ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To the persons involved with mainstream media who covered the Bellevue Football Investigations from June of 2015 into 2018, it is my sincere hope that this book and the two that follow will give many of you a moment of pause and reflection regarding your own actions and writings and statements made during that time period. Many of you participated in what became a rather vicious attack on a group of student athletes from a public high school (i.e. high school kids), its coaches and its collective community. Many of you “piled on,” and fed a media frenzy that was beyond unfair to those persons who were actually there.

In this era of “fake news”, words were twisted and taken out of context, fiction became fact, rumors became reality and guilty until proven innocent somehow became the new normal. The attack on Butch in the media with calls for lifetime bans in both the newspaper and on the radio and his picture on the front page seemingly twice per month for what seemed like ages was so unnecessary and so wrong and so inappropriate. You all helped feed a false narrative that was rooted in a strong distaste for that program and any persons involved with it. In the end, what you collectively did was bully a football program and bully a bunch of kids whose major crime in reality was simply that they won too many football games so you “cancelled” them. These persons literally missed the real story which was what was going on down in Renton at the WIAA headquarters and downtown at the Bellevue School District offices. To the persons involved in social media, particularly those making all those mean and ignorant comments on the newspaper websites, shame on you. Our kids read them. If your goal was to hurt young people, you were successful. How brave of you. Well, I ain’t hiding, and here is the truth in this trilogy of books. When I learned that Mike Colbrese of the WIAA actually had a person in his office reviewing the daily social media writings/comments from the Seattle Times comment sections and reporting back to him on what was said, it was in my opinion apparent that our collective high school athletic community had sunk to an incredible new low with regard to the Bellevue Football issue. The leader of the State’s governing body giving credence (of any kind) to those online comments was beyond pathetic. It became clear that there were eight primary persons involved (some with multiple online handles) with what seemed like an incredible over the top disdain for the program. When we hired forensic writing analysts to compare different writings of some of these, some information was incredibly interesting. We did find out who Odeagrad79, I Love Baseball, and Agent Zero were. All legends in their own minds. However, we never did discover who “Mr Myke” was—at least not for sure. Given what he wrote and when he wrote it, we know he was part of the “deep state” in this sordid affair. For whatever it is worth to anyone out there who is interested, I will pay five thousand dollars to the first person who can provide undeniable proof as to the identity of Mr. Myke—as the identity of Mr. Myke will explain quite a few things even more that were going on behind closed doors during the Bellevue Football investigation and aftermath. We have it down to what we think are three people, but we can’t be sure---yet. A work in progress.

The NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, is an amazing place to visit. While I was there with my son Indy back in 2018 for the Youth National Championships, there was a wall containing many quotes from current and former NFL players. One quote, in particular, on this wall containing so many, caught my eye. It was from J. J. Watt, and it states, “Success isn’t owned. It’s leased, and rent is due every day.”

As I write these three books about the true Bellevue Football story, this quote from JJ Watt resonates in my head. It does so because contrary to what many read in the newspapers, and outside of the mindless social media attacks, I was there. I know what happened. Our program understood that success is not a given and that we are not entitled to anything. Our program knew we had to earn it. Our program was willing to pay the “rent” every day and while there are many who have decided that we took short cuts or bent/broke the rules, they were not there. They were not with us when we paid the rent every day. They would rather explain away our program’s magical success over the years by stating that we cheated—because the newspaper and two former federal prosecutors said so. They can feel better in some twisted way knowing that it wasn’t that “they” were being outworked in the weight room, outworked in the offseason, or outcoached when it came to game preparation and in game adjustments. You see, if we didn’t cheat, then “they” would have to concede that “they” simply got outworked, outplayed and outcoached and “they” do not want to concede that. It is a lot easier to try to lower the bar than it is to do the work required to raise it. Well guys, we didn’t cheat. We did things the right way and that is why I have spent the last four years writing, and researching documents, public record requests and interviewing persons involved.

