Eunice 100% of the Shots You Don't Take
How Social Media, Local News Media, Old People, and an Irrelevant Sanctioning Body Want to Punish Teenagers Playing Football Into Submission Over One Incident
I married a small-town girl from Reserve, NM. Pop. 300+
Before her, when I was still very young, I dated almost exclusively in towns with 1 stoplight or less. It wasn’t because I liked a particular “type” of girl, because small towns have cowgirls, yes…but there are rocker chicks, girly girls, hippies, intellectual types and pretty much anyone you would prefer. I liked them all. Check my stat sheet… nah, please don’t.
Was there a reason I liked small-town girls? Simple. They were real and rarely full of shit. Even if they were horrible people, at least they were real. I loved that everyone went to the basketball games of the high school, making it a community affair. I loved that the county fairs/town events had everyone there, unlike similar events in bigger towns. It was a familial feel in towns I wasn’t familiar with.
Magdalena, Quemado, Reserve, Ft. Sumner, House, Capitan, were just a few of the towns I got to know because of the women I dated. I got to meet the people of the community and saw how these people tick. I really liked it a lot.
Would I live in any of those places? Nah. Not at all. It’s like Vegas for me. Visit but don’t stay. It has more cons than pros, but the pros for me were dating people that I wouldn’t normally see in my hometown.
I have an affection for small town New Mexico, and my defense of them truly felt tested in the last week by an event that happened in the high school sporting world. I will get to that in just a second.
One thing I learned from those small towns is when I was younger, and now at 40, seeing the next generation of younger kids comingle with each other, is that you have more friends in more towns than a big city kid would have. You party, you go hunting, you hang out with a group of friends that may live in 3-5 different zip codes within your area that are all small town kids.
I for one think it’s cool. Small town folk aren’t against going 30-40 miles to be around friends, simply because that’s what it takes to be around friends in those areas. Magdalena kids knew Reserve Kids, House and Ft. Sumner kids go to school together. Quemado is 40 miles from Reserve, but all those kids for the most part know all the other kids…except for the weird churchy, cult-y ones that have parents that live out there because they want to blow up the government, and serve Jesus and all that.
(Ok, that’s another con about living there. Crazies are more prominent. Think Unabomber.)
The worst thing you can do as an outsider (someone like me for instance) is try to fucking understand people’s friendships and relationships in these small towns. You can’t comprehend it because you are NOT a small town person. Period. That’s the respect I give these people, particularly young kids. You can’t tell them who to be, because they actually spent more time carving out an identity than you ever have.
So I found it very fucking rich that this state, two media outlets, a sports sanctioning body who’s sole job is to find reasons your kids are horrible people to punish because they are weird school overseeing sadists and a bunch of holier than thou people who NEVER would understand small town culture decided to pick on a bunch of kids for doing the one thing small town kids do, which is have rivalries with other small towns to pass the time, which is the same as their parents, grandparents and so forth.
Eunice, NM. Never dated anyone there. I am familiar with it from my time in Portales, NM at ENMU. It’s in Lea County, close to the city of Hobbs. This is important, because even though a city of 40,000 is nearby 20 miles away and they hosted a WWE Event 6 years ago that I attended, which shows how “big” that city is, it still very much on an island in Lea Co.
About 20 miles the other way is the city of Jal. I used to call them “my adopted” high school football team, because I used to tell my cousin when I was a teenager that I was going to randomly pick a small town team to follow on the Friday football shows on local ABQ TV. I ended up with Jal which is an acronym for “John A. Lynch,” who was a cattle rancher back in the day.
Both towns have 2,000+ people in it. Jal folks are a little more well off, as many of those folks work in the oil industry.
Adults will see those things more than kids, and to that point, when you are in high school, you can give two shits about median income. You are just looking for people to party with, hook up with, live your wild teen years with.
So when it is time to play sports, since these damn kids know each other for years and years and years, it becomes a tad more competitive than normal. Why? Because you are playing people you know. Your friends. Yes, there is a rivalry there, but it is only in the best sense. These kids will grow up and still talk about others in the nearby town.
