To play basketball for the Richmond Heights Spartans, student athletes have to fork over $100 and sign a three-page code of conduct obliging them not to smoke, drink or break any laws resulting in a "negative" effect on the school or its host city.

The statement further calls sports participation a "privilege" and instructs students to be respectful of the rules and regulations established by their coach.

"I promise to abide by the expectations my community has created regarding good sportsmanship and behavior," it reads in part.

The conduct statement is good as far as it goes. But the problem is it doesn't go quite far enough. It doesn't tell a student athlete on how to respond to a rogue coach.

The statement contains no instruction, for example, on how to react to a white coach who has no problem tossing around the word "nigger" when instructing his ten black varsity players on how to play.

"It was at the away game against Cardinal [in Middlefield], that coach Popp was yelling at us at half-time. He said, 'Y'all are playing nigger ball. Y'all are not using your heads,' " London Fulton, a 6-foot-1 junior forward told me Sunday.

"I just looked around at my teammates. We were winning the game, but coach was still yelling. Then he said 'nigger ball.' Everybody just kept their heads hanging down. It wasn't a good scene"

Richmond Heights ran away with the game last month, 81-63. But that was the night that Jason Popp lost his locker room. That's the night a group of players on the undefeated team began serious talks among themselves, and with their parents, about forcing Coach Popp's replacement or refusing to play the rest of the season.

"We all really love the game of basketball. But we made a decision to sacrifice our season if a change wasn't made," Fulton told me in the lobby of Exclusive Eyelash Designs & Spa, an upscale Richmond Heights salon owned by his mother Dawn Johnson-Tyree.

"My definition of a coach is someone who helps his players get better on the court and off the court. Coach Popp wasn't really doing either," Fulton, 17, said of the coach he said he has known since he was 12 years old.

Last week, Popp, whose team is 15-0 and ranked No. 6 in the state's Division IV category, was relieved of his coaching duties for the rest of the season. In announcing her decision to remove Popp, Superintendent Linda Hardwick, noted that the coach, who has been with the district for 15 years and is head of the school's teachers union, has always received positive evaluations.

Hardwick also said that Popp – and the entire district –needs some cultural sensitivity training, which is an early favorite for the understatement of the year.

It is entirely possible that the rumblings of a cadre of displeased parents and discontented players -- everyone wants their kid to start -- helped ratchet up the anger and tension on display in Richmond Heights. But if Popp was using unconscionable street talk with young men in his charge, he forfeited all rights to share in any success the team enjoys.

Once Popp started sounding more like a racist than a high school basketball coach and classroom teacher, his removal was not an option.