With that said, this story is written to the fifteen hundred or so student athletes I have had the privilege of coaching since the fall of 1982 when I first started coaching high school football, plus the hundred and fifty or so people I have had the privilege of coaching in softball starting in 2004. For some of them, I also have had the chance to coach their child in either football or softball. I have received hundreds of letters, emails, and texts from many of my former players asking about what happened, why the powers that be did this, and mostly just to offer their support. Thank you so much for those. They are very much appreciated. I am writing this for them because they were there, they know me, and they deserve to know the truth—you know, that thing that apparently got lost in so many people’s minds. We have done our own research and investigation of the investigations. It started with the 2006 investigation, then the 2012 investigation, then the winter of 2015 investigation, and then another investigation a year later. We have compiled over fourteen thousand pages of documents, public records, private emails, and even the infamous “42-person list of transfers from 2008 to 2015”, which, when you see it, you are going to see how incompetent and/or mean-spirited many of these people were, as well as desperate to trash us in the media, preaching a false narrative.

This three-part series of books is the compilation of our four-year investigation and research of the facts. The first book provides a historical background and takes things all the way to the now infamous “Diploma Mill” article of August 23, 2015 by the Seattle Times. The second book goes from that point in time through the prosecution (there is a big difference between a prosecution and an investigation) and into the “68-page report” prepared by two former federal prosecutors—a title the two of them would often make sure anyone they interviewed were aware of. The third book describes the events that transpired following the release of that 68-page report and will take you through the aftermath. It will detail the win by Butch Goncharoff and me and the coaches in binding arbitration and the win by Butch and me and the coaches in the state’s longest ever Public Employment Relations Commission (“PERC”) proceeding. It will then go over the effects on the program, the coaches, and, most importantly the students, and the many other legal proceedings that followed. From the Seattle Times, to certain people at the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (“WIAA”), to certain people at KingCo, to the former federal prosecutors who “prosecuted,” to some entitled parents, as well as a number of people in our own school district, this story is about how each and every one of these parties or people played a role in distorting the truth, making “fact” out of fiction, and often, not only with what they did do or say, but also with what they did not do or say. It is a story of how, in the end, what these people really did was harm a program and hurt kids and how our coaches and players really had no viable way to defend ourselves. The program simply won too much and, had it not, the simple truth is that this would never have happened. You will see how politics, rather than facts, controlled what transpired. You will see how a newspaper (essentially the only one in town) threw its weight on a high school football program and held on until the program could breathe no more. You will see a prosecution (not an investigation) run its course using a convicted felon, who had been indicted in 2004 by one of the prosecutors (which was never disclosed by the prosecutor who took this case), witnesses who were found “not credible” by related legal issues, and a deliberate effort to ignore the facts, which were in favor of the program and the coaches. So, in a sense, this story becomes our only way to put on an actual defense to the prosecution. A defense that isn’t being twisted and directed by politics and people trying to keep their six-figure salaries rather than admit the truth.

So, to do this, I’m going to give a brief history of the program (i.e., its roots) from my point of view. A boy who started off in Beacon Hill (Seattle) as a baby, went to Kenmore until I was four, and then settled in West Bellevue, where I grew up. I think, by giving some background and insight into the past, it will be easier to understand how things came together, fell into place, and then, within a very short time period, were literally ripped to pieces by some very mean-spirited, envious, and resentful people. As you will see by the end of the story, because of what it took and what really happened and how things were done, these vindictive and mean-spirited people actually paid all of our players an incredibly huge compliment (albeit in a very negative way). What our players did was not possible, yet they did it anyway. They did the impossible. The other side’s inference is that there must have been cheating, because, in their minds, what our players did is not doable by a public 3A high school and because the other side cannot believe or understand how it could have happened legitimately (and it was legitimate). They sleep better at night by taking the position that the Bellevue football program cheated, and that was/is the reason for its success. What a laugh and how ignorant. To our coaching staff, watching this all unfold was analogous to the old story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The media was given a theme, and they ran with it, and there was no practical way for us to defend ourselves once our school district leadership showed its true colors. Thirty second sound bites on television, or one-paragraph blurbs in a newspaper, just were not going to do it. We were essentially defenseless. Until now.

