The Health Costs of Modern Coaching

I watched Gary Kubiak have a stroke on the sidelines of a Houston Texans Game. Two months later he was fired. I watched Eric Wedge of the Mariners have a stroke while talking to the media; three months later he quit. I followed how John Fox of the Denver Broncos had a heart scare and then had to have heart surgery only to hurry back to the sidelines. I followed the ebb and flow of Urban Meyer as he came apart emotionally and physically while winning three national championships at Florida and took a sabbatical from the game. I could go on and talk about the strokes Dan McCarney had at North Texas State or the stroke of the great Rugby coach Eddie Jones in Japan. This covers less than a year. These examples highlight the hidden and insidious health costs of modern coaching.

Modern professional and college coaches are noted for high visibility and huge salaries. In college, the football coaches are always the highest paid public officials in a state. The visibility and money make coaches celebrities and targets. They are also blamed for everything and face relentless scrutiny that follows their wives and children. The scrutiny of rabid and irrational team obsessed fans only touches on the unremitting demands of owners frantic to win and chaffing to control or in college of boosters and athletic directors who serve as surrogate owners.

The medical costs of relentless pressure and stress are well known. Modulated and controlled stress can energize and motivate high performance. Unending stress, however, degrades cognitive performance through the mediated impact of cortisol and adrenaline on the centers of planning and judgment. It extracts high costs on the cardio-vascular systems that make bodies vulnerable to illness. Dealing with this stress can lead to dangerous habits of drinking, compulsive actions such as exercising or tape watching as well as overeating. Another standard technique is to “release” the frustration by acting out anger and stress with displays of aggression and abuse towards athletes or opponents. These habits are designed to alleviate stress but only contribute to health deterioration.

All this barely touches the emotional costs that high level coaching extracts. Recently ESPN printed a week in the life of John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens. The life calendar makes clear the 24/7 sleep deprived life of any high achieving modern coach. At college recruiting, fundraising and booster appeasement pile on the already insane schedule. Harbaugh sleeps over in the office to be more efficient and avoid waking his wife and children. Marrying a coach is a lot like marrying a doctor or military officer, even though the stakes are a lot less in real life. Coaches have no private life and face endless attrition trying to keep marriages and children intact.

All these hidden costs usually remain hidden even from the coach since coaches, male and female, live an uber-mensch life of ignoring the costs and coaching through the pain. They model for their players the unswerving and destructive devotion to work that obliterates private life and compromises mental and physical health.

The strokes and heart problems just reveal the tip of the iceberg of the physical and psychological costs of coaching. The very patterns necessary to live with this stress in a sane way are hardest to implement given the cycle of stress and blame and competitive perfectionism that drives them.

Coaches constantly preach to players to learn how to “let go” and have “amnesia” for their losses and failures. This capacity to move on and stay present remains critical for any player to continue in the game. Good coaches model this by showing up for work the next day after a defeat ready to let go, learn and prepare for the next game. Often however, the coach has spent all night and morning studying tape and obsessively breaking down plays or patterns to be ready.

Players internalize this taking care of business approach as much as they internalize an abusive out of control coach who takes out frustration and anger at themselves for losses on their players and pretends it is motivation. Even as coaches try to live this approach and model it, they still grapple with unrealistic expectations, demanding and irrational owners or boosters—no differences often—which have no true loyalty except to winning. No one gets any credit for past victories. Most college coaches are fired with winning records.

Every coach knows that all the praise, all the raises, all the extensions mean nothing. Every coach is expendable; no team has loyalty to coaches, unless they win, but even then a scandal will end them. This utter lack of loyalty and job insecurity coupled with the knowledge that all the praise, hype and sucking up are hollow wears down the integrity and honesty of coaches.

The coaches now reciprocate. With rare exceptions no coaches stay for long time. The “shelf life’ of a coach has decreased, and none are given serious time of five to seven years to build a true program. Almost no one will stay at one place. Many resumes will resemble nomadic lives. Coaches move constantly for money, prestige, loss of confidence or just wearing out a welcome.  Even after being fired, the coaching fraternity will reabsorb them as coordinators or coaches at lower level programs. Often they will get a second chance, sometimes third chances.

The insecurity and insincerity simply aggravate the health issues by providing no safe haven and no secure center for coaches. Sane coaches develop some sort of life and anchors beyond coaching; otherwise the costs of stress will exact its toll.

Some get ill. They collapse in public or private as the stroke and heart examples demonstrate. Many end up with chronic back or intestinal problems—common outcomes of endless stress.

More than a few implode under the pressure. Coaches explode on the sideline or practice. They scream and choke their players. They heave balls at them. More than a few meet untimely career ends when they blow up; others like Bobby Knight were treated as “characters” and people shrugged off their abuse and insanity as just “Knight being Knight.” Others end up drinking too much and getting in trouble even though they are often shadowed by team minders or protected by watchful and friendly police.

More than a few coaches are devoutly religious, for good reason. Only the knowledge of acceptance and love outside of the “game” can carry people forward. A relation to God exists outside of relations to wins and losses, despite what some fans believe. Relations to God or good friends or family perdure and provide purpose, love and acceptance that are not false or contingent on winning. Sports like life exposes mistakes and constantly tempts people to take themselves more seriously than they should. Sports pressure cookers incite mean or abusive slips and behavior. A close religious relationship provides a place to seek forgiveness, redemption and growth that boosters, owners and fans can never provide.