Oh, Johnson? The one that played football for Jal like a decade ago? He owns the Chevron now, right? (I just made that up, but that’s how small town people talk.)
So a rivalry game between Eunice High Cardinals and the Jal Panthers happened on October 14th, 2023 in Eunice. The rivalry, which has likely been there for decades and contested by the players parents and grandparents was in full force that day.
It was a hard fought battle and in the end, Eunice pulled away from Jal and beat them 42-28.
Another small school game. Who cares, right? Well, apparently the media in Albuquerque did, although I will say this, what happened next I don’t agree with, and the kids in Eunice did deserve a punishment.
Backstory first. 49ers beat the holy hell out of the Dallas Cowboys a week prior. I didn’t watch it, because I was at my grandma’s researching a book I am writing. But one thing I did see was that Pro Bowl TE George “Ma and Pa” Kittle (that’s Chris Berman’s dumb nickname, not mine) scored a touchdown and lifted his jersey to show an undershirt that said “FUCK DALLAS”
First off, that’s a lot of sweat, my guy. You need to drink some Gatorade stat before you cramp up.
Secondly, I am a Cowboys fan (I guess), just toured AT&T Stadium in July, and I thought this was hilarious. I knew he would get fined, or possibly get in a fight, but I laughed at it. It’s a rivalry, one of the best in the NFL.
Thirdly, While this might be more antagonistic than what I have coming up regarding Eunice, don’t for one second think that parents should be offended by this. George Kittle doesn’t raise your kids, you do. If you are too shitty a parent to not get a lesson out of Kittle’s move, then that is all on you. Your job is to teach your kids lessons, not hope they learn shit watching a game on a commercial television station and an NFL game where fights in the stands are as prevalent as sunflower seeds on the ground.
God, get to it already James.
Sorry, I am a great writer, and I have a lot to say :)
Cut to later that week. Eunice beats Jal. At the end of the game from what it looks like, because they were all sweaty, Eunice kids lift up their jerseys and it says “FUCK JAL” underneath.
I will not show the photo here for reasons I will get to, but here’s a soccer player giving you an example of what it said.
Cue the women clutching their pearls.
Where’s Helen Lovejoy?
Now, I admit it. High Schools, particularly football games are soft targets for violence. Yes, shootings happens. Gang fights happen. Hell, I’ve had cousins jump other people, not on the other team, but it was Socorro on Socorro dumb teen fights. That’s bad and the sport is good right? Because on the field we throw pads and helmets on 14 year olds and watch them beat the shit out of each other, even though they are our kids, take pleasure on it to a point, and that’s ok, right?
That’s where the hypocrisy starts.
Ever been on a football field in any semi-competitive way? There are worse things being said than something on a goddamn shirt. People talk shit to each other. People talk shit to themselves. When I hit a “Final Jeopardy” right on TV, I do the DX crotch chop and say “Yeah, bitch!” to myself sometimes. I’m serious, and I worry that will impact my Jeopardy eligibility lol
It’s just the heat of the moment. Yes, they had shirts made, it is a little different, but I promise you they wouldn’t show them if they lost.
My thing is: What did you expect when you hype up rivalries, especially in the wake of UNM-NMSU, where I am going to have to write a book about the ridiculous way the media has portrayed that rivalry in the last couple of years, seemingly being a party to inciting people in my opinion.
So many people shared a photo of the kids with the shirt, that Eunice High had to self-report to the NMAA, which is the sanctioning body for high school sports in New Mexico. Several days later, they posted this Facebook post.
Now again, I agree with the kids being punished. What are you going to do, fine them $13,000 like NFL did Kittle? Nope, you have to take away the one thing they love, and I get that. But that’s where the punishment stops in my opinion.
