Friday Night Tykes Season Finale Recap
The moment Long Beach Patriots assistant @SeXyAsSAbrina offered 50 bucks to any kid who’d knock a 13yo out of a game #FridayNightTykes pic.twitter.com/gO7rSWkrL7
— Jerry Thornton (@jerrythornton1) March 24, 2017
With other news coming as fast as I can keep up the last couple of weeks, fell behind on America’s most beloved mashup of youth sports and human trainwrecks, Friday Night Tykes. But the last episodes paid off the wait. Season 4 ended with superlatives all over the place. Best Game in Show History. Biggest Comeback. Best Athlete Ever. Worst Officiated Game. And best of all, possibly the top five entries ever in the coveted category of Most Deranged Behavior by Coaches and Parents:
–Game 1: Rockets vs. Wildcats
The TYFA semifinal playoff game features the Judson Jr. Rockets and the Floresville Wildcats. We’re told right away that the Rockets are worried because the last two times they played in Floresville, the officials were totally in the bag for the home team. We then meet Wildcats’ QB Mike Dotson, “the best quarterback in TYFA” and his coach Tommy Bunn, whose core coaching philosophy seems to be based on putting his nose against Dotson’t facemask and whisper “You’re gonna win this game for us” and … well nothing else. That’s all we see him do.
Things start going off the rails for the Rockets early as they get a “sideline warning” penalty, meaning the coaches were standing on the Forbidden Zone that is the 4-yard wide white area. Meanwhile across the field, the Wildcats are basically holding a coaches meeting between the numbers and the hashmarks. Ruh roh. Still, after giving up a couple of scores the Rockets get a late touchdown to make it a 13-8 game at the half.
In the second half, the shitstorm begins. A 4th down stop by the Rockets’ D is nullified by another sideline infraction and leads to a score. A successful onsides kick leads to another touchdown drive over the sound of a Rockets’ mom shrieking “Refs are GARBAGE! TYFA is GARRRBAGGGE!!!” The teams exchange touchdowns until the Rockets pull out to a 37-27 lead with 7 minutes to go. That’s when the Wildcats go to work. And by Wildcats, I mean the officiating crew. The Rockets get flagged for an illegal substitution while on defense, causing team president Keith Dyson to scream “What is this? The United States of Floresville???” Followed by 50 yard TD pass by Dotson that makes it a 4 point game.
But the Rockets keep their composure enough to put the game away with a short touchdown run in the final minute. That is, until it’s called back for holding. The subsequent attempt fails and the Wildcats take over on downs at their own 6 with 0:28 on the clock. Bunn goes deep into his playbook, telling Dotson “You’re gonna win this game for us” before every play, each of which is the same designed bootleg. Dotson runs it to midfield and gets out of bounds to stop the clock, with yet another 15 yard sideline penalty tacked on, just for laughs. Another run by Dotson is stopped as time runs out and the Rockets are the winners. At least until the ref puts 6.1 seconds back on the clock because it stops automatically on a first down. And adds on a 15 yard unsportsmanlike as the Rockets sideline loses their shit. Another Dotson QB keeper leads to a sack and the game is over yet again. Until the defense gets called for the offsides, with another unsportsmanlike tacked on to give Floresville one untimed down from the 25. This time, Bunn decides it’s time to mix it up, telling Dotson “I need you to win the game for us.” The change in strategy works as he takes it in for the game winning score.
Then? Pandemonium. I don’t mean regular pandemonium, the way we use the word when the student section storms the court to celebrate. I mean capital “P” Pandemonium, meaning the castle filled with demons that is the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost. Rockets coaches go after the referee. A kid calls him “Sorry ass BITCH!” Tears everywhere. A dad has to be restrained by his wife and someone else holds the ref back. Dyson and TYFA president/human clenched fist Chris Davis go nose-to-nose, debating whether TYFA has in it in for the Rockets, who is invading whose personal space and whether or not to literally pull out their dicks and measure them or just keep it metaphorical. Meanwhile the Wildcats gather for the most joyless and tainted trophy presentation since … the last Friday Night Tykes trophy presentation.
–Game 2: Tha 210 Outlaws vs. Steelers
TYFA, like the NBA is a superstar-driven league. And these two teams have them. Tha 210 have the DuBose twins and the Steelers with coach’s son Sedrick Alexander and Treveon McCutcheon. That’s where the similarities end. Tha 210 Outlaws are a first year expansion team that is $5,000 in the hole, while the Steelers have won three championships and have a core they call The Trophy Boys entering their final season of youth ball. As Outlaws head coach J Joplin reminds us, he did time in federal prison for selling drugs, has survived multiple gun shot wounds and coaches football to keep kids on the straight and narrow. A good lesson that would be easier to follow if I wasn’t distracted by the red and black beads dangling on his walrus tusk-like hanging beard. But still, stay in school kids.
There’s plenty of bad blood going into this one due to the fact the Outlaws feel like they got jobbed the last time the teams met when the refs called the game to a minor issue like a massive lightning storm centered on the field. The Tha 210 score early and it’s fair to say the Steelers don’t handle adversity like Tha 2016 Patriots. Sed Alexander goes down in a heap, crying out in pain. It’s the first of, by my count, 7 times in the game he doesn’t get up and has a crying fit. He never exactly specifies where he’s hurt. He just sort of implies it’s somewhere, like a guy standing before a judge explaining why he’s too injured to work and that’s why he can’t pay child support.
