What's in a name, they ask. The answer, a vast majority of the time anyway, is nothing more than a few vowels, a couple consonants, and a pretty good look into the creative process of parents. In this case, however, I can't help but think that what comes complimentary of being called 'Major Applewhite' for your entire life is a propensity for the type of petty power trips that are more fitting of those that have made a commitment to the country to be overbearing bastards in the process of determining which kids are mentally tough enough for combat. To be clear, the Houston coach could have been A Boy Named Sue and I still would have thought he was cloaking his oversensitivity in strictness by snatching clothes off the back of a player who clearly hurt his feelings by having the gall to loyally wear team-licensed outerwear while safely looking out for his financial future. That said, there's something so self-fulfilling about the prophecy of a football coach with a military rank as a first name and a last name that's sounds made for a movie acting like a drill instructor in going Full Metal Jacket due to nothing more than a literal jacket. Now, I don't want to let Ed Oliver completely off-the-hook here. Ranting and raving at his coach mid-game, no matter how much said coach instigated it, is a questionable move from someone who gave up the right to become a distraction on gameday when he decided not to take part in gamedays. It's not as if a mountain of a man who is pushing 300 pounds was left at risk of hypothermia by wearing only a hoodie in Houston on a nice November night, so - much like the upholding of an objectively idiotic rule - his aggressive reaction was largely out of both pride and principle. I just think the grown adult man whose pride and principle led to him showing up the superstar player whose talents have made his tenure 10x easier should be held to a higher standard. It's a hell of a lot harder for Ed Oliver to balance being a good teammate and a good businessman than it is for Major Applewhite to balance being a rational human being and a disciplinarian, the latter being something that should be asked of him in the type of contract his freakishly talented pass-rusher is not-so-coincidentally yet to have signed. Even physically undressing your own biological child in front of their peers in public is liable to get you verbally undressed, never mind physically undressing the most intimidating of sure-shot Top-5 picks who has unequivocally made massive contributions to the growth of your program in front of his peers in public. I don't think either party was totally right in the heat of the moment. However, the party that felt the combative removal of a coat couldn't wait until the locker room was the most wrong for acting like the militaristic blowhard his parents were apparently praying they had given birth to when he aggressively executed the overly simplistic theory that "rules are rules" in defense of the dumbest of rules when he should have been focused on - oh, I don't know - coaching football maybe?
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