Pilot Point makes Ft Worth newspaper

[HighSchool Fan]

Coach out of job for a good reason

By Bud Kennedy

Star-Telegram Staff Writer


Of all the bonehead stunts lately -- and that's not even counting the Texas Legislature -- the worst comes from our neighbors in Denton County.

A $69,000-a-year high school football coach has suddenly resigned with no explanation.

Newly promoted Pilot Point Bearcats coach Mike Russell didn't need to explain why he's now leaving that storied program.

We can see plenty of reasons that he ought to leave by reading the vulgar jokes, racial comments and sarcastic insults in his public school e-mail.

Apparently, Russell and some Pilot Point assistant coaches considered the school computer system to be their private nasty boys' locker room.

In e-mails published last week in the Denton Record-Chronicle, they joked about women's body parts, demeaned girls' sports and made fun of students, trustees, administrators -- everybody but arrogant, self-important football coaches.

"We were just talking like coaches talk in the locker room," Russell was quoted as telling the Denton paper.

If so, then Pilot Point's locker room needs a dose of disinfectant.

In public e-mails -- many written when they were supposed to be teaching -- Russell and three other coaches joked as if they were above any shame.

In an e-mail Jan. 26, Russell sent assistant coach Darren Hall photos of shirtless women and the "Silicon Challenge" -- "Can you tell a real pair from a fake one."

A few days later, Russell decided to tell another coach about a woman who had her nails done. Fine, if he hadn't coupled it with a racist remark about an Asian woman.

Hall also resigned last week.

He is by far the most outspoken coach in the e-mails, using racial epithets, calling school trustees "the DEVIL reincarnated!" and referring to the rival Whitesboro Bearcats as the "PotHead Bearcats."

Hall also told Russell that he has the air conditioning in his classroom "set at 66!!!!!! The girls don't like it. The guys do!!!!!!!!!!!!"

In one exchange Jan. 28, Hall reported that "we are watching the sex video in class -- Got several fresh girls that are making comments about how it didn't really happen that way."

The head coach's reply: "Have them summarize their findings."

In an exchange Feb. 8, Hall joked that a student "needs to apply at Hooters cause her talents don't lie in the area of softball."

Russell replied, "Will she be a COOK?"

Russell was promoted in January to succeed G.A. Moore, the state's winningest football coach.

Russell served 17 seasons as an assistant under Moore, with an 11-season break when he coached winning teams at Gainesville.

Pilot Point also forfeited its last football victory and all its basketball games this month for using an ineligible sophomore player, the Denton paper reported.

The player's family had moved from out of state to a ranch in the nearby Aubrey district, then moved into Pilot Point briefly but had moved back to Aubrey while the sophomore was still playing for Pilot Point.

In the e-mails, Russell and other coaches joke openly about "recruiting" players and about which players might move to Pilot Point.

Before the Denton newspaper and the Pilot Point Post-Signal had published the e-mails last week, about 200 parents came to a school-board meeting to protest Russell's sudden and then-unexplained resignation.

Russell has denied that he quit over the e-mails. He blamed the administration without naming Superintendent Cloyce Purcell.

"I was told things were going to be a certain way, and they weren't that way," Russell was quoted as saying in the Pilot Point paper. "I was told I would have say in decisions and things would take place that are not taking place."

In an editorial, the Denton newspaper called the coaches' public e-mails "crude, adolescent ramblings" and said some comments "would have been more at home on a restroom wall."

In one of his last e-mails, on March 4, Hall wrote, "This ain't gonna be a [bad] place when we get everyone fired or killed off."

It just makes you wonder if some of these guys played football without a helmet.

[KTJ]

I wonder what PP fans, teachers, and students now think of this situation.

PP is clearly the laughing stock of the State right now. They've lost all credibility.

[kaorder1999]

wow...unbelieveable

[VWG]

Where's PPHS fan when you need him?