You reading this (Unless you are a Eunice Schools Administrator) let me make it clear: IT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING JOB TO PUNISH THESE KIDS. Oh, but there’s been a ton of punishment on social media, and I blame KRQE in Albuquerque for that.
Look at their post 2 days ago
“DON’T MISS” (An opportunity to talk shit about someone else’s kids)
Has only 25 engagements, 23 comments and 3 shares. This was done almost 2 days ago. Not a lot, right?
Well.. the reason it says “Don’t Miss” is because they posted this several days before and it got wayyyyyyy more engagement, and engagement means clicks, which means more ad dollars! They thought they would get an equal amount of traction a second time around.
543 comments, 180 shares and 857 like buttons. Probably hundreds of thousands of views more compared to the latest one.
They shared it again, because they wanted to incite more people, because more people means more comments, and means more eyeballs on their product.
They are simply trying to milk a small town rivalry and a SELF-REPORTING, which means Eunice turned themselves in, into a comment fest where kids are called punks, being discussed as harshly as school shooters and basically bullying these kids for their awkward actions, whether premeditated or not.
One woman had great context, saying “Imagine all your worst moments as a teen broadcast to the world and have people judge you.”
As a man who survived 2 suicide attempts in high school, I can tell you this will lead to widespread bullying that will lead to mental issues for those kids. There’s no way around it.
The public will be on them, then their parents will feel that heat and take it out on them.
I can tell you there’s no doubt in my mind one of the kids in the photo that was punished by NMAA and his school likely got THE HOLY FUCK BEAT OUT OF HIM by his dad because of him getting in trouble.
Are you going to report dad to the child abuse hotline for that? Nah, those same assholes asking for the heads of the kids for wearing a shirt are the same ones who will say prayers on social media for child abuse victims and do nothing to help there. Hypocrites.
I guarantee you there’s some people who found the social media pages of those football players and lit them up in the DMs, calling them racial slurs, homophobic slurs, among other things, which will send those football players into a depression as well. Where’s your outrage on that? Is that more punishment, that they are going to be harassed by people they don’t know?
It’s so crazy to me. These people are being commissioned to punish them!
The ABQ Journal did a story about it as well. Lucky for a lot of us it is paywalled.
There’s part of it. I am a paying customer, albeit reluctantly. James Yodice is a great writer, although I will get to my big disagreement with him in a bit.
ABQ Journal on Facebook was popping off mainly with boomers that likely didn’t even read the article because it is paywalled:
173 like buttons, 201 comments, and 19 shares. A lot for the ABQ Journal.
ABQ Journal on X: Eh.
1 like. Old people who read the paper aren’t on X.
But reporter James Yodice, who I respect so much and is the best at what he does shares the photo of the kids uncensored on his X account and the floodgates open up.
I’m still not sharing the photo, and I will explain why in a second.
As many views as the Journal has circulation. Wow.
The power of going viral actually has afforded me a small career as a content creator, so I know how important those numbers are, though I make my bacon on Tiktok and through my podcast.
Now, I challenged him on his post, calling it exploitative, because his newspaper did NOT publish the photo of the kids, and even KRQE did but blurred the kids out.
This isn’t a journalistic post. It’s exploiting kids who can be as young as 12-13 years old, and I have a problem with that.
Yes, the kids were stupid and should be and have been punished. So who is this reporter to share the uncensored photo which is only going to stoke animus towards kids who are not old enough to drive, and have adults bullying them. That causes as much violence, whether it be verbal or otherwise than those shirts ever would.
It’s a post from a man who wrote a good article, referencing Kittle, and wrote it as a reporter should. Fanning the flames with a picture on his own time not promoting the article makes him part of the problem, pure and simple.
Now, ethically, since he didn’t link to his article to get people to pay the paywall, I guess he’s clear there, but then that means he is a part of aggregating the photo as a member of the public, which to me means he’s part of the story now, because his photo was the most shared on X, and for the most part not a lot of people were sharing it until the media came in and made it a story when it wasn’t.
