Reply #13: As the daughter and sister of Texas high school football coaches...

[booksenkatz]

I can tell you that you've hit the nail squarely and firmly on its head. Football, particularly high school football, IS a second religion to a disturbingly large sector of Texans. If coach is having a good season, or seems on the verge of a good season, you don't let anything touch him. If coach is having a bad season, he's fired. What's going on in his classroom has little effect in either case. Great coach/bad teacher stays. Bad coach/great teacher... sorry, but you've lost too many games.

PS I'm the only one in my family who dislikes sports, am definitely the black sheep!

On edit: this teacher seems too young to have acquired much of a track record either on the field or in the classroom, so I'd be interested to know what his apparent "mitigating circumstances" are in the eyes of these parents. If they're supporting him for the right reasons, I'd be pleasantly speechless.