Texas High School Football Team Faces Bullying Complaint after Blowout

In the past several years, after a string of tragedies in which the victims were bullied, the issue of bullying has been catapulted onto the national stage. Once thought to be a normal part of the school experience—a rite of passage, even—bullying is now being looked at seriously for the harm it has done to school-age children.

But just what should be considered bullying? Physical violence, obviously, and verbal taunts as well. How about blowouts in athletic events.

Texas recently made the news as the site of a bullying complaint, after the Aledo High School Bearcats crushed their opponents 91-0 in a football game. The parent of a Western Hills player lodged a bullying complaint listing both teams as victims and blaming the coaching staff.

Should a football team be punished for being too good?

Tim Buchanan, coach of the Bearcats, claims that the team didn’t run up the score on purpose; in fact, they tried to do the opposite: “I sit there the whole third and fourth quarter and try to think how I can keep us from scoring,” he told the Star-Telegram.

The coach pulled his starting players after the first quarter, eventually playing the team’s third string.

The Western Hills coach, John Naylor, agreed that the Aledo High School coaching staff and team handled the game well. “I think the game was handled fine. They’re No. 1 for a reason … and they’re good sports, and they don’t talk at all. They get after it, and that’s the way football is supposed to be played in Texas.”

With both sides seeming to agree that the game was handled in a sporting manner, the allegations of bullying may be unfounded. Of course, no team would want to be so outmatched, but does that fact in and of itself constitute bullying? Assuming the Aledo High team didn’t set out to humiliate their opponents or engage in trash talk, one would think not.

What do you think of the bullying complaint against the Aledo High School coaching staff? And what do you think about the problem of bullying in Houston and throughout Texas? What types of measures should we be taking—as educators and as parents—to alleviate this troubling problem?