John Nash 18 September 2009 Football, Stamford High, The Ryan Report 1,306 views 2 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

In all my years, I never thought I would hear a referee utter the phrase I heard Thursday night.

It was during a contentious second quarter of Thursday’s Stamford-Ridgefield football game when one of the official, who was later indentified as Tom Brown, came over to Stamford football coach Kevin Jones to discuss why he had taken the length of Khairi Fortt’s football pants into question.

“I did it to teach him a lesson that he is not in college yet,” said Brown.

Jones retort made it very clear that he did not appreciate the help and did not consider it  Mr. Brown’s place to teach his players lessons.

“Well, that is par for the course when you have people who think they are going to do my job for me and teach the kid a lesson,” said Jones, following the game. “The bottom-line is he doesn’t know what his role is. His job is to actually look at the game and regulate the game and clearly Khairi’s pants covered his knees.”

Jones said he realized it was probably Ridgefield coach Kevin Callahan who brought the length of the pants into question in an attempt to unnerve the Black Knights, but it went a little too far when we had an impromptu fashion show on the Boyle Stadium turf comparing pant lengths.

“It was clear that he just wanted to bother us from the beginning, I could see what Callahan was doing,” said Jones. “It was clear that Khairi was dominating them, so I could see why Kevin would do that but it’s also a cheap tactic.”

Now, on its surface, the comment from Brown is more bewildering than offensive, but for him to come out and say it aloud, within earshot of many witnesses is, well, ill-advised. That coupled with a few seemingly botched calls made it seem as though the Black Knights were snake-bitten — or zebra-bitten would maybe be a better term.

There were the too many men of the field penalty that Brown waved off and granted a time out to Ridgefield in its place. Another ref had thrown the flag, but Brown told Jones he did not see the infraction.

Then, there was the punt with about nine minutes left in the game. Ridgefield’s Kevin Walters clearly signaled for a fair catch but Drew Arcoleo cut in front of him a returned the ball to 10 yards which coupled with Jones being hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty set up the Tiger’s second touchdown.

And again, no referee saw Walters wave his arm. Jones was frustrated by their  answer.

“The kid waved for a fair catch and explanation I got is nobody saw it,” said Jones. “Except for everybody else in the stadium.”

Nobody can tell what is in a person’s mind, what their intentions are, but Brown should think long and hard about using the phrase he used and leave the lessons to those paid to teach.