And McCutcheon is not buying his act for one goddamned second. He’s disgusted not only that Sed keeps begging out of the game, but that the coaches keep putting him back in and giving him the ball. After Sed finishes his performance doing the Sonny Corleone tollbooth death scene, Tre Tre says “It’s Daddy Ball, bro,” a phrase I wished I’d used when my son’s coaches had all their kids playing every snap and 25 kids going home without needing to throw their uniform in the hamper on the way to a 3-8 season. But I digress.
Anyway, the Steelers can’t mount any kind of comeback. And the DuBose twins’ mom does not pass on the chance to make Sed’s life miserable, taunting him with “Don’t cry! Don’t cry!” with a voice that sounds like a rape whistle on the way to a 26-8 blowout and perhaps the end of the Steelers dynasty.
–Game 3: Outlaws vs. Patriots
This is the Snoop League title game between the original San Antonio Outlaws and the Long Beach Patriots, played in no less a venue than the Ford Center, the Cowboys practice facility and another of Jerry Jones’ pharaoh-like palace to his own majesty. We get to see various families packing for the road trip, including Outlaws DC Clayton Guillory, who’s having one of those moments every parent has when their kid is chaotically trying to pack. Until he decides to go to a place not too many parents of 13-year-olds go. “When he starts having sex he’ll probably call me and be like ‘Hey dad, he’s naked. What do I do?'”
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Which is actually some Growing Pains-type fatherly advice compared to what they get at the team hotel. At their first morning meeting, Outlaws coaches start lecturing the team about how the hotel manager told them he had complaints about three different rooms with kids running around and bothering the other guests. So they skip right over talk about embarrassing their families or the program, blow straight past threatening to take away playing time, and go right to telling them if they don’t behave now, “Your ass will wind up in a penitentiary” after getting stopped “with two kilos of drugs in your car.” Or dead. My mom used to just stop at telling me she’d take my Atari away.
Without a doubt, the breakout star of this one is Sabrina Vaifauna, the Patriots assistant coach. Picture Miko Grimes if she was pumped full of more HGH than the entire female roster of the WWE, a voice like the Bruins’ foghorn and the moral compass of a wolverine. When Outlaws star Myziel Miller goes down with a knee injury covering a pass, my girl Sabrina promises the receiver she’ll pay him 50 bucks if Myziel doesn’t come back. “To-night!” When Myziel is sent back out, she doubles down, offering nothing less that a bounty on him. “It’s easy! Get him out. Get rich!” I’m going to suggest that Coach Vaifauna get a good lawyer on retainer fast because she should be hearing from the Texas Rangers within the hour.
As Myziel limps his way onto the field, some coach ups the Creep Factor by saying “That’s a man right there. On Father’s Day, kids give him presents. The rest of the game is pretty much the Outlaws rolling, 31-19 while head coach Fred Davis and OC Marecus Goodloe have arguments 5,500 through 6,000 on the season about the play calling and another unsatisfying trophy celebration.
–Game 4: That 210 vs. Hurricanes
If this was a Disney movie, the ragtag bunch of upstarts with the ex-con coach who practice on a dirt field and can’t afford a big bouncy house thing to run out of would best the powerhouse team while an inspirational anthem from a non-threatening Tweener pop star plays and the credits roll. But this is not a fairy tale. This is the TYFA championship.
Instead what we get is a look at the Houston Hurricanes indoor practice facility. 35,000 sq. ft. that is bigger and better equipped than the Y I used to pay 6o bucks a month for and has its own ER and Physical Therapy rooms. They also have the single best football player in FNT history, running back Dahmeir Scott. Scott is Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson made flesh. An untackleable manchild who looks like he’d give you 85 rushing yards in an ACC game, but is an irresistible force here. On the very first play from scrimmage, Dahmeir goes the distance, while a dumbfounded DuBose mom yells “Damn! Why didn’t you grab him?” from the safety of the upper deck of Jerry Jones’s summer palace. Some time around Scott’s sixth touchdown she offers this coaching tip: “When are you gonna start blocking that boy?”
Aside from watching Dahmeir Scott finish puberty, earn his driver’s license, graduate college and start a family on his repeated trips to Tha 210 end zone, we get the absolute worst thing that’s ever happened in FNT‘s four seasons. Outlaws Ashton DuBose gets drilled in the skullbucket, forcing an interception. As he comes off the field, the 13-year-old tells his coaches “My head hurts.” Not once. Not twice. Three times. Which they treat by telling him to catch his breath, offering him water and, from a voice off camera “They need you.”
Apparently because they failed to notice the Roger Rabbit cartoon birds flying around his head and with the Outlaws hanging around and the score 33-24, DuBose is sent back out. For a QB keeper. He’s drilled again. Finally in tears, the kid taps his head and coaches are forced to take him, stumbling sideways like a crab, to the sidelines again. He sits there, his eyes reduced to slits and rolling back in his head while a coach suggests he takes deep breaths to “get some air to your brain.” Which is really all a kid whose brain has been slammed against the inside of his skull needs. Thanks, Dr. Omalu.
Anyway, Mrs. DuBose finally says her kid is not going back in the game as Dahmeir Scott runs for more of his 3,000 yards on the way to the 45-24 blowout. While Outlaws kids are inconsolably crying, the coaching staff takes turns telling them they shouldn’t be crying because there are more important things in life and that crying is a good thing, because it shows football is really important to them. I have never seen a moment – or an hour of television – that captured the amazing and fucked up world of youth football so perfectly.