A Georgia head football coach has been suspended for multiple games following a practice incident which some might even misguidedly consider humorous: He kicked a player in the rear end.
As first reported by the Albany Herald and WALB-TV, Americus-Sumter (Ga.) High football coach Michael Pollock will sit on the sidelines during Friday's game against Albany as ongoing punishment for an incident at one of the team's practices, when Pollock reportedly booted an unidentified player in the butt.
The incident clearly qualifies as abuse, albeit of the more unorthodox and bizarre variety. There has been no indication whether the player in question was injured, or if he was the person who reported the incident to authorities.
Regardless, the interaction was serious enough that it pushed Pollock off the team's sidelines last Friday during the team's 34-18 victory against Macon County (Ga.) High, and will keep him there again this week.
There is no indication of how long Pollock will remain on the sidelines, though it is telling that the school has said he is still its football coach and athletic director. It seems likely that if he was going to be fired, he already would have been.
In the meantime, Pollock's assistant Chris Wade has served as the team's head coach in Pollock's stead, and will continue to do so until the coach is allowed to return. The temporary head coach said that the entire incident had created significant uncertainty with the team and on the Americus-Sumter campus.
"It's a tough situation right now," Wade told the Albany Herald. "We're just trying to keep the focus on Albany. And that's all I can really say."
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