College Softball Team Names Dog As Emotional Support Coach

The second you see that a college softball team has an "emotional support coach" on the payroll, it's completely natural to reflexively complain about how soft the world has gotten.

However, there's an important distinction: an emotional support coach would be ridiculous if the team hadn't hired one heck of a good boy to handle those duties.

If you flip threw the Arkansas Tech softball roster, you'll see one name that pops out: Mr. Wilson.

No this isn't one of those stories where a guy couldn't make the baseball team so he started identifying as a *Jerry Lewis voice* Laaaaadyyyyy! so that he could be on the softball team. 

Nope. We have enough of those… 

I'm pleased to report that Mr. Wilson is a dog.

Imagine whiffing on a pitch to cap off a strikeout, You hang your head and trudge back to the dugout. You're down, you're out. But do you know who still believes in you?

Mr. Wilson, that's who.

I bet he shags balls in batting practice too. What a guy, that Mr. Wilson.

I knew it was a growing trend around the sports world for teams to bring dogs into the fold. I know they say it's for emotional support purposes, but let's face it: a big reason for this has to be because it's social media gold.

People get so excited when they see a video of a dog on social media that they practically punch their thumb through their phone because they try to like it so hard.

However, what I didn't realize is that dogs joining coaching staffs is becoming a thing. That's because Mr. Wilson was not the first to hold a position like this.

The Northern Iowa Panthers made sure to let us all know that they've got a Director of Happiness on staff who goes by the name of Mahi Chambers.

I kind of like this. It's fun. It's not like they're real coaches.

Although, there is a small part of me that thinks a Labrador Retriever could coach the Dallas Cowboys better than Mike McCarthy.