UIL State Executive Committee Punishes Westwood ISD Football Coach and I.T. Employee without Ordering Game Forfeitures

What started with cell phone video taken from the stands at a football game ended this morning with the UIL State Executive Committee (SEC) ordering:

• Westwood ISD Head Football Coach Richard Bishop to be suspended from all UIL football activities for the remainder of the season, and to be placed on probation through the 2025-26 academic year.

• WISD information technology (I.T.) employee Don McCoy to not be involved in any UIL activity (not just football) for the rest of this school year.
  
  
• Bishop and McCoy to be given UIL public reprimands.

• That WISD won’t forfeit any past or future football games this season (they’ve won all seven of their games thus far).

Bishop and McCoy were accused of violating a UIL rule that says “a noncompeting school shall not film, videotape or otherwise make a visual recording of an athletic contest without the prior written consent of the schools competing in the contest.”

Bishop and McCoy were reportedly sitting next to each other in the stands — at a football game involving two other schools — when McCoy took out his cell phone and began taking videos.

The punishments handed out by the SEC — the equivalent of a Supreme Court for the league — tracked the prior rulings of a UIL district executive committee (DEC) regarding Bishop and McCoy.

The SEC, however, overruled the DEC’s decision to order WISD to forfeit all their football games this season. The consensus of the SEC was that the athletes and other students at the school had done nothing wrong — and did not benefit from the actions of Bishop and McCoy — and should therefore not be punished.

Longview broadcaster CBS 19 has more here.