Should high school coaches be allowed to swear at kids?

The Bellevue High School football program has garnered a lot of criticism and investigation, recently. From recruiting practices to the athletic environment, Bellevue football is under the microscope.

KIRO Radio’s Ron and Don didn’t tackle all the issues, but did take time to give lip service to one aspect: language.

Strength coach Tracy Ford is at the heart of the controversy. The former Bellevue player had his own career in sports and now coaches players in the gym.

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“The other thing that is bothering people is the way in which Tracy Ford interacts with the kids,” Ron Upshaw said.

Ford was captured on video speaking aggressively to players in a telling-it-like-it-is situation. In that video, Ford uses curse words casually, including the “N” word.

“I think his tactics, short of calling the kids the ‘MF’ word and using the “N” word, short of that, is good,” Upshaw said. “It’s hard to break through to kids these days. Everybody wants to be an NFL player, everybody wants to be in the NBA, everybody wants to make money and get big contracts like Russell Wilson. But when it comes time to put the work in to do that, that’s where it goes off the rails for a lot of kids. Especially when you are a teenager and you are immature.”

“It seems like he has a tough love approach that can be abrasive,” he said. “I don’t know the culture that he is trying to build in his shop, it’s not the culture I would build.”

But there is a line, co-host Don O’Neill said. And as an athlete himself, O’Neill knows where that line is.

“I wouldn’t want him around my son dropping the N bomb,” O’Neill said. “And I had coaches my whole life that could get very aggressive. I had coaches that had a profound impact on my life, and they weren’t afraid to use the F word either.”

“Dropping the N bomb, and he drops it so causally … and he also talks about the fact of being a modern-day slave owner, that he found these kids, he invested in these kids, it’s like dude, ‘You’re the strength coach!'”
“They still won 11 out of 15 championships while you were away in Canada or whatever,” he added.

Despite the debate over language or recruiting practices with Bellevue High School’s football, O’Neill said that people shouldn’t lose sight of the positive aspects of the program; that there are good people, athletes, and coaches there.

“A lot of this was initially self-reported,” he said. “They must have known when they self-reported these things, that this other stuff was going to come out.”