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After a sluggish start to the season, the UTSA Roadrunners have rattled off three straight victories and have re-emerged a top contender in the AAC. Ahead of their home matchup against ECU this Saturday, head coach Jeff Traylor tried to keep his team’s focus by placing rat traps in their lockers.
That idea backfired on him in the most Tom and Jerry way imaginable.
UTSA put rat traps with cheese in players lockers this week to symbolize don’t eat the cheese. One of the players gave one to Jeff Traylor. The trap went off and smashed one of his fingers.
— JJ Perez (@theJJPerez) October 23, 2023
Here’s @CoachTraylor answering @theJJPerez about a player putting a loaded rat trap on his podium: “it looks like my pinky got smashed by a hammer. It woulda killed a lesser man.” https://t.co/rrT8GRBdfb pic.twitter.com/emQ5LSX1ml
— Dave Wilson (@dwil) October 23, 2023
Best sport in the world. Kudos to whichever senior pulled that prank and hopefully he’s not somewhere in San Antonio running stadium steps as we speak. Traylor was a good sport about being felled by his own cheese trap and it wouldn’t be a surprise if we saw him roam the Alamodome sidelines with a splint on his pinky this weekend.
For those wondering what this is all about, “don’t eat the cheese” is a mantra originated by legendary NFL head coach Bill Parcells. The “cheese” is the praise a team receives when things are going well and he often warned his players to not read about their own success at the risk of getting complacent. Just last week, North Carolina head coach Mack Brown talked about how Parcells himself called him during his 2005 national championship run with Texas to deliver that very ominous message. Well, apparently his Tar Heels took a bite of the poisoned cheese as they were upset by a struggling Virginia team on Saturday.
We’ll see if UTSA can avoid the cheese trap this weekend when hosting ECU..