Earlier this year, two football players at John Jay High School in San Antonio deliberately hit an official in the late stages of a game. It later emerged that they did so on orders from the defensive backs coach, who believed the official had directed racial slurs at several players during the game. Well, earlier this week, that coach reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that could potentially keep him out of jail.
On Tuesday, Mack Breed appeared in a courtroom in the Hill Country town of Marble Falls and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault causing bodily injury. This came less than 24 hours after he was arrested on charges of ordering Michael Moreno and Victor Rojas to hit umpire Robert Watts during John Jay’s September 4 game against Marble Falls High School. Judge Linda Bayless handed down a suspended sentence of one year in jail. She then placed Breed on 18 months’ probation, fined him $1,500 and ordered him to perform 120 hours of community service. If he steps out of line while he’s on probation, he will not only go to jail, but pay an additional $2,000 fine.
As part of the plea agreement, Breed will also have to pay restitution to Watts and complete an anger management course. He also permanently surrendered his Texas teaching certificate. Breed resigned on September 24 rather than face certain termination. The University Interscholastic League, the organization that governs public high school sports in Texas, then banned him from coaching at a member school for the rest of the 2015-16 school year and slapped him with two years’ probation. However, according to Dallas Morning News editorial page writer Sharon Grigsby, without a teaching certificate, it will be next to impossible for Breed to get a job at any public high school in Texas again.
Breed’s lawyer, James Reeves, says that his client “made a mistake” that night, and wanted to put all of this behind him. “Mistake” is an understatement. Breed told his head coach and John Jay’s principal that he ordered the hit on Watts due to the racial slurs–a charge that Watts adamantly denies. Even if Watts was being a racist idiot, there is nada, zip, zero excuse for deliberately targeting an official in this way. What did Breed get for it? His coaching career is all but over, and Moreno and Rojas’ football careers are likely over as well. All things considered, Breed has only done two things right in this whole incident–confess what he did and plead guilty.
That being said, another mistake was made on Tuesday. I can’t understand why Bayless didn’t send Breed to jail right away. This wasn’t just a case of a coach losing his cool at the end of a game and decking an official in the heat of the moment. This was a premeditated attack in which two players came at an official from several yards away. If I had been the judge in this case, I would have sentenced Breed to at least two years in prison, and remanded him to custody immediately. Bayless had a chance to send a message that premeditated attacks have no place in the game–and blew it eight ways to Sunday.
Grigsby wonders if Breed should have gotten a second chance. I probably would agree–if, as I said earlier, this was a heat of the moment situation. But it wasn’t. I realize that high school football is almost a religion in Texas. But even in the event Breed ever got his teaching certificate back, I find it hard to believe that any principal or coach with a smidgen of integrity would take a chance on Breed. Sorry, Sharon, but this isn’t something from which you can come back as if nothing happened.
Burnet County district attorney Eddie Arredondo has all but announced that Moreno and Rojas will face criminal charges as well. However, it’s very likely they’re already in plea talks as well, given that they have already expressed remorse for their horrible actions that night. I hope that Arredondo is willing to only give Moreno and Rojas probation or house arrest. If they get sent to jail while the man who ordered the attack only gets probation, it will be one miscarriage of justice piled on top of another.
