Underpants Umps Wreak Havoc in Baltimore

Kids, your mothers warned you about this

By CHRIS NEEDHAM

Updated 1:31 PM EST, Thu, Oct 29, 2009

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When you were a wee little lass or lad, your mother warned you, before you went outside, to make sure you were wearing clean underpants lest something befall you and an emergency room doc see some sort of unsightly stain thereby forever tarnishing her maternal reputation.

In Baltimore County, one high school cross country team has found out the difficulties when you don't heed your mom and pay attention to your underpants.

A miscolored pair of pantaloons -- no, not from a stain -- took away the Hereford High School's Baltimore County Men's Cross-Country Championship, reports the Sun.

After they won the race, an underwear umpire inspected the boys and found one of them to be lacking. The officials threw the kid's result out, giving the championship to the team from Towson.

What'd the kid do? He had the audacity to wear a pair of black compression shorts underneath with (make sure you're sitting down for this)... white stitching! The horror! Stone the beast!

Steve Smith, who has the worst job title in the history of employment (the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association interpreter for the National Federation of Track and Cross Country Rules) told the Baltimore Sun that "The [uniform] rule has no bearing on the race, but it's in the book, which makes it one of the regulations that we have to follow."

Ah, the "just following orders" defense. That worked so well for ... well, we won't go there.

Becky Oakes, the assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations in Indianapolis, defended the rule to the Sun, noting that "Your cross country uniform is supposed to say that 'I'm from high school XYZ,' Philosophically, that's what 'team' is all about. The [multicolored] Spandex undergarment began to get away from that."

But yet at that same meet there were plenty of runners who didn't wear Spandex underneath. How's that for conformity?

So the lesson the kids take away from all this? It's important to follow the rules, even if they're blindingly stupid, created by idiots, serve no real purpose nor give no real advantage and could be waved away into something sensical with just a tiny bit of discretion.

Who says our schools aren't training kids to be a part of the modern workforce?