30 years ago, I was that fat kid who wanted to play goal but then realized it hurt a lot when the ball hit you in the face. So - I switched to centre. And the good news was, when little spindly sickly kids see a big fat kid running down the field at them full tilt, they usually run the other way. Try it - if your fat kid can only run 10-20 yards it can be a very effective intimidation tactic.

By the way, the funniest piece of advice I ever got from a soccer coach was that we should only bunch up on the field if it was an "emergency". She never told us what constituted an emergency but we took her very seriously and spread out as far as we could. Of course, we scored very few goals because we were never close enough to each other to pass the ball, but we never had to go into "emergency" formation.

Good luck with the team coach Penis!

Mr. Penis...
I have seen six-year-olds play soccer. It is no longer Soccer, but a sport called Clusterball. As long as you know which direction the opposing team's goal is in, you're one up on 85 percent of the players.

Boy, could my niece's team have used Kelly's coach.

Uh oh . . . I can see this "Coach Penis" and "Mr. Penis" thing is really going to catch on. Telling everyone about THAT might have been a mistake.

Kelly . . . I will take your advice. I'm puting Big Jack in the middle, and I'm going to put him on a training program that will allow him to run 20 yards as fast as he can.

Meredith: Out of the four teams we played, two played Clusterball and two didn't. We beat one of the teams that did, and tied the other.

For the ones that didn't, the ones who had actual plans in place, and good kids who could execute the plan, we lost 4-0 and 3-0.

It's all about keeping one good kid outside the cluster, and hoping the ball comes shooting out to him or her somewhere in the vicinity of the net.

Steve C.

This is marvelous. I believe, in fact, that you should develop this into fully-fledged management coaching material. The world would be a better place for it.

I was "volunteered" as an AYSO referee for my daughter the one year she played soccer. (We quickly figured out she was far more interested in picking flowers than in chasing the ball.) The one game I was head ref for was an unmitigated disaster. Even the 8-year-olds knew the rules better than I did. Terrible how they foist us into these positions when we're not equipped to fill them ... Be that as it may, I now cherish the memory of confronting an angry parent who waded on the field brandishing -- I kid you not -- a garden hoe.

Even the south side ain't got nothing on SoCal. :P

I realize your style is your shtick - your act - and wildly popular for its tell-it-like-it-is freshness. But, as a friend, I find the name calling a bit over the top. You sound like a bully.

Your Dr. Phil rant at last week's CCC smacked of an anger management issue.

Whassup, bud?

Charles, dear Charles:

Where is the name calling. I was the one subjected to name calling. I was the one dubbed Mr. Penis.

And yes, anyone who knows me knows I do, in fact, have anger management issues.

And if you're referring to me calling someone "fat," then you need to be aware of Social Rule #7a: You can call someone fat if you are also fat.

Sort of like how black people can use the "n" word. So there was no name calling here at all.

Steve C.

Dear Coach Penis...
1. At your son's age, having seen two boys through soccer, I agree with Meredith's assessment of 'clusterball' - I called it "The Amoeba Games" - this moving screaming every form changing blob of sweaty whiny kids all ripping their cleats into each other trying to KICK THAT BALL! Do they make shin guards in titanium?? I imagine there's some pressure on you out there in Naperville - I advise you stocking up on the amount of wine you keep in your house.

2. Have Big Jack watch your Rocky commercial - he will be extremely motivated.

3. Please do not ever, EVER put this in a management advice book format. We have the 'Fish philosophy,' 'omebody Moved the Cheese' - I'm not quite sure if we're ready for the Big Jack and the Penis Coach philosophy style of management.

4. I have never thought you looked like a penis.

5. Maybe you should consider wearing hats.

6. Again, I advise you to stock up on the amount of wine you keep in your house.

Signed, Little League mom.

Corrections
...it was the 'ever form changing blob'
...that should read 'Somebody Moved the Cheese' - I don't think 'omebody' moved anything.

We had a mom show up at Nathaniel's soccer practice a few weeks ago and address the entire group of 10-11 year olds in this fashion: "Bryan has a tendency to growl when he's feeling cornered, but please don't let this scare you. It scared the kids on his last team so I wanted to let you know ahead of time so you wouldn't be scared."

I took a quick look around at the coach, my son, the girls on the team - everyone looked scared except for Bryan and his mom.

Managerial lesson learned: When an employee's mom shows up, be wary. The apple rarely falls far...

I may be one of the few who understood the Naperville reference.

To add some color, residents are, of course, referred to as "NaperVillians."

They can be, to be blatantly stereotypical (cover your monitor, Chas), just a tad pretentious - the people who want desperately to be all cultural and city-types.

But alas, their right-wing upbringing required them to be fruitful and multiply, so they were relegated to the burbs by the arrival of their own personal version 2.0s. There, they seethe with anger, attend homeowner association meetings, and put entirely too much import on their kids achieving their own broken dreams.

But I digress. In fact, Naperville is perfectly lovely. But I never can pass up the opportunity for a rant. Now, don't get me started on Soccer...

