by Jon Franklin
The start of the 2025 football season on the high school, collegiate and professional level has seen a complete lack of discipline and common sense. Ranging from commonplace trash talk, to racial slurs, fighting, and now to spitting – America’s most popular game is turning into a farce.
Back on August 22nd, Cedar Ridge traveled to East Chapel Hill for the season opening football game against the Wildcats. Despite being much improved on both sides of the ball, the Red Wolves had difficulty in def T ending big plays. Ultimately, the Red Wolves fell to the Wildcats, 44-0.
But in the waning moments of the game, emotions got the worst of the Red Wolf players and coaches. Officials ruled that the Red Wolf players said unsportsmanlike things towards their opponents while not stopping play when the whistle blew, thus a litany of penalty flags for personal fouls. It also caught the ire of some coaches who voiced their displeasure with choice language towards the officials, that resulted in more flags. Two of them were eventually disqualified.
I was in the press box assisting Curran Campbell with radio coverage for this website. I have no idea what was said, so I’ll leave it there.
Last Thursday in the opening game of the NFL regular season, the Philadelphia Eagles opened defense of their Super Bowl LXIII championship against their NFC East rival, the Dallas Cowboys.
Following the opening kickoff and a delay for injury, Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter and Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott engaged in heated banter before Carter spat upon Prescott. Video later surfaced that Prescott spit at Carter before Carter retaliated. Carter was ejected from the game, and the Eagles were given a 15-yard flagrant unsportsmanlike conduct penalty while Prescott was unfazed. As Carter’s ejection came before the opening snap, the League office ruled the ejection was a game suspension. Prescott has yet to receive any discipline.
Another incident occurred in Week Two of the 2025 college football season when Florida defensive tackle Brenden Bett spat upon South Florida offensive lineman Cole Skinner after a play during the Bulls’ late 4th quarter drive. Bett was ejected and the 15-yard penalty was instrumental in helping South Florida in upsetting the 13th-ranked Gators on a walk-off 20-yard field goal by Nico Gramatica.
A lack of decorum and sportsmanship extended to fútbol when Luis Suarez of MLS’ Inter Miami FC was banned for six games after expectorating saliva upon a Lumen Field staffer in Seattle when Miami defeated the Seattle Sounders in the 2025 Leagues Cup Final. In the fracas that happened near the end of the match, Miami midfielder Sergio Busquets punched Seattle’s Obed Vargas while Miami defenseman Tomás Avilés was also involved the fray. Busquets was given a two-game ban while Avilés received a three-game suspension. All received heavy fines.
Athletes at the scholastic level often emulate their heroes. When they see them and their mannerisms, like a first down sign, a need for flag – they will do it in a high school game. Sadly, the negative stuff is also being seen at the scholastic level. It’s a cascading effect that must be stopped. If you spit on someone, you should go to jail for assault. That’s just disgusting on so many levels.
Going back to North Carolina high schools. The North Carolina High School Athletic Association released a statistic that in August of the 2025 football season, 100 ejections were reported statewide. While the details of the report were not released as to the exact locations, it was noted that the 100 ejections were a 35% increase from the 74 ejections from the same period in the previous season. Other sports such as cross country, women’s golf, women’s tennis, and volleyball were all ejection-free.
The two reasons for the ejections were profanities and racial slurs along with fighting.
The NCHSAA has a new sportsmanship initiative called “Game Locked In”. It’s no different than the previous one of “We Make the Right Call”, emphasizing that sportsmanship is the main emphasis on every part of every game within high school athletics. I have a reader from the NCHSAA that I read before each contest.
Within the past few weeks among the football players, it seems this initiative has been going in one ear and out the other or it’s not registering. If the change was truly needed, it seemed student-athletes were either picking the lock or making the right call got the wrong number.
From the announce position, I do what I can to create a positive environment for everyone. Granted, I don’t listen to much modern music. In some modes of modern music, I simply just don’t get into their vibe and culture. At my age, I’m more relaxed into things of the classic realm. I use music from the 70’s to today that’s widely used among the athletic community, but I am open to using modern styles.
When I used to work in the collegiate and semi-professional realm, the music was more risqué, but very much edited. Then again, I wasn’t in charge of playing it. Problem is, the participants in the college/semipro game and the main demographics of the attendees are adults. Three years ago, I was given a list of twenty songs to use in pre-game for a Cedar Ridge football game. I had to deny 16 of them because of the frequent use of explicit language, the verbiage of violence (including murder), and the use of sexual innuendo (including sexual acts & genitalia). Only four of them made the cut.
But when you work with high school athletes, music must be CLEAN or heavily edited. Why? They are underage kids playing games in front of families (including underage siblings) and their peers who are underage by default. It can’t have foul language, no verbiage to violence, sexual acts, innuendo or genitalia – along with drugs and alcohol. You can’t play inappropriate music in an audience that involves underage children while at the same time tell them to say no to drugs and alcohol, abstain from youthful lusts, while instilling morals in hopes that they do the right thing.
According to The Rolling Stones – You Can’t Always Get What You Want. That’s exactly right, Mick.
If student-athletes are listening to these forms of music and media, and watching their music and athletic influences act coarse on a regular basis – it seems that it has such a transferrable, destructive ability. Is it really a wonder of why college and high school student-athletes are engaging in repeated acts of unsportsmanlike behavior on the playing surface? Let’s face it, young people are impressionable and copy things they see and hear coming from those that inspire them.
A few columns ago, I mentioned that a return to DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) as a core class in middle and high school could help students develop critical thinking skills, proper communication, along with better ways to deal with pressure situations. Sadly, after hearing this report from the NCHSAA, a need for a return to DARE or an equivalent, is needed more than ever.
But this column brings up the big issue – Sportsmanship. We see the handshake lines before and after games. But what exactly is brought up by the coaches in practices or games? Does the music these student-athletes listen to counter-affect what coaches teach about picking up an opponent off the ground following a play? If a player trash talks, does a coach tell their player to keep their mouth shut to avoid getting a penalty when doing so plays into the hands of their opponent? Then again, is a coach talking junk to them, to include profanities, in practice?
If athletes are blowing up or spitting at each other on the field, then what are they doing to each other or others off the field? Even fans at games are now acting out of order – that’s my next column.
If cursing and racial slurs are the bulk of the reasons why ejections are through the roof, is it because they’re learning it from home? From media? From each other? From the coaches? Regardless, there’s got to corrective action from all fronts. If it comes from inside of the program, how is it being addressed by the head coach and the athletic director? In the words of Barney Fife, “NIP IT!”
I’m surrounded daily by those who made bad choices, and it all started from their days as a teenager. It’s sad to say that if youth can’t or won’t contain their aggression and transform them into constructive forms of communication as teens, then they simply won’t know how to communicate at home, at school, in a relationship, in a job, or in the community when they become adults.
But many do. And for the ones that do, they’re going to accomplish amazing things because they are acting upon the lessons learned from great parents and coaches, as well as other role models. The work of enforcing sportsmanship isn’t just a school thing. It’s a home thing, a church thing, a youth league thing, a coaching thing, etc. It begins at an early age.
I tend to not use Bible verses, but this one is spot on – Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way (they) should go, and when (they) are old, (they) will not depart from it.”
If you train kids in the right ways, they won’t forget what they’re taught. In fact, they will even thank you for it. If you’re in a position of influence in the life of a student-athlete – let alone a child – you can teach to instruct and correct to improve. But if you allow them to fail, you have failed, and then everyone fails until someone steps up and teaches them the right thing to correct their behavior.
Sportsmanship is still the name of the game. Let’s all lock-in to improve the games and our athletes.
