Diary of a Mad Football Coach, Part 1

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: There has never been a football coach worth a damn who wasn’t out of his cotton pickin’ mind. I should know. I am one.

Coaching football is not like coaching any other sport. I know they don’t award Nobel Prizes for it. But running a football team is a massive, complicated undertaking. Long before you’ve called plays in a game, devised a system for your offense, schemed your defense or put together your special teams, you have to evaluate your talent. You have to decide which players can handle the ball, can run, block, tackle, throw the ball and catch it. You have to identify the players that are tough and will show up to every practice and work hard, and separate the ones you can count on to be leaders from the ones that will be a constant pain in the neck.

This might be a good time to mention that the players I’m talking about are nine years old.

I don’t remember exactly how I got myself involved in all this. I live in a mid-sized suburb on the South Shore. A few years ago I got it into my head that at a certain age, everyone should do some kind of volunteer work in their town. I don’t do work at a soup kitchen or visit nursing homes. Unless you like crabgrass, you don’t want me planting flowers in a traffic island. If I’d helped build the new playground, it’d look like one of those M.C. Escher drawings with the upside-down staircases. So I started coaching youth sports.

I’ve done baseball, basketball and even filled in for a couple of games at soccer, a sport about which I know less than nothing (though after years of careful observation I’ve discovered that it somehow involves kicking). I’ve approached all these sports with one goal in mind: that everyone like me. That’s it. Play everyone and keep them happy. If little Jenny or Justin wants to play forward instead of midfielder, be my guest. I once had one goalie and seven kids who all thought they were playing forward. It wasn’t the result of a brilliant scheme I’d put together, it was indifference. If we’ve got no defensemen, what do I care? Once everyone likes me, the rest of coaching is just “Pass it to the open guy. Keep your glove down. Hands up on defense. Swing the bat level. Nice rebound, Billy. Pick out a good one. Be a hitter now.”

Football is different. The first thing you learn is that there’s a reason why football coaches talk in that loud, stern, grown-up voice all the time. It’s the only way possible to get your players’ attention. Putting forty nine-year-olds in helmets and pads and asking them not to screw around is like putting a bunch of puppies in a shoe store overnight and asking them not to chew anything.

The second thing you learn is that teachers should be paid ARod money. It’s tough enough trying to teach a kid football, a game, something they volunteered to do, something fun. I can’t imagine trying to teach a kid, for example, algebra. I was trying to teach one kid how we call our plays. How the first number stands for the Running Back, and the second number stands for the hole he’s running to. So a “38 Sweep” is the 3-back to the 8-hole. I gave him a speech about how we’re counting on him to know the plays, how everyone has to be on the same page or the plays can’t work. Then we had this exchange:
Me: “So if we call “23 Blast,” which number back goes to the 3-hole?”
Kid: “Um…Nick?”
Me: “OK, right. But what number Running Back is he?”
Kid: “Oh. Um…Jack?”
Me: “No, no. What’s the number of the back? The number; the answer I’m looking for is a number.”
Kid: “Tyler?”
Me: “Just go have fun and block somebody.”
And if a kid screws around in school, a teacher can’t make him run a lap.

That’s why the game of football drives coaches insane; or drives the already insane into coaching. By its nature, football is complex. It requires eleven players to know what-in-the-Sam-hill they’re supposed to be doing at all times. You can’t just say “Go out there and score.” like in other sports, because if one kid is doing something different than the other ten, the play will be a train wreck.

Ironically, the fewer players you have, the easier it is. We had forty kids this year. Which meant that when we found eleven kids we could trust to run a play without getting someone killed, there were twenty-nine on the sidelines. As far as I could tell, the preferred method of entertainment for those kids was asking me what time it is and punching each other in the balls.

One thing you learn to appreciate in football is the fat kids. Parents tend to experience mirages. The way people in the desert see water, football parents look at their kids and see them tearing into the open field, dodging tacklers and running to glory like some NFL Films archive of Walter Payton highlights, if only the stupid coach would give them the damn ball. No one dreams of their kid playing offensive line, throwing a well-executed block like the coach told him so someone else’s kid can run the ball. But you can’t play football without it. Fat kids’ parents are grateful for any position you put their kid in. For them, football isn’t a choice of Left Tackle vs. Superstar Running Back, it’s a choice of Left Tackle vs. Crippling Case of Juvenile Diabetes.

The biggest myth around youth sports is that no one cares about winning. That’s true only if you’re winning, in the same way that money isn‘t important to the wealthy. We lost our first game by a touchdown to a good team. We lost our second by a two-point conversion to a bad team. Our third game was against a very good team and was the kind of disaster that usually has the words “A Jerry Bruckheimer Film” attached to it. The smell of blood now in the water, the sharks began to circle. There were fewer kids at practice. The coaches started pointing fingers. We were either pushing the team to hard or not hard enough. Another loss. Now the parents got involved.

I showed up at practice, proud coach of an 0-4 team, and the head coach pulled me aside and told me we had to go by new rules. No raising your voice at the kids. That goes for all of us. No running them too hard. Parents were complaining. Calls had been made. Letters had been written. You can always remember when it happens. It’s happened at every job you’ve ever had. When the last little flicker of your morale goes out, like a candle being snuffed. This was mine.

Next issue, Part 2: I gain the peace and tranquility that only exists in the hearts of those who no longer give a crap.