3-pointer: Cattleman quarterbacks, GHSA’s Gainesville ruling, Mac McWhorter

We might have a first in Friday’s Georgia-Georgia Tech game, and that’s no bull.

It’s quite possible, and maybe even likely, that this will be the first playing of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate in which both starting quarterbacks also are cattlemen.

Tech’s Haynes King and UGA’s Gunner Stockton have ample experience both in leading game-winning drives and raising cattle on family farms, quarterbacks worthy of both the Downtown Athletic Club and the 4-H Club.

For the sake of those of us whose care for animals is limited to pouring out kibble, cleaning up their waste and asking who’s a good boy, a combined list of chores that King and Stockton handled as they simultaneously pursued high school football greatness, courtesy of their fathers, John King and Rob Stockton:

Feeding, medicating, vaccinating, growing and cutting hay, fixing fences, growing corn and turning it into cattle feed, often in the heat of Texas summers and the snow of North Georgia winters. John King laughed ruefully recalling the times he and Haynes had to venture into a spillway in waders or in a boat to fix a barbed-wire fence.

“We had some fond memories in late summer, early August back there trying to fix that fence before the season started,” he said. “It was rough — hot, no shade, one of those kind.”

The Kings’ 12 head of beef cattle in Longview, Texas, belong to John. (Haynes used to name them after his favorite players on his father’s high school football team.) Bulldogs fans likely are familiar with the legend that Stockton asked for cows as a Christmas present when he was a sophomore at Rabun County High. (Stockton did not name the cows, but just gave them numbers. “Kind of like an athlete,” said his father, who was also a high school coach.) Stockton’s herd of Angus beef cattle, once as large as 30 before he left for Athens, is now about 17.

The dads spoke of the maturity, responsibility and work ethic that raising cattle taught their sons.

“It teaches you hard work,” John King told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It teaches you you’ve got to do it even when you don’t want to. Cows, they don’t look at a calendar. They don’t know what time it is.”

It is little surprise that, when both worked as counselors at the Manning Passing Academy this past summer in Louisiana, they came away with positive impressions of the other.

“I also think that Gunner and Haynes both are the kind to get their hands dirty,” Rob Stockton said. “Neither would be considered a prima donna quarterback. I definitely think it isn’t a surprise to me that Haynes and Gunner are two guys that got their hands dirty working with cattle and working on a farm.”

Simply bovine.

Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton tends to two of his cattle. When he was a sophomore in high school in Rabun County, Stockton asked for cattle for Christmas and has continued to raise them. The herd at one point reached 30, according to his father, Rob Stockton. (Courtesy of Onward Reserve)

GHSA, Gainesville both at fault

No one has come out a winner from the GHSA’s decision to uphold 35 of the 39 suspensions of Gainesville High football players after a fight with players from Brunswick High in the teams’ Friday Class 5A playoff game, won by Gainesville.

On Tuesday, the GHSA’s board of trustees did reinstate four Gainesville players after concluding they did not contribute to the fight. But the board could have offered more latitude toward other team members whose intentions were, at the least, unaggressive.

The board had a vote to reinstate eight additional Gainesville players — one of whom was visible in a video walking into the scrum of players with his hands up — but the motion fell short 6-4. Those players deserved more justice from the trustees.

However, while it was Brunswick players who instigated the fracas with their team trailing 42-0, Gainesville also could have done better to defuse the situation. A number of Red Elephants players ran onto the field from the sideline, in violation of GHSA bylaws governing fights that carry a one-game suspension penalty. (Pirates players did, as well, and the school accepted numerous suspensions and a postseason ban for next year.)

Gainesville coach Josh Niblett defended his players’ actions by saying that they did “what’s natural” in coming to the defense of their attacked teammates.

There were two problems with his defense. One, the bylaw is in place because players rushing into a fight, whatever their intention, are hardly ever going to lower the temperature. Fights are best de-escalated with officials and coaches, not more players.

The best-coached teams plan for these situations — instructing players to keep their cool and stay on the sidelines, if for no other reason than to avoid mass suspensions like Gainesville has incurred.

Two, some of Niblett’s own players demonstrated that their field-rushing teammates didn’t have to do “what’s natural.” Many Red Elephants players, including star quarterback Kharim Hughley, stayed on the sideline and thus will be able to play in Friday’s quarterfinal against No. 1 Hughes High. Their discipline flew in the face of Niblett’s argument that their teammates had little choice but to join in.

Barring the successful intervention of a possible legal maneuver, Gainesville will pay an unfortunately steep price. But better for its young people to learn a valuable lesson about keeping a cool head while on a football field than in a place where the consequences could be far graver.