Famed High School Football Coach Charged Amid Shocking Abuse Claims

A Hall of Fame high school football coach in Oklahoma has been hit with state charges after his players accused him of fostering a “cult-like environment,” rife with racism, toxic masculinity, and demeaning abuse.

After a lengthy probe by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, Ringling High School Head Football Coach Phillip Koons was charged with outraging public decency on Tuesday. If convicted, he could face up to a year in jail, and hundreds of dollars in fines.

According to players on the football team, the coaching staff harassed them with degrading comments during workouts and while they were in the locker room, claiming he was their “daddy” and they should consult him before ever speaking to their own parents.

“These boys were subjected to a cult-like environment where this guy would groom them, break them down to where they were at a point that they wanted to quit playing football, some of them wanting to commit suicide, and then would build them back up within that cult system and create a deal where he was the most important thing in their lives,” one of the players’ attorney, Tod Mercer, told The Daily Beast. “He would isolate them from their friends, from their family, even from their doctors.”

Along with attorney Cameron Spradling, Mercer explained that Koons would emotionally destroy his players with bouts of insults, calling Black players on the team the N-word, “porch monkey,” and “stupid African.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-ringling-high-school-football-coach-phil-koons-charged-in-oklahoma-amid-shocking-abuse-claims

Read on. It gets worse.