Coy Sheppard, a senior at Mendenhall High School in Mississippi, decided not to sue his school for kicking him off the football team, where he is kicker. But only because the Simpson County school board met and decided the 17-year-old’s Oct. 11 removal from the team — for wearing pink cleats — was patently ridiculous, and not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Unbelievably, Coy wore the shoes — to one game and one practice, before his coach booted him — to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month, given both his mother and grandmother (who gave him the cleats) are breast cancer survivors.
Know what the NFL — that would be the nation’s professional football league — did last month to honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month? They had players and officials wearing pink cleats, tossing pink coins, blowing pink whistles, and playing with pink-adorned balls.
District Deputy Superintendent Tom Duncan insisted Coy wearing the pink cleats “had absolutely nothing to do with lack of support for breast cancer awareness.” So he must’ve just been trying to be a big fag then, huh?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Coy, who regularly wore cleats of various colors throughout the Tigers’ season (seemingly without incident), and his family agreed to drop the lawsuit against the coach, principal and the school system so long as he’s put back on the team with the same standing.
Jeff Atwood
May he continue to wear the pink cleats?
Kieran
How was the poor coach supposed to know this was about breast cancer awareness? He thought he had a fag on the team.
Courtney
Well, this did happen in Mississippi.
I give the kid credit. I would think he had even bigger balls if he would have held out until the entire team agreed to wear the pink cleats. Surely, some organization would have been glad to donate them.
GlacierGuy
I would have continued the lawsuit! Now the school, coach and admin know that they can make snap judgment calls all without consequences. How pathetic of the coach to even assume the player was gay, and if so did he think kicking this student off the team was appropriate? Come on grown ups – grow up! In the end, Mississippi or not – this crap has to stop! Pink, purple, yellow…at the end of the day does is really flipping matter?
Drew
@Courtney: You’re a douchebag.
“….happen in Mississippi.” I hope to see future posts from you where you condemn each State in which something stupid or homophobic happens.
DR
This whole situation was patently ridiculous. Glad it’s over.
Alan
@Drew: Um well if he is so am I cuz I thought the exact same thing