Prep coaching vacancies are plenty; ugly Final Four and ugly uniforms

▪ Take 1: What’s up with the glut of recent high school coaching vacancies? In the last few weeks we’ve seen basketball coaching positions opened via resignation or otherwise at East St. Louis (Philip Gilbert), Belleville East (Abel Schrader), Mascoutah (Scott Oltmann) and Belleville West girls (Seth Garrett). Gibault soccer (Matt Reeb), Collinsville soccer (Clay Smith) and New Athens volleyball (Kyla Patton), among others, have also resigned with more coaches rumored to be on their way out.

My take: The days of coaches sticking around at one school for most of their career appear to have gone the way of stagecoaches and 99 cent-a-gallon gasoline. I talk to a lot of coaches and one thing that seems to come up consistently is dealing with a few problem parents about playing time or other issues. Sometimes it’s parents who try to go over coaches’ heads to the athletic director, administrators or even the school board. Others leave to coach their own children or spend more time with their families. We are also seeing an unusually high amount of transfers between area schools, but of course “not for sports,” wink, wink. I think South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin had one of the best takes on the entire modern sports world: “You know what makes me sick to my stomach? When I hear grown people say that kids have changed. Kids haven’t changed. Kids don’t know anything about anything We’ve changed as adults. We demand less of kids. We expect less of kids. We make their lives easier instead of preparing them for what life is truly about. We’re the ones that have changed. To blame kids is a cop-out.” Some parents may not want to hear that, though.

▪ Take 2: Speaking of the Final Four, didn’t North Carolina and Gonzaga stage a rather ugly men’s basketball national championship game Monday night?

My take: While both teams had, shall we say, “a little trouble with fundamentals,” they had nothing on the officiating crew that must have gathered before the game and determined that they would try to have the most whistles and play stoppages in Final Four history. The teams combined to shoot 52 free throws, and there were 44 fouls called (including 27 in the second half). Even Cleveland Cavaliers legend LeBron James took to Twitter and declared “Man I can’t watch this anymore man! I would like to see the kids decide who wins the game! I mean Bruh!! Smh (shaking my head).” Who could blame him after watching this combination of inept shooting and missed calls (UNC’s Kennedy Meeks clearly had his hand on the out of bounds line and the ball should have gone back to Gonzaga). While some scream “let them play,” others believe the game has become far too physical and the officials are trying to find a happy medium to keep things in check. Whatever the case, the Tar Heels have another national championship despite hitting only four of 27 3-point shots.

▪ Take 3: The surging Blues hit a roadblock Tuesday in the form of a 5-2 home defeat to the Winnipeg Jets. Any reason for concern with Mike Yeo’s club battling to nail down third place in the Central Division and a first-round playoff matchup with the Minnesota Wild?

My Take: Winnipeg won’t make the playoffs, and it’s a good thing the Blues won’t play them, having gone 0-4-1 against the Jets this season. With three games remaining, the Blues still have a one-point lead over Nashville, but a couple things have my attention. Goalie Jake Allen had been spectacular during the Blues’ recent hot streak, but looked slightly more human against Winnipeg. Also worrisome is the amount of rookies and youngsters in the lineup with some key veterans still nursing injuries. The lower-body injury that has kept veteran center Paul Stastny out of the lineup since March 21 is perhaps the most costly and bears watching with the playoffs just around the corner.

▪ Take 4: According to Bloomberg News, the University of Utah will become the first university among the five largest conference in the country to offer scholarships for — wait for it — playing video games in a field known as “eSports.” What in the name of Call of Duty, Super Mario Bros. and Ms. Pac-Man is going on?

My Take: I used to tell parents asking me about the best way to a college scholarship was to get a high score on the ACT — and if you have a daughter, put a golf club in her hands at an early age. This whole eSports and video game scholarship thing changes everything. Most kids grow up playing video games, so they’re already training for scholarships. Illinois College in Jacksonville will offer video game scholarships as early as next year, according to the Springfield State Journal-Register, while Robert Morris College in Chicago has offered scholarships since 2014. Many of the college eSports programs compete in a game known as League of Legends, which can be played between two teams of five people. Will there be an eSports Final Four? Will people fill out online brackets to pick the top geeks in the land? Stay tuned.

▪ Take 5 (the pop culture take): What were the ugliest pro sports uniforms of all time?

My take: Any list of the ugliest pro sports uniforms must immediately include the infamous 1976 Chicago White Sox monstrosities. Not only did the garish dark blue, black and white jerseys have a collar, the players were sometimes outfitted in knee-length shorts. They broke those out for the first time on Aug. 8, 1976, at Comiskey Park. The Bicentennial White Sox of Goose Gossage, Terry “Tub of Goo” Forster, Ralph Garr, Bucky Dent, Wilbur Wood and Clay Carroll only wore the shorts a few times, and, perhaps thankfully, they never came back again. Ironically, those 1976 throwback jerseys so angered former White Sox pitcher Chris Sale last season that he sliced his up in the clubhouse. Honorable mentions: the New York Islanders’ “Gorton’s Captain Fish Sticks” uniforms, the Houston Astros “orange rainbow” classics and those neon-red Cleveland Indians uniforms from the late 1970s.

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 7:52 PM with the headline "Prep coaching vacancies are plenty; ugly Final Four and ugly uniforms."