"He Ain't Waking Up For Midnight Feedings" – Ole Miss Coach Joe Judge Educates His Player's Pregnant Mothers On Importance of Letting Daddy Sleep Through The Night
Sorry, Toots. Your baby daddy was married to the game long before he knocked you up. It's football season. Not baby season. Dad needs his full 8 hours. If you really must insist on sharing a home with your significant other + shared newborn child, there better be at least 2 closed doors between them from the hours of 10pm-6am. And if you could soundproof the baby's room as if it were a music studio, that would be best.
Well said, Will Compton. Surely people who have never been around sports on that high of a level will have perfectly rational, nuanced reactions to this clip.
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Now I'm not sure why the hell Joe Judge would say this. It feels like that's something he could have kept to himself. It's probably something he shouldn't bother saying to his players wives and girlfriends at all. Like, is what he says really resulting in him getting better rested players? Are his players really that incapable of managing their time, and having that conversation with their significant other without a coach strong arming them into it?
Maybe they are. I don't know. That being said, maybe I'm the asshole here, but in the modern era of college athletics where players could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly millions) for a single season of football, to pay a kid that much money in exchange for uninterrupted sleep for a 4-5 month stretch of time… that kinda seems reasonable?
It's not like this is a foreign concept. Father's have long been traveling for work, and spending stretches of time away from home in order to make money for their families. It happens in every industry. Mother's do it too. Parenting is a two-way street. Sometimes there are periods of time where one parent focuses on making the money, and the other focuses on the kid. For a player who Ole Miss could be paying life-changing amounts of money for a couple seasons of football… depending on how he's delivering the message, it feels like a fair request from a coach.
Now when it comes to college football, obviously every player is different. You can't tell this to a walk-on. If I were a mother, and Joe Judge told me this, but my boyfriend/husband wasn't making shit for NIL, and was riding the bench every game with no real shot of ever earning meaningful playing time, I'd tell him to go fuck himself. But if your baby daddy is the star quarterback making $1M for a single year of football… I mean c'mon. That's a no brainer. Joe Judge shouldn't have to explain this to people. If I told my wife I had to prioritize work for half-a-year to bring home that type of money, she'd be over the moon.
And in the end, it probably doesn't matter what Coach Judge tells a couple of young parents. If the mom wants to ignore him, or if the dad weighs the pros and cons of not getting a full night's sleep during football season, and decides a happy wife/girlfriend (and quality one-on-one time with his baby) would be better for his mental state than sleeping in a room alone with noise-cancelling headphones on, then that's what he's going to do. Maybe it affects his play, and next season he doesn't make as much money. Or maybe he plays perfectly fine regardless of how much he helps with the baby. It's still his choice.
Overall, unless Joe Judge has a gun to their head, it seems like an ok thing to request. It's probably decent advice for a lot of these families. For a lot of players, that year could be the most important year of their careers. It could help set their families up for life financially. But again… if the dad would rather be heavily involved with his newborn baby… he can still do that. College football players are adults who can prioritize things for themselves. Joe Judge isn't showing up at their homes every night to make sure daddy is asleep and secluded.
At least I don't think he is. Now if he's doing that… this might be a different conversation.