Nothing worse than watching your kid ride the pine while the coach's kid plays when he wants, where he wants and for as long as he wants. I see this far more often than I see parents getting out of control with a coach. I've seen coaches pull kids from a game for a simple error while their precious flesh and blood commits unforced turnover after unforced turnover. Then there are the coaches with their buddies as assistants and no one else need apply

This happens. It also happens that the coach plays the AD's kid, or the councilman's kid, because failing to do so will result in a loss of his job.

In my case, it was president of the school board's son who got the playing time over my brother and myself.

Not true. There are far more worse things than this. When we start treating it like there's nothing worse, we become part of the problem.

Reminds me of a commercial that ran on the radio as I was driving around Colorado Springs a few days ago. It started with "There's nothing worse than getting caught driving in a hail storm."

My first thought, staring at the smoke in the mountains, "I can think of at least one thing."

My second thought, "It's a figure of speech, for crying out loud. Lighten up, Snaqwells."

Of course, advertisements are the worst offenders of such hyperbole. (That's what sells.) My favorite opening radio ad line was, "Losing your hair can be devastating!" No, losing a child can be devastating. Losing your hair is part of life.

And more to my point, so is dealing with nepotism. We can complain all we want about our kids not getting playing time, or we can teach them that the real world is the exact same way. It isn't fair, but it's part of life. Learning how to deal with it is better than making too much out of it.