Texas Football Coach Caught Slipping Some Bribe Money To The Ref After A Big Win Says It Was Just A "Poker Chip He Found On The Field"
Dallas News - Calhoun High School (Port Lavaca) head football coach Richard Whitaker doesn’t even use social media.
He first heard about his unintended social media fame from his daughter, who is in college and had seen this clip online:
When Whitaker got to school this morning, his players were talking about it. By the afternoon, the entire Internet was too.
“It’s amazing how things travel from social media,” Whitaker told The Dallas Morning News Tuesday afternoon. “That’s why we tell our guys you cant put things out there you don’t know the truth about.”
The knee-jerk reaction of those who saw the video was that Whitaker, after beating B.F. Terry High (Rosenberg) Thursday at Traylor Stadium, slipped cash to an official.
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Coach, what’s your explanation for this?
TBL – “Prior to the game Thursday night, there were poker chips laying on the field,” Whitaker told me. “These poker chips, we found out later, were being used by one of the bands that uses the field. They use them as markers. Prior to the game, Terry football coach Tim Tekyl — he and I have been friends for many years, since the mid-90’s — he reaches down and picks up one of those chips, hands it to me, and says, ‘Put this in your pocket. It will bring you good luck tonight.’ This was all in good humor.”
“And so, after the game, again all in good humor, I reached out and handed the poker chip to the official,” Whitaker continued. “What you don’t see on the video is when he passes by, he sees it’s a cheap poker chip. He starts laughing, I start laughing, we point at each other, and I walked off. That is it. Coach Tekyl can tell you the same story. The official has been contacted. He has the poker chip in his bag. It’s a meaningless poker chip with no value whatsoever. He has it in the bag with his whistle. That’s the story. If social media wants to make this out to be something else, that’s not true.”
Suuuuuuuure. Just a poker chip casually laying out there on the field that you picked up and stuck in your pocket. Completely worthless. No value whatsoever. I bet.
Listen Coach Whitaker, don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining, and don’t pay off the ref for hooking you up with all the calls down the stretch and tell me it’s just a valueless poker chip that was all a joke. This is Texas high school football my man. Friday Night Lights. Ever heard of it? Only this is real life, with real stakes, and real bribe money. This ain’t Vince and East Dillon taking on JD McCoy and Dillon High as some actors play fake football on a Hollywood set, this is the real deal, Calhoun taking down BF Terry and trying to win real State. Nobody would blame you for slapping a couple hundos into the hand of your “long time friend” for some crucial phantom holding calls, not when the stakes are this high, not in Texas.