So, Oklahoma State University men’s basketball coach Travis Ford was kicked out of his son Brooks’s high school basketball game yesterday, and that’s pretty funny, if perhaps unremarkable. This sounds like any run-of-the-mill Too Raw Sports Dad story, where a probably bad parent got too fired up living vicariously through his son and yelled at and/or cursed out the ref, right?
According to witnesses, that’s not really how it went down. Ford was at Bixby High School, watching his son Brook, who goes to Stillwater High School, play a basketball game against Bartlesville High. Ford was seated a few rows behind Stillwater’s bench, with some other parents. In the third quarter, Ford said something later recounted by a witness to be, “You need to blow your whistle.”
Apparently this is what caused the referee, a fellow by the name of Rick Smith, to take umbrage and kick Ford out. Here’s an anonymous(!) school official talking to Tulsa World:
“(Smith) kind of baited him into it,” the school official said. “Travis came in to watch his son play, and I felt like he was baited into the whole thing. … When all of this took place, I didn’t hear one single thing said. The official blows his whistle, points (at Ford) and says, ‘You’re gone.’ And then I saw Travis walk out.”
And here’s Tulsa World’s report:
It looks like my man Mr. Smith saw chance to make a name for himself, decided to shoot his shot, and that’s great. I’m not even mad at the guy for that.
Stillwater lost 63-51; Brooks Ford was player of the game with 12 points off the bench.
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