Imagine someone just sharing pictures of your child online at their worst. I’m not a parent, but as a parent, how would you feel about that? His defense was that it was circulating online. So is a leaked sex tape from (insert celeb name here), but you sharing it doesn’t make it right as well because someone else did it.
As someone who had a stolen nude photo sent to his boss as a means of trying to get me fired, as someone who had people telling me to kill myself about 8 years ago for their own amusement, I can tell you that because someone else has something doesn’t mean it is right for you to share.
Now don’t get me wrong, I was 32 when that photo of me came out, and sadly it can be found on the internet still (believe me, I looked) and I did nothing to deserve that but trust the wrong people.
Some of you will still blame me, right? Hypocrites. Like you don’t use your phone for nefarious purposes at all.
Last weekend. I saw many videos of a nude woman in her 30s walking the streets of Las Cruces.. the main street mind you. People laughing and honking and making jokes of her weight and….grooming. Nevermind that woman was obviously having a mental episode in the videos. It was sad, because she needed mental help, and all she got was made fun of. She probably got arrested as well.
His photo, although he was meaning well, was put there to get a reaction. You don’t put a photo on there to get 1 like. He has enough football coaches, football fans, and other media on his social to be able to make that go viral. While he was likely NOT looking to gain off that post, again, he’s sharing photos of teens at their worst moments… kids as young as 12 years old.
One thing about small towns I remember… small kids suit up for varsity. 7th-8th graders. Unless all those football players are 18 in the photo, I don’t want to see it online. Simple as that.
I reported the post to Twitter saying it is doxxing and child exploitation, because it is. If I post a photo of some kid at the bus stop on the side of my house picking his nose and I say, “What a little dickface, picking his nose and wiping it on my wall. Where’s his parents to teach him manners?” It’s the same thing. Yes, it’s gross… but he’s not committing a crime. He’s just being crude, like the kids in the shirt.
But no, his post, and the media posts caused hundreds of thousands of people to get the chance to wail on a bunch of minors for manifesting a rivalry in a clothing form. Again, I am not in support of the kids’ actions, but merely defending them from adults taking their shots at them when they are at their lowest.
My favorite thing of James Yodice’s post and article is the phrase “Who commissioned these shirts?”
LOL. For about $30 I can buy a printer, $10 I can buy 10 iron on transfers for shirts, and for $3 per shirt for some plain hanes tees, I can make these shirts for as much as it costs to feed a family of 4 at Chili’s.
It’s really not hard. I used to make t-shirts to mock my enemies in my 20s. I have photos if you really want to see them.
The dumbest person in that group would have enough smarts to create the shirts.
“Commissioned” to me sounds like someone is creating a sculpture for a grand opening of some art museum.
The worst thing about this incident is actually a tie though. Nothing more condescending than parents of these kids, many of which would be about the age of the girls I dated in said small towns years ago, pretending this is the worst thing in the world that ever happened to their town. Dude, you never left town, and these rivalries are some of the only things to get out of the house for. Let’s not pretend you have evolved. You haven’t.
You know what the class motto for my high school was in 2001?
FUCK IT!
Yes, seriously.
FUCK IT!
It was in the yearbook and everything. All those idiots who voted for it (I didn’t get a vote) have kids in HS Football now.
That shows you society hasn’t gotten worse. It’s always been the same. We just have social media now.
Finally, the sanctioning body, the NMAA. Now to call them political is an understatement. They have their own agenda in the way they handle things. NIAA, AIA, AND UIL in other states around us get called out for their politics and how they handle kids in athletics all the time as well.
The NMAA’s recent “2 strikes and you are out” policy is a ham-handed way in trying to curtail any potential issues in NM Athletics. Recently Belen and Valley High (ABQ) got into a scuffle during a game that resulted in each team having one strike against them and each had to forfeit their next game
Belen is a small town in Valencia Co. and Valley High is a huge 2000+ enrollment high school in Albuquerque.
