A Rick Reilly column driving me to laughter is about a once-in-five-years occurance, but he did the trick this week with the hilarious tale of Houston's Texas Christian High School and their football coach, the wonderfully named Herc Palmquist.
Palmquist, whose school apparently plays in a league in which there are only six players per team on the field at a time, pulled a gambit recently in which he told his team that a scheduled game against the equally wonderfully named Not Your Ordinary School was "canceled," and then went out and hired college-aged ringers (some of whom had beards, mustaches, and tattoos) in their place. And they lost, 26-18.
But that wasn't the only area in which the gambit failed- the faux-team couldn't remember the team's nickname during the coin toss, one kickoff attempt was downed behind the kicker, and the roster submitted to the officials had only the players' first names. And even though his team was leading at the time, Palmquist offered to forfeit the game both at halftime and during the fourth quarter. The ruse was discovered when the mother of one of the regular, non-ringer players was surfing SixManFootball.com and saw the score for the game her son had been told was canceled.
Palmquist was suspended from coaching for five games but not fired- because, according to Reilly, he also owns the school. Only in Texas.
Posted by Stephen Silver at December 2, 2005 01:00 AM