-Neruda

>>Please do not ever, EVER put this in a management advice book format. ... I'm not quite sure if we're ready ... <<

Oh, come now. You have to admit that there are umpteen organizations out there that would be vastly improved if someone just told their Dans that their job was just to lie down in front of the goal!

I'd be a lot more likely to be interested in reading "Management Lessons from Coach Penis" than anything about moving cheese.

See, it's insights like these that make "Corporate Hallucinations" my favorite blog. OK, I'm not what you'd call an avid blog reader (by a long shot), but what Steve's dishing out you just can't get anywhere else -- at least nowhere else that won't be screened out by the security filter at the office.

Semantic note: over here Maryland way, we call it "herdball." Essentially a rugby scrum that never breaks up.

Greg

How about calling it what the entire world, except the USA, calls it? FOOTBALL. Where the heck did we come up with soccer anyway. Sounds anti-feminine if you ask me. ;-)

Coach P:

You've skipped the most difficult item of coaching any youth sport -- the parents!

I liken your soccer/football analogy and its lessons about communications to working in a large organization. The players are the workers, drones, wage slaves who actually get things done. The parents, however, are the executives who have Visions (and often hallucinations), resist media training, get crappy ideas from inflight magazines, play by their own rules and always think they are much better communicators than they really are.

I can't wait for some "Coach P talks to the Parents" stories.

T2ed:

Ha!! You're right. The damned parents are the executives! They seem to know EVERYTHING. And I'm sure it's only going to get worse as Zach gets older.

Zach's baseball coach, who is a terrific guy and a great coach, actually had to call us parents over before the first game, to remind us that the league has a "no tolerance" rule about parents getting obnoxious and yelling stuff at the umps. "THese umps are just kids, remember. They're going to make mistakes."

And I'm thinking: "This is a six-year-old league . . . does he really need to say this?"

I asked him afterwards about it, and he said: "Oh, yes. Just watch."

It's unbelievable to me . . . a bunch of frustrated ex-jocks and cheerleaders trying to live out their glory days again vicariously through their children.

On a different note, now I feel all guilty and terrible, thanks to Charles Pizzo, for calling a kid fat. What if my kid was fat and someone called him fat? How would I feel? I teach my son to NEVER tease or call names or participate in any group teasing, and here I am calling a kid fat.

I want to apologize to the world for calling a kid fat.

And for record: He's not really FAT. If he was fat, like the kid in the Bad News Bears, I don't think I would have called him fat. That would be too mean.

He's just kind of . . .big. Big and dopey. And slow moving. And he doesn't want to be there. I should have said, "This big, dopey kid."

Then I wouldn't feel so bad.

Steve C.

Steve,

I think you put the emphasis on the wrong word in that third sentence: They SEEM to know everything is how I would suggest it go, and that applies to parents at their kids sports events as well as the executive suite.

I love the idea of "Coach P talks to the parents/executive", I just wish we could throw them over our shoulders when they start howling and put them in the corner for time out like we can do with kids!

On the whole "fat" thing, I too was a fat kid and so feel I can weigh in (get it! ok, that was bad), but I didn't take any offense to that comment. I recognized it as humour. Unless you anticipate that your team members, or any other six year olds will be reading your blog (not out of the realm of possibility given their computer skills, I grant you) I think you're probably safe.

Steve,

I shared this wickedly funny blog post with my coworker who has five boys. I thought he was going to wet his pants, he was laughing so hard. I think I recruited another devoted reader to your posts. Bonus--he handles our internal communications! Keep blogging, 'cause we're reading!

Cheers,

JJ

JJ:

All right! Welcome your friend to the tribe. Five boys? God . . . I don't know how people do that. With ONE boy, it's all-consuming. Arts class, crafts class, baseball, basketball, soccer, tumbling, homework, extra reading time . . . . I mean, how does anyone do five kids??

When I was a kid, I would leave the house at 9 a.m., and come back at 6 p.m., mostly hanging out in alleys or the vacant lot by my house. These days, the kids in the burbs all need blackberries to keep track of their schedules.

Kristen: I, too, was picked on as a kid. Not because I was fat (I didn't get fat until later), but because I had alopecia, and had big clumps of my hair missing all the time. Imagine how much fun the other kids had with THAT.

Steve C.

Wow, a soccer mom and a penis! Soccer is great as long as you keep score. When my youngest was five she was on this team that was coached by this guy who was conned into it by his kid. He knew nothing about soccer and they lost miserably all the time. They didn’t keep score but the parents sure did and we all pretty much screamed Kick it, Kick it, no the other way. I believe kids should know what it feels like to win and lose. It was kind of funny too, because the last game they played was against the team that was coached by my older daughter’s soccer coach and they were the champions of that age group. Someone was keeping score? That year my oldest was also the champion of her age group. He was a soccer coach, not a soccer mom or a penis.

Yes I would also leave the house in the morning and have to be dragged back for dinner and eat as fast as I could and then right back out the door and dragged back again by 10:00. I never had to eat lunch and I don’t think I ever did, but we had to eat dinner every day at 6:00 and 2:00 on Sunday.

