By Julie Buehler
It used to be a football coach, coached football.
Sculpted sharp, young men out of soft, flimsy boys, taught self-respect, preached hard work, prayed for wisdom and by gum, won football games.
But that’s changed.
There’s little patience for sculpting a new offense, let a lone affecting a life forever.
Now coaches are more concerned about their jobs than the lives of the players they coach. They’re less interested in teaching and more interested in winning and it’s showing up at every level of football.
There’s the occasional coach that spits clichés about honor and commitment and excellence, but once that façade is peeled back , in the face of reality, he’s burping out one-liners that he’s not living.
USC had a guy like that. Steve Sarkisian. They fired him because he reportedly showed up to Sunday practice drunk.
And multiple reports indicated multiple people knew the charming, kindly “Sark” had a drinking problem.
How many people knew of Sarkisian’s drinking problem and did nothing to help the man, dissuade the man from self-destruction?
I’m not sure what the number is, but it’s too big.
Too many people decided their job security was more important than reporting the many public transgressions.
And that’s the life of a big-time coach. Surrounded by those hoping to springboard from one program’s success to their own program.
Now a coach’s life is pandering to the interests that be, hoping he’s not accused of preaching or praying, teaching a little and placating a lot.
There might be not be a finer man to coach football, but Coach Pagano is likely fired after this season.
After 4 years of solid work his decision-making was reduced, by fear, to trying to outsmart his opposition into putting too many men on the field.
Forget actual football, the best strategy he came up with collapsed into a bad gimmick.
It’s the kind of thing that happens when a man feels he’s tried everything else and only the irrational would work.
But his job is under scrutiny, some believe he’s going to be fired and others believe he will be fired because he can’t crack The Patriots Code. So he needed to beat the Pats on Sunday Night Football for vindication.
But it went the opposite direction.
It’s the maddening life of a football coach.
It takes a special kind of person to dedicate 25 hours a day to the game of football. Watching film, constructing game plans, building confidence, demolishing self-will, it’s a difficult thing and its becoming more difficult every year.
It’s so tough, one man who claimed to be tough, quit the job. Mid-season.
Steve Spurrier quit. Outright.
His South Carolina Gamecocks lost another game, he figured their season was lost. After a career spanning decades, he suddenly called it quits.
Like so many other things in sports, the world of a coach has drastically changed. I’m not sure Lombardi or Paul Brown or Tom Landry or even the more contemporary Bill Walsh could, or would, coach in today’s climate.
Julie Buehler hosted the Coachella Valley’s most popular sports talk radio show, “Buehler’s Day Off” every day for 3 years, but now she can be exclusively seen on KMIR sharing the coolest stories in sports. She’s an avid gym rat, slightly sarcastic and more likely to recite Steve Young’s career passing stats than American Idol winners. Tune in to KMIR’s nightly news or KMIR.com for her sports reports.
