Why are basketball coaches such hotheads?

I don't really follow basketball but sometimes there are basketball stories that make the mainstream news and it's almost always a case where a basketball coach got in trouble for slapping, choking, throwing chairs, kicking people in the butt, screaming obscenities, biting, or straight-up fistfighting.  and these incidents are almost always basketball-RELATED and the coach in question is SOBER.  It's not like other sports where the coaches get caught doing bad stuff in their leisure time, this is happening ON THE JOB.

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but basketball seems like a fairly peaceful sport.  You're barely allowed to touch somebody or else it's a "foul."  There's no permitted hitting or fighting like in hockey, and there aren't crazy unfair replay review calls like in the NFL.  So what the hell are they getting so upset about?

a basketball coach is really just a gym teacher that got promoted, if you think about it.  Gym teachers get mad a lot, I guess because they are not good at most other jobs.  Nobody wants to grow up to be a gym teacher.  Even if you are really, REALLY good at "teaching" gym, the nicest thing a student is ever going to say to you is "You are the best gym teacher I have ever had.  Someday I hope *I* can be as good a teacher as you, except the real kind.  Thanks!"

Losing your temper easily must be the key to getting promoted out of having to teach gym.  What other part of the job can you excel at?  You're not PLAYING.  Your kids aren't competing against kids from OTHER gym classes.  You're the only person there that has no chance of "winning" anything.  You can only say stuff and watch.

Gym teachers rarely get VIOLENT though, because they have a whistle.  They blow the whistle whenever they don't like something.  It's a safe release.

*FWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE* "NO SHOVING!"

*FWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE* "I COULD HAVE DONE THAT BETTER THAN YOU BUT I'M NOT ALLOWED TO PLAY."

a basketball coach doesn't get to have a whistle during the game.  Only the referees do.  Therefore they HATE the referees.  All high and mighty and getting to decide things.

Referee: *FWEEEEEEE* "Travelling."

Coach: "THAT WAS *NOT* TRAVELLING!  DO YOU NEED *GLASSES*?  IF I HAD A WHISTLE I WOULD BLOW IT AT YOU!"

Referee: "Sorry coach, it was travelling.  and by the way..."  *fwee*


So then the powerless coach goes to practice the next day all furious and chokes a kid, I guess.

(He also brings a whistle to practice, because he can.)


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