“After further review,” Valley didn’t have to forfeit their following game, although Belen still had to against Deming, which is a small town in SW New Mexico, and home of the worst run newspaper in the state.
Apparently Valley had “video evidence” that proved their case for appeal against Belen and they won it. Or could it be that Valley High from Albuquerque had more influential people fighting its case than poor little Belen had? While both had strikes against them, Belen still had to eat the forfeit, which is fine, but they were playing on the road at Deming, which takes away ticket sales, concessions and other revenue for Deming still and they had nothing to do with it.
How is that fair? Well according to the NMAA, who is the God of High School sports in NM, it is perfectly fair.
NMAA has several major corporate sponsors, many of whom prop up the sanctioning body by their donations. When you go to games, you see the corporate creep as well at the events.
What those corporate sponsorships do is allow influence to be exerted as well, and if someone is tangentially tied to a high school and they are part of the corporate sponsor structure, a conversation could be had.
Here’s gold level sponsors of NMAA:
I am very familiar with a lot of these sponsors…with of these sponsors I know well because of a friendship I have had for almost 20 years.
The owner of that particular company is as influential a person as it gets in New Mexico. But someone who worked hard to grow a business and a family before getting and growing influence. If he wanted to call in a favor to NMAA, he likely could.
If there was no sponsorship “partners” for NMAA, they would go away in two seconds and they wouldn’t be there to hand down arbitrary punishments.
How are we to know that Belen didn’t get screwed because one of the corporate sponsors called in a favor for Valley High? How do we know someone influenced the forfeiture of a game for Eunice even though the school self-reported and punished? We don’t know that, and therein lies the problem.
I can create a “Eunice High Football” social media page and say all kinds of disparaging things about other schools, and there’s no doubt NMAA would lay the smack down on Eunice based on the past actions.
I can commission a Eunice shirt, start crotch chopping their opponents at games and get them banned for a year. How does that make sense? It doesn’t
I am so tired of this story, that I had to write about it to get it out of my system. There’s a whole other Jal element to it that is as tasty, trust me. I am working on gathering that info.
Finally, I just want to say kids will be kids. Wearing a shirt like this will get you in trouble at school, but it is likely not going to make you a school shooter. These kids from both towns likely shared a couple of brewskis later that night, and maybe one player kissed a girl from Jal or One Jal player shared his stolen Jager with a Eunice player.
Kids have goldfish memories and the crappy adults are the ones with a steel trap mind. Yes, I do consider the shirts bullying in a sense, but I consider comments like I shared above bullying as well.
I consider what the reporter did on X sharing the photo ethically wrong. His “it was circulated on the internet before” is the journalistic “If your friend jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, does that mean you will?”
But I digress, This is a non-story made a story by the ABQ Journal and KRQE, two entities that very rarely cover Eunice or Jal, NM. Eunice and Jal are actually in the Midland-Odessa TV market and they didn’t even cover this shit either. They were looking for clicks and likes… just like the kids in the FUCK JAL shirts, but are less obvious about it.
Finally, it’s funny that every one referenced George Kittle as the reason these kids did this shit. Well, George Kittle did his thing because he likely heard of a story from a man named Gary Plummer, who was on the SF 49ers in their Super Bowl 29 winning season as a linebacker did the same thing against the Cowboys in a game I watched as an 11 year old
If Kittle wasn’t on the 9ers, he never would have made this shirt, especially if he was in Dallas, so why are we not blaming 63 year old Gary Plummer for Eunice High?
Because that’s not how America works. We pick on the most fragile ones, which are the high school kids.
As I said earlier. We were always this vulgar, we just have social media now, and the whiners in the general public are empowered by social media more than ever.
Knowing that Plummer was the OG t-shirt wearer would still not deter people like Yodice or the media outlets making a stink on this, because many won’t remember 1995 and many want to take the “popular” stand of mocking a bunch of kids too stupid to know any better.
I’m honestly just waiting for a column calling for the arrest of George Kittle’s parents from someone to get clicks. It’s coming.
- James