Those people had never been to Fort Worden on a late Friday night, or sat in the room at Fort Worden on a late Saturday night, listening to Butch, listening to me—and, most importantly, listening to each other, which, in my opinion is where most of the championships were won by the way—Saturday nights at Fort Worden—with no pads, no helmets, no shoes. That was the place and time where our football program separated itself, year after year after year, from its competition. The outsiders love to call out “recruiting” or “cheaters,” etc. Well, our players were there. Our players are apparently the people we “recruited” to get some unfair advantage, etc. Many of our players reading this book are apparently the “transfers” even though they went to Chinook Middle School and even if they went to Bellevue High School all four years. Many of our players reading this book are apparently the ones we bought with cash and gifts in order to buy win after win after win because, you know, that is what we were all about according to those who hated the program.

The powers that be decided that we were cheaters. It’s time for the powers that be to go under the microscope here a bit and let the readers decide for themselves. Let’s take a real hard look at the actual facts and documents. Most people on the outside likely don’t even know that we prevailed in the arbitration. The arbitrator ruled in our favor that what the Bellevue School District was doing to Butch and me was “a ruse” and required the Bellevue School District to pay almost $20,000, the entirety of the costs to date for the arbitration. The arbitration also forced the Bellevue School District (“BSD”) to agree to wording in our collective bargaining agreement that would prevent the BSD from ever doing to another coach what they did to Butch and me. You see, Butch and I found out that they had reported the two of us to our league for violations without even first giving us a chance to defend ourselves—and we found out about it in the newspaper when it was published on May 28, 2016. You would expect that a school district in the United States of America would, at the very least, provide some level of due process to thirty-four-year and twenty-year employees before throwing them under the bus and into the news media. However, in this case, we were literally found “guilty” by our own school district without first providing us with an opportunity to defend ourselves and explain to them why they were incorrect.

Further, most people on the outside likely don’t know that we also prevailed in the PERC legal action and that the Bellevue School District was declared to have acted unlawfully with regard to three separate items, including the “$500-in-a-season rule” (coaches’ pay issue). The state of Washington required the Bellevue School District to rescind the unlawful two-year hiring ban that Bellevue’s five-person school board had ignorantly and unlawfully attempted to impose (even though we warned them over and over again at the time that what they were doing was wrong and was against the law). But before we get into too many details, it is important to all be coming from the same background of historical facts. This story will start out with a lot of early history. Some you may find very interesting, some maybe not, but much of this background and history ends up playing a part, to varying degrees, in what ultimately came down, and it is important to understand this background and be able to put things into context as you read this.

Trying to explain things to the outside world and people who don’t know or were not coached directly by Butch and me is a tough task as there is no common frame of reference there. They aren’t going to get it. To the outside, sadly, we were seen by many as a program with a bunch of rich kids and with an over-active booster club, with infinite resources, hell bent on winning, and willing to do whatever it takes. We were seen as a program that brings in players and “recruits” from all over the region to come to Bellevue High. A program that had money-hungry coaches illegally taking large sums of money to coach. A program where bending the rules was the norm, and if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying. A program where if you struggled in class, we sent you to an alternative school—a dumb-dumb school—set up your scholarship there, funded those scholarships through our booster club, and then, when you were done playing for good old Bellevue HS, we dumped you for the new guy and parted ways.

As Butch discussed with the team on the eve of the 2015 state title game, after an interestingly timed Seattle Times story came out that day about us coaches “wooing” middle school athletes to Bellevue High, the color of one’s skin had become an issue to some outside of our team—with the sentiment of some of the accusers being that there were more black kids than there should be playing football at Bellevue, and they didn’t “belong” in West Bellevue because they “can’t afford it.” Some white people must have been paying for them to live in Bellevue, and they must have been recruited or else they wouldn’t be there—because apparently it was not the norm for black people to reside in West Bellevue unless something was amiss. Our players in the locker room that night in December 2015, the day before the championship game, remember. Apparently, there was no scenario in the minds of these haters that families made individual choices, without pressure from anyone, to want to live here and go to school here. What an affront to these families, how disrespectful to the parents of players, and, most of all, how wrong this was to the players themselves.

