Cleats by Bill Hinds for January 28, 2022

I suspect that Tanner’s dad is the real jerk of their house. Get Tanner away from Pops and he stands a chance of being a somewhat decent teammate!

I have a friend who recently left coaching. When asked if he’d ever return to the avocation, he responded, “Only for a team of orphans!”

Sad, but attend any HS and under sporting event and you can hear the same thing coming from far too many parents

What – there’s no assists tally in soccer?

This is the turning point in Tanner’s character arc. Despite winning the game, his awful father berates and belittles him for passing it to Jack. To hide his embarrassment, he takes back his sportsmanship and makes a passive aggressive remark.

Upon seeing this, we learn that Tanner isn’t that bad and his whole aggressive attitude is a facade to cover up his own insecurities caused by his stage father’s awfully high expectations for him. Seriously! Tanner’s old man makes Fred Flintstone look like Bob Ross.

This is a huge difference from when I was growing up. Most of the games we played were pickup games — no parents there. My parents never came to any of my organized games, even when I was on the high school basketball team (in fairness, I was at the end of the bench and maybe, just maybe, got in for the last couple of minutes during a blowout).

Now we know why Tanner’s a jerk . . . . .

My guess: Dad is counting on his kid getting some kind of sports scholarship, and he’s pushing him to be ultra-aggressive even at a cost to his own team, so long as it burnishes his resume. He probably wants to be able to point the scouts at the stat sheets and say, “look, my kid is the star — you want him, not these other losers”.

He was thinking about the team and not just himself…..