I Can Restrain Myself from Putting Concussed People Into Closets

You’re a college football coach at a big ole fancy brain academy in Texas.  Hypodermically, let’s call it Texas Tech.  Last year you led your team – for demonstrative purposes let’s call them The Red Raiders – to its best record ever.  You negotiate a big bullion contract to coach your flat ass off for years to come.  You and the athletic director basically screw with one another, because you’re competitive as hell and think you’re the biggest cup in the jock due to your success.  You or someone close to you is smart enough to negotiate a rather hefty, hefty, hefty bonus into said agreement reduced to writin’ and such.  A player of yours gets a concussion while practicin’; to help your flat ass get your Bob Barker Bucks, you respond by telling a trainer to lock him in the “darkest, tightest spot”.  Let’s say the darkest and tightest spot – get your mind out of the gutter – is an electrical closet.  I’ve never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but I’m pretty sure those things are not upgradeable to suites with complimentary intercontinental breakfasts.  Why not add to this scenario by posting a “guard” outside this juice room shant we?  This happens twice maybe.  You could never fathom that the rich kid with the soft noggin’ who spent two practices in Schneider’s Room of Wonders would tell his momma and his daddy (Apparently this “hypothetical coach” never read/ watched Richey Rich).  Because of this, you are suspended from coaching in something called the Valero Alamo Bowl (it’s goatee, eye patch-wearing evil twin brother is the Volare Elmo Bowl).  If you’re still the lead Red Raider on January 1, 2010, you get your self $800K in a new crisp, uncirculated check.  You hire a lawyer – because EVERYONE should have a high priced attorney on retainer- to help try to get you the small portion of your bonus that will not be eaten up by his fee.  You and your law dog decide to file a motion asking a judge to temporarily restrain Texas Tech from suspending you from coaching in the Fiero San Antonio Bowl?  Huh?  Cut to the taste, the AD you’ve been treating like hell since B.C. fires your flat crazy ass before you get a hearing on your TRO ( Oh God no, it’s lawyer speak! Run for the hills and don’t be negligent and cause foreseeable harm to others you owe a duty to!).  Who would have thunk you could be fired, thereby ending your employment and making your TRO moot (It ain’t Chinese or Japanese, it’s Legalease!)?  My theory is whatever concussed the boy they forced into the closet must have brained them, because anyone who thinks they could force someone to keep them on the payroll has never been shunned from the Big Dance, invited to the NIT, or gotten drunk and drove with Billy Gillispie.  As another lawyer friend of mine just put it – oh yeah, I’ve got another job – “You’d file something like that if you were fat, dumb, live in Texas, and think you’re entitled to everything.”  See what the GWB years did to us?  Oh yeah, by the by, this all really happened and the cat’s name is now Former Coach Mike Leach.

Let me break down the theory of a TRO for ya in a way that only I can.  Take good notes, their will be a test afterwards - I might put on a cardigan and ask you to be my neighbor.  Not proclaiming to know somethin’ about TX LAW – which may or may not be an airport in Los Angeles – I’m going to explain it from KY LAW’s viewpoint.  According to something called Rule 65.03 in the Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure (CR 65.03), you can temporarily restrain folks from doing things at the commencement of an action, or while it is pending in the wind, all secret like and without notice to the other party - ONLY IF the facts put forthwith in a paper with sworn words show the persona’s rights are being, or will be finagled by their foe.   Said personas may also expect to be exposed to quick and hard-to-fix injuries, loss of duckets, or other hurt before the foe or their shyster can get all responsive and stuff AND persona’s shyster swears he attempted to somehow serve the TRO on their foe and reasons as to why their foe shant be told about their legality.  Furthermore, heretofore, wherefore and thou sayeth naught, if the injury is not very serious – think legal equivalent of a hangnail, chronic halitosis, and The Jimmy Legs – you don’t shoot or score.

Who wants to attempt to explain all this for 5 extra credit points and a plastic bobble of your choosing out of Teddy’s Treasure Chest?  Essentially, what all this means is there was no way in hell that flat assed bastard was going to be able to force TT to keep him on the tit until he suckled $800K more of their milk, because you can’t force people to keep you at work in a non-union like atmosphere.  This is like saying Obama could file a temporary restraining order against the Electoral College to keep him in office for the next four years, even after being defeated by some fool with an angry right wing.  Now, that being long windedly said, if you had what we in the business call a “contract”, you could sue your former employer for “breach of contract”.  That doesn’t mean the contract was signed upside over, or the language went left to right – a little gynecological baby birthin’ humor.  It just means you thought your “contract” gave you certain rights you were screwed out of by being fired, and you want your money/benefits and maybe some dough for them being jerks. “Dough for them being jerks” is legal jingle for “punitive damages”. Yep, being a jerk can drop your bank balance.

It’s not like TT had to search for Bobby Fisher to pull off the legal equivalent to being kinged when they fired Flat Boy Slim prior to his $800K incentive “vesting”.  Not “vesting” or “vested” like Ted Striker in the disco scene in Airplane!  Vested as in you did something, and somebody promised you something in return if you did said something.  That obvious move of being fired was why the TRO that should have been permanently restrained from being filed was filed.  He wanted to stay his suspension, or keep himself suspended and not axed until 1/1/10; because if he still had the keys to all the closets on campus on that date – even if it was being stayed or just suspended – he would get a $800K cake to possess and eat as well.  I’ll give them some credit for their attempt to blend humor and the law, but restraining something just isn’t that funny.  How many people into bondage that you’ve met have a sense of humor?  Sure, a good patent leather or ball gag joke will get a giggle or three, but it goes right back into dominatrixing this, and dominatrixing that before you can break out the Gimp.

And finally, how does a sport with statistics such as “sacks” and “tackles” have something called the Humanitarian Bowl?  I never saw Ghandi pass rushin’ no body.  Mother Teresa never set the record for most poor people tackled in a poverty season.  I’m just sayin’ it makes less since than Mushmouth after a dental procedure.