If you want to know what really happened, keep reading, because Butch and I never got to tell our side until now. Newspapers would give us a paragraph. Television would provide a thirty-second news bite. There was no due process. Deals were made behind closed doors, and it was over before it even started. It became a political decision-making process rather than a factual one. What was done to the 2016 team was tragic. What was done to Tyson Penn was far beyond unfair. What was done to the 2012 and 2013 teams was unforgiveable and, as Budda Baker says, “wrongfully diminished those students’ accomplishments and did so without a legitimate basis” on September 25, 2017, when the WIAA vacated those two titles even though each and every player on both of those teams was fully eligible and completely legitimate.

Take a read now and, by the end of the story, see if you don’t agree with me. There is no one on this earth who has researched more, read more, or done their homework more on the Bellevue football program and what went down early in 2015 (and after) and what is still going on today as I write this story. It is unbelievable, and when you see how people cheated and twisted the rules to try and show somehow that we did, it is really going to piss our former players off when they finally get to see what actually really happened. What is more than clear, and in answer to the title of the story, is that the answer is no, the truth did not matter—at least it hasn’t mattered up until now. I hope to provide the truth here and shed light on the documents and story that the Seattle Times had no interest in, that our beloved school district had no interest in as it faltered behind incredibly poor leadership, and that those two former federal prosecutors, hired by the only “monarch” still allowed to work as one in Washington State, had no interest in. I am confident that this story will be of use to our players in the future and hopefully help prevent anything similar from ever happening again.

Many of our former players will recall Butch using yellow note pads while everyone else was computerized. Butch had a pager while others had cell phones. I had a flip phone with an antenna when most people had smart phones and stuck with VHS tapes for literally years after everyone else watched DVDs. We were different and social media never was, and never will be, our thing. To Butch and me, it was a big waste of time, and rarely about the team, and far too often about chest pumping for an individual. Ironically, it was stuff like this (concern for the individual over the team) that really helped lead the program of ours to its end, as you will see in future chapters. Social media does have some positive uses, and the transfer of information is so easy now. But when it comes to coaching and being a “team,” it also can be very divisive and easily used the wrong way. We realize what social media is and that it exists, and we both do text now (and in the year 2020 Butch actually started emailing), but outside of short team-related information transfer, far too many young athletes have let it consume them, and as you’ve heard us say to you for many years, there is no “I” in team.

This series of three books is most importantly for the players. Those who played football for me at Bellevue, Sultan, Sammamish and then at Bellevue again, and now at Kennedy, and also those who played youth football for me. Those who played football for Butch at Bellevue or youth football prior to 1995 for him. Those who played softball for me in Little League, Flame Fastpitch, and the Batbusters more recently. To me, it wasn’t about winning state at football (though we did). It wasn’t about winning championships at youth football (though we did). It wasn’t about winning state at softball (though we did). It wasn’t about qualifying for the Pro Football Hall of Fame National Championships and playing in Canton, Ohio (though we did). It wasn’t about winning a national championship in football back in 2012 (though we did). And it wasn’t about winning twelve state championships in football (though we did). It was about the legacy that all of our former players now pass down to their children, and potentially pass down to those who they are now going to coach and teach in the years to come.

The news media spread the word that we were cheaters and took short cuts, that our head coach didn’t report incidents, that Butch wrongfully took monies from the booster club without the knowledge of the school district, that I was paid a coaching stipend in the summer without the knowledge of the school district, that many players were illegal transfers or had the booster club pay for them to attend an alternative school, which gave away free grades, or that we “recruited” players to come to Bellevue High instead of where they should have gone to school. The powers that be at the Seattle Times and WIAA wanted the public to think that and proactively made things appear that way in the media and through their prosecutors (not fact finders, mind you, which should have been the case; but prosecutors). The Bellevue School District and a few entitled parents afflicted with “my-son-didn’t-get-the-scholarship-I-wanted” disease showed their true colors when the chips were down. Our own school district decided to do what they did and, as you will see in this story, they were so wrong. They acted unlawfully, and even when they knew they were wrong and were proven to be unlawful in legal proceedings, they did nothing to correct their errors—and there were a lot of them. It became quite clear, as the truth unfolded, that the Bellevue School District leadership at that time was going to protect its six-figure salaried administrators and leave Butch and me, and especially the past and present players and our program, hung out to dry. Much more on that later.