Sorry, folks, but the "big, fat kid" is where it got real for me. Though most adults (including Steve in that reference) aren't so heartless as to call a kid fat to his face, we talk in ways that are concise and most times appropriate to the intended audience. Why say "the young urchin who spent too much time by the school soda machine" when "fat kid" gets it done here in the land of Corporate Hallucinations?

The best thing about good blogs is they're real. They capture the true voice of the author -- even if that voice sometimes gets him in trouble.

Don't go PC on us, Coach P. The tell-it-like-it-is nature of this blog -- and the fact that it does indeed cause pants-peeing -- makes it one of the few I keep coming back to regularly. (Note to David Murray, I'm still waiting for your return to the blogosphere ...)

Yeah, it's not like you called the kid fat to his face. He'll never know you said it unless he reads your blog. And if you have six-year-olds reading this, I think you're going to have bigger issues to address.

Oh, God. If there are six year olds reading this blog, I'm going to jail.

Steve C.

(Note to David Murray, I'm still waiting for your return to the blogosphere ...)

I agree. Going from one blog to the other was not unlike watching an old "The Odd Couple" episode. Steve, I'll let you figure out which one you are.

(Note to David Murray, I'm still waiting for your return to the blogosphere ...)

I agree. Going from one blog to the other was not unlike watching an old "The Odd Couple" episode. Steve, I'll let you figure out which one you are.

Eileen:

Well, it would be tempting to draw it in very black and white terms, with me being Oscar the slob, and David being Felix, the somewhat effeminate snob. And there is some truth to that.

But it's actually much more complex than that. Actually, I embody the best qualities of both men, and David represents the worst qualities.

I have Oscar's earthiness, his "realness," his connection to the common people. But I also have Felix's sophistication in terms of fine dining, cooking ability, wine tastes, culture, etc.

David, on the other hand, has Felix's inherent prissiness and snobbiness . . . but he also shares Oscar's slobbiness. He once lived for two months straight on Pizza Rolls and Schlitz, and to this day fine dining to David is a burrito and can of Bud.

See? It's not black and white, is it?

Steve C.

Umm, could we PLEASE get past the name-calling?

You both fell right into that one. Dance puppet boys, dance!

The Puppet Master

I get so busy here I go days without having time to read a blog. Then a moment's peace occurs and I come check to see what Steve is hallucinating about today. I'm never disappointed. This whole thread is a riot!

O Steve - as if telling us about the "Mr. Penis" thing wasn't brave enough - you actually posted this and opened this can a worms?! You got guts man!

However, I have to ask, when you're drinking wine from a box, does that really count as "sophistication"?

Plus I've seen your Rocky video and that foot long and the can of beer you crushed didn't look like any "fine dining" or "fancy micro-brew" to me! Maybe those terms are defined differently in Chicago?

A lot of things are different in Chicago. They have their own bizarre variant of softball there, using an orb of near-basketball size, and no gloves. Then there's that "river" that's actually below the level of the lake it supposedly flows into. But I always have a ball when I visit!

Greg

Joining this thread late as usual, but I do have something to add, so better late than never.

Steve C., I mean, Coach Penis: I have two sons, no wife and a business to run and here's how I do it: Lock the kids either in their rooms or out of the house until supper time. Then make 'em do their homework until bedtime. Of course that's not all true. Sometimes I lock them in the bathroom when they need to get clean. :-)

Charles: As a skinny person, I took no offense to Steve's name-calling. As long as he doesn't start ranting about skinny people.

And I think you're being way too hard on David Murray. He took a small group of us (including Greg) to a great restaurant in Chicago during CCC. It was embarrassing, though, when he asked if they had Steak-Umms.

Headline in New York Times today:

The Big, Fat American Kid Crisis . . . And 10 Things We Should Do About It

Steve, do you think someone there is reading your blog?

At my three-year-old daughter's Saturday soccer game we only made it three quarters through before they started dropping like flies. "Daddy, I don't want to play anymore." Coach asked four kids if they'd go in and all four refused, my daughter included. "It's too hot." "I'm tired." "I don't want to run anymore."

It was 75 degrees and stunningly beautiful out. What we had was a lack of engagement (to use a word I know makes David cringe). I wonder how Coach Steve might have dealt with the situation. Not that we care that much. They are only 3 and as long as they have some fun, that's all that matters.

Soccer Parent @ A Mile High

If I was 3, I wouldn't want to play soccer either. Too early. Too much structure. 3 year old kids flow like water. You just have to keep them from getting in trouble.

I have 2 girls and they didn't start playing soccer until they were 8 or so. I didn't want to burn them out and have them hate the sport. You can learn so many lessons about teamwork playing a sport that carries later into life. They are both still playing some soccer at ages 13 and 10, although I wouldn't mind if they try another sport because once your're 18, you're in the working world and your options decrease fast (to play).

Soccer Dad and coach
Connecticut

P.S. Steve's column was outstanding. I once volunteered to ref an 8-year-old game and had the coach screaming across the field at me that I blew the call. I found out later that I did blow the call but he didn't set a good lesson of sportsmanship that day.