By USA TODAY High School Sports
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John Jay (San Antonio) assistant coach Mack Breed said he ordered two football players to target an official during a Sept. 4 game against Marble Falls for using racial slurs and missed calls, according to an ESPN report.
According to a document obtained by ESPN in an Outside the Lines report, Breed admitted to the school’s principal, Robert Harris, that he “directed the students to make the referee pay for his racial comments and calls.”
Breed has been on paid administrative leave since the incident, which received national attention.
An attorney for umpire Robert Watts has vehemently denied that Watts used racial slurs. During an interview last week with Good Morning America, the players said Watts used the “n-word” and also told a Hispanic player “this is America, speak English.”
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Harris was not at the game but wrote in a letter about the incident that he spoke with head coach Greg Gutierrez multiple times on the bus ride back from the game and then met with him in the school parking lot. Guttierrez said Breed asked him on the bus ride what would happen to the two players.
“I later met with Coach Breed at John Jay High School … in my office in the presence of Coach Gutierrez,” Harris wrote, according to ESPN. “Coach Breed told me that he directed the students to make the referee pay for his racial comments and calls. He wanted to take full responsibility for his actions. Mr. Breed at one point during our conversation stated that he should have handled the referee himself.”
Sophomore Victor Rojas and senior Michael Moreno, the Jay players who simply said they were just doing what they were told, will have disciplinary hearings regarding their actions on Wednesday.
The State Executive Committee of the UIL is scheduled to meet Thursday. Breed is among those expected to testify.
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