Those who hurt us the most, though, were a few of our own players’ parents—entitled parents, those who felt their child should have gotten better, and, in a few cases, those who wanted to pull the puppet strings and feel important. A few of them decided to trash our program and Butch, distance themselves from the legacy created by our former Bellevue football players, and literally wash their hands of all of us. Our program has always been about the legacy of a proud past, focusing on the current, and planning ahead for those in our youth programs on teams yet to come. These parents I’m talking about were only concerned with now and today and how things would affect their child. In the end, though, as is often the case, these particular parents and families didn’t give a damn about the program or the history or what would happen after they left. Their interest was focused on how things would affect their child, and they represented quite succinctly what had changed in our program those last couple of seasons—far too many student athletes and parents feeling “entitled.” As this story unfolds, you will see who these people are and what they did and said, and you can be the judge. Everyone deserves answers. So, this story is the culmination of our own four-year investigation, our review of over fourteen thousand pages of documents, and my own knowledge of the events leading up to this. I have a feeling that once our players (and others) have read the story, they will feel that they can once again wear their Bellevue football shirts without having to hear the whispers or, if you hear do hear them, you’ll know what really happened and how wrong all those haters and social media loudmouths were. This story is a bit historical and, then, as we get to the last few years, more of a reckoning really. There are people at the WIAA, KingCo, a couple former federal prosecutors, the Seattle Times and a few at the Bellevue School District who need to be accountable for what they did and did not do—and this is my way of holding them accountable to the degree that I can. Some may not like the truth, and some may not like my opinion, but it is the truth and, frankly, at this point, what they want or what they think is the furthest thing from my mind. I’m not writing this story for them. I am writing this story for the student athletes who Butch and I had the privilege of coaching over many decades. The players all these “experts” and administrators and investigators (prosecutors) and reporters did not think too much about as they went on their merciless and unrelenting attack of our program.

For those of you reading the online version, I hope you find the hyperlinks helpful, as they will lead you to documents that many never got to see during the investigations. These documents help show and explain better than anything else. In many instances, it is “read for yourself.” For those of you reading the paperback version, if you’d like to read the documents, you can go to the book’s website and connect there. Our website address is, “didthetruthevenmatter.com”. Some of the documents will utterly astound you, and many of them sure never ended up in the newspaper or on television. Sadly, many of these documents should have ended up in the 68-page report, but, of course, they didn’t, because they were rather exculpatory, and that sure wasn’t going to happen in that report. In any event, I think these documents will assist any reader in formulating a more informed position when it comes to the Bellevue football program and what it truly was all about.

After reading these three books, it will be quite difficult for people to take the position that we cheated or took shortcuts or that each, and every single football title was not earned. It is my hope that if and when the subject comes up, and someone is being disrespectful about the program, our players will now not only be able to tell those people being cruel and ignorant what they can go do with themselves, but they can now also tell them to read the book and shut their mouth because they simply do not know what the hell they are talking about.

In closing, Butch and I still talk once or twice a week. I know that the biggest concern for Butch through all of this has been how this has affected his players. As he saw headline after headline with his picture on the front page of the newspaper talking about recruiting and cheating and all that was wrong with our football program, as was always the case, his thoughts went to his players and how this would affect them and their accomplishments and their legacy. Butch is an amazing man. He and I miss you guys and hope you are all doing well. Keep in touch and enjoy these three books. They are for you.

Coach Jones Bellevue 1982, University of Washington 1986

1982-1994 Bellevue 1995 Sultan 1996-2001 Sammamish 2002-2015 Bellevue 2019-???? Kennedy