Middle School Football Coach Totally Confused By Parents Who Don’t Want Awards Dinner Held At Hooters

An Oregon Middle School football coach has been fired for planning an awards dinner for his seventh and eighth grade players at Hooters. Well, he wasn’t so much fired for planning it, as for refusing to change the location when parents protested.

Randall Burbach gave the seventh and eighth grade boys on the team the choice about where they wanted to have their banquet. They chose Hooters, so duh – that’s where they’re going to go. They also asked if he could arrange for them to eat french fries and Now and Laters for dinner for the rest of the year – to which he said, Sure boys – whatever you want. Then they all asked to never have homework again and if every student could nap during math – to which he replied, Why not? Okay, I made all of that last bit up but the Hooters part is true.

Burbach seems utterly confused as to why any parents would have a problem with a middle school awards dinner being held at Hooters. When speaking of the kids and the restaurant he says, “If they did as well as the Hooters did for my boys when they were 12, it would be a great experience.” I don’t even know what that means. Now this guy is kind of creeping me out.

The school’s athletic director, J.P. Soulagnet, implored Burbach to hold the dinner somewhere else, but Burbach was unyielding. Burbach told News Channel 8 Portland, “I’m not allowing myself to be bullied by the vocal minority – is the example, is the war I want to win. It’s the only war I can win right now.” Okay Coach Crazy; way to take a stand. But, you’re fired because you are being ridiculous.

”Some might say that this restaurant objectifies women. I would tend to agree,” Soulagnet said. ”It is not a restaurant that I would feel good about my wife or daughter working at. I think it sends the wrong message to our young men and that saddens and worries me the most.”

I’m not really offended by Hooters but I totally understand why parents wouldn’t want their kids having a middle school awards party there. The fact that Burbach doesn’t is frankly, more than a little strange.

(photo: Getty Images)