I watched one of this season’s NFL playoff games at a local bar. I struck up a conversation with a couple of the gentlemen next to me, who appeared to be in their mid 40s. They turned out to be local boys like me. Naturally, the conversation quickly turned to reminiscing about our “glory days” playing football in high school.
As most of my readers can probably guess, I love spinning a good yarn and this particular topic was right up my alley. We began swapping stories and I got a few laughs, but ultimately one of the younger gentlemen smiled and told a story that even I couldn’t top.
His senior year at another local high school (my school’s rival) he had the good fortune to be coached by a legendary local coach who is widely regarded as one of the best high school football coaches of all time. This coach was known as an extremely tough taskmaster whose teams excelled not only at football, but also at sportsmanship, discipline and class. In short, no one messed with this coach.
That year’s team finished up an undefeated season with a game against a completely out-matched opponent. Towards the end of that game, the legendary coach’s team had a huge lead, approaching 40 points. The coach gave strict orders to run the clock out and not try to drive the score any higher. His team ran 3 plays, and then started to punt the ball back to the other team. Unfortunately, without consulting the coach the punter and one of the receivers decided to fake the punt and run a pass play instead. The play was successful, resulting in another touchdown.
Of course, this just drove the point gap even higher and was another embarrassment for the opposing team. The two players had driven the score up so that the team could break a record by scoring 300 points in a single season. But to this coach, being good sports and not humiliating your opponents was more important than getting his name in a record book. But these two guys figured, We’re both seniors. He can’t do anything to us; we’ll be gone.
They were wrong. As the story goes, the furious coach personally drove those young men to the opposing high school the following Monday morning. He marched them into the main office and made them apologize to the entire school for their lack of sportsmanship – over the P.A. system.
I don’t know either of these kids, but my guess is they learned two things that day. First, by experiencing some of the humiliation the other kids felt after that big loss, I think they probably learned something about sportsmanship. And second? I think they learned that you don’t mess with Coach.
Have a great weekend,
Ro