A coach is using the fall of Matt Leinart, the NFL quarterback by way of USC and Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, to teach his eager players a vital skill.
But this coach's specialty is not offenses or defenses—at least not in the gridiron sense.
And his players (think playahs) deal with totally different kinds of passes.
“For over nearly 20 years, David Wygant has been earning the trust of American men and women looking to transform their love lives,” states his online bio.
He's posted on his website, which promises “The Naked Truth About Dating, Sex and Relationships,” and item titled, “What You Can Learn From Matt Leinart”:
Let me ask you a couple of questions…
Do you suffer from high expectations?
Are you really doing all that you can do to meet the opposite sex?
Be honest with yourself!
Or do you suffer from Matt Leinart disease? (Yes, that's him on the right… A little drunk you might say)
What's that? If you haven't followed the news, Matt was expected to be a starter for the Arizona Cardinals, but has now been released.
Wygant goes on to invite visitors to listen to a podcast he has posted that goes more into detail about the dreaded Matt Leinart disease.
The former Orange County quarterback phenom is taking a huge pay cut to remain in the NFL, signing a one-year contract with the Houston Texans that calls for a base salary of $630,000. That compares with a base salary of $2.5 million Leinart would have made if the Arizona Cardinals did not cut their top pick from the 2006 NFL draft this past Saturday.
During much of his time in Phoenix, Leinart was portrayed as a spoiled Orange County private school brat who felt entitled to the starting job while partying and not working hard enough to earn one of sport's most elite spots.
It did not help matters that, just before his release, Leinart said he deserved to start with the Cards and that he'd only sign with another team if he could start there.
Perhaps humbled by being cut, he signed with the Texans despite there being no guarantees where he will wind up on the depth chart, which right now shows the lanky lefty is Houston's No. 3 QB, behind Matt Schaub and Dan Orlovsky.
Texans coach Gary Kubiak has reportedly said he will give Leinart a chance to compete for the backup job, and his contract does include an incentive of $23,125 for each game the Texans make him their No. 2. With incentives, the maximum value of his deal is $1 million.
His Arizona contract had called for $10 million in base salary over the next two seasons.
Ouch!
Meanwhile, Leinart's Mater Dei backup, Colt Brennan, may have to await an offer from the CFL if no one from the NFL comes calling this season. His agent had already been talking to Canadian teams after he was cut first this summer by the team that drafted him, Washington, and later the Raiders.
On the same day Leinart was released.
But at least the University of Hawaii star has so far avoided the indignity of being made an example out of by an online dating guru.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.