate, more out of ignorance. Most likely, you weren't trying to hurt anyone or even profile Jews in your comment. That's what makes it so destructive. When someone intends to be hateful, it's usually met with great resistance. Casual ignorance is harder to combat and has greater reach, especially when you command great influence. Hate is like a virus. Even accidentally, it can rapidly spread.

Edelman's probably giving Leonard too much of the benefit of the doubt. More than I would, anyway. But "casual ignorance" is a good way to look at it. Edelman offered to meet with Leonard. Maybe he could meet with the Duxbury High football team, too. Maybe someone they hero-worshipped, which is probably the case when it comes to Edelman - rich, handsome, jock, those three Super Bowl rings from real Super Bowls -  could get through to them in a way that others cannot. What Edelman has to say might be pretty damned audible. 

As for their coach: I bet he's learned a lesson. But I'd also bet that he won't be coaching another high school football team any time soon.