When a particular comment reminds me of something I want to warn you against, it sounds like I am coming down on the commenter. Coaches are not known for being particularly subtle, so please take this once and for all: I am not calling for an apology from the person who made the comment. In fact, worrying about the comment itself takes away from the general point I am trying to make.

One my articles was inspired by someone asking how to answer someone who said whites were guilty of taking other people’s lands. I used this to make the point that you were generally forgetting basics.

This basic was to ignore the crap and point out the guy is justifying genocide.

In football practice if a player asks Coach about a basic he has forgotten, the coach will call everybody over and repeat his question and make the general point. In that environment he makes it very clear that he expects others to forget the same thing.

I do the same thing with a general article. This was not written to condemn the question, it was used as an opportunity to make the point generally.

The coach does NOT want to discourage his team from coming back and asking him questions. He has to assume that everybody worth having on his team is tough enough to hear the thing aired in front of everybody who can benefit.

The point was, as I said, forgetting the basics is a very usual problem of people in the heat of the fight.

I want you to understand that the BUGSER who asked the question did exactly the right thing. He came here to ask what to do.

That’s what we’re HERE for, gang.

If you care enough about the winning the game you will expect the coach to be a bit rough.