Winner: Dale Christensen, coach of the Liberycilla High School football team in Libertyville, Illinois.
Approach: In 1994, Christensen had two students stage a fake fight at a pep talk before a game against the rival Libertyville Wildcats. Then he pretended to intervene, and during the scuffle, secretly pulled out a starters pistol, shot himself with a blank round, then fell to the ground as if he had been hit by real bullets.

A few minutes later he got up, his chest drenched with the fake blood he had hidden under his shirt and announced that the whole thing had been a motivational skit to get the team ready for the game. Unfortunately, someone had already fled the room and called the police. Three police cars were already speeding to the scene.

Reaction: “Most of us were scared out of our minds,” one team member told reporters. Christensen, mystified by the controversy that his actions generated, resigned a few days later. As the school superintendent put it, “Mr Christensen believes people outside the football team don’t understand what he was trying to accomplish.”

Winner: Mr Routon, Mathematics teacher.
In May 1994, a colleague showed Routon a mock math quiz that had been circulating around the country for months. The questions involved drug dealing, prostitution and car theft. For example:
“Johnny can get 150 for a stolen Chevrolet, 250 for a stolen jeep and 600 for a stolen BMW, how many keeps will Johnny have to steal to pay for a 1,200 packet of uncut cocaine?”

And also:
“If Benny's Ak-47 uses 20 rounds clips, how many times will he have to reload to pump 150 rounds into a gang rival?”

Mr Routon was inspired by this. He made copies of the quiz, passed it out to his class of 11 to 13 year olds and had them answer it. Routon was temporarily suspended and then transferred to a desk job ‘away from children’. He then later resigned.

Runner Up: Reverend Kenneth Humpreys, a minister and music teacher at Henry County High School in Paris, Tennessee.
In 1994, while planning for the school’s annual Christmas pageant, Reverend Kenneth Humpreys got into an argument about the music selection with band director Martin Paschall. Displaying true Christmas spirit, he threw a chair at Paschall and hit him in the face and chest, breaking a rib, severely injuring his lip and knocking out several teeth. Reverand Humpreys was suspended without pay for two months and later pled guilty to assault charges. The Christmas pageant was cancelled.