The cost of being a coach lies inside. The costs eat coaches alive without fans noticing. The panoply of glory, celebrity and money surround coaches. Beneath the glitter lies the human truth, “sic transit Gloria mundi.” More to the point “what have you done for me recently"? No coach escapes the falseness, insecurity, mad expectations, greed or true and false glory of this world.

The sane and healthy ones develop spiritual and personal strategies to give them perspective on the “game” they play.

Sometimes they have to lose health or personal lives to learn the real worth of worth of wins/losses compared to family, friends, love and integrity. Urban Meyer describes how it can be a "daily" challenge to keep the balance with family life and coaching. Coaches who survive and then thrive all develop the moral capacity to "take it seriously but hold it gently" and to let go and move on without breaking themselves.

Professional versus College Coaching

This last weekend I watched teams coached by Nick Saban, Mike Riley and Steve Spurrier. All the teams played with abandon, skill and precision. Yet I was also struck by the fact that all the coaches, like Pete Carroll who made his reputation at USC but has returned to the professional ranks,  had one thing in common. All had barely OK professional football coaching careers, but flourished at the college level.

Their experience and many others like them lead me to reflect on the divergence between the worlds of college and professional coaching and the interesting migration from one to the other. Rick Pitino and John Calipari  epitomize the college basketball version of failed professionals returning to become superlative college coaches, but I will focus on football. The the core the professionals coach players but the college coaches educate and teach young men.

The journey from pros to college is treacherous and many fail in their first try, witness the failure of Charlie Weis at Notre Dame or Bill  Callahan at Nebraska. The move from controlling the talent and dealing with the maturity level of professionals can compare badly to endless recruiting and the need to maintain the level of motivation required for 19 year olds. It can  be unnerving and even feel demeaning.

The move in either direction can be treacherous as almost any coach who has coached at both levels will tell you. Professional coaches assume an ultra elite level of skills and paid commitment as well as 12 month development by players. They also possesses an ability to move people in and out quickly. On the other hand, most professional players have a profound awareness that they can be traded at any moment, and  ultimately they must protect their individual value which lies in individual skill and achievement on the market, not the team. They will think of their career as much as their team.

To be honest, coaching college is not for everyone. Many ex pro coaches hate having to woo and identify with 18 year olds. Worse, coaches must now show up for games of 14 and 15 year olds. Grown adults must work with grasping coteries, middle men and relatives who can surround elite players. 

Many coaches prefer the chess board approach of the pros where everyone is a free agent and all the players are fungible, completely replaceable. It makes developing the talent level much easier. Any contract can be terminated, at some economic cost, but no coach is stuck with kids for four years or has to worry about the care and feeding of adolescents let alone the need to make sure they have enough to eat or get to class on time. More importantly no coach has invested years in wooing and helping the kid from pre-high school nor have the coaches talked and worked with the kids parents and guardians. Professional coaches often don't need or want an personal investment in the quality and growth of the players--college coaches must make that investment to attract and retain their players.

But the sheer truth is college coaching is alot more fun than pro coaching. There is a reason coaches call the NFL  the "no fun league." Professional football players, for good reason, are all free agents. Football players represent the issue in its purest form.  Players play a violent harsh games with no institutional compassion or loyalty. Their contracts are not guaranteed so they need to protect themselves to maximize what will only be a short hard career. This puts serious limits on what coaches can do with them and how much influence coaches have. Very little real teaching goes on in the NFL. The players may pick up certain techniques and adapt to systems, but they do not over invest in one particular system since they may be playing across the ball on another team the next year, and the half life of professional coaches covers nano-years. Very little reason exists for players to buy into a system or feel an abiding loyalty to a team or tradition or fans and certainly none exists to change or grow as a person unless it increases their endorsement value.

If the players know this, the coaches are worse. Bill Belichick epitomizes the coach who treats all players as interchangeable parts to play until they break or fail and discard or replace them as needed. Let's be clear, all coaches must "cast a cold eye on life, on death," as Yeats would have it. Every leader needs a clear hard eye to judge and evaluate and decide upon performance, but professional Coaches seldom have the luxery to care and infuse their coaching with care. The demands to win, to perform before a relentless and fickle public and owners do not give them the luxery to care about or to educate players.

The coaches who return from the pros to college often feel relief and liberation rather than failure and exile. If you talk to coaches who have coached in both leagues, most recognize the immense satisfaction in being a teacher with a profound and lasting impact upon the life of a young person. Eighteen year olds have their limits, but they possess possibilities. A coach can still change a life; they "can save" and "rescue" kids. 

Coaches and teams can impart  lessons of discipline, internal judgment and teamwork. Good college coaching  builds moral and social equity in the young men. You won't hear pro coaches referring to their players as "kids," But college kids can grow into young men under a coach's tuteledge.  For many of their charges the coaches serve as surrogate fathers, powerful role models. The coaches and the academic staff hound kids to get educations despite themselves. Watching a disorganized and angry 17 year  old grow into a fine player and competent and sometimes fine human being buttresses the lives of many college coaches, especially the ones who are not at the glamor jobs or the army of assistants who migrate from team to team teaching the sport they love and helping kids they enjoy being with. Few professional experiences can match the exuberance and emotional commitment of college players. The vast majority of college players know this is the end of their playing career and they give it their all.

I do not want to romanticize college football coaching. Nor do I want to pretend it exists independent of its own world of pressures to win and boosters who seldom worry about the welfare of moral growth or education of the young men. To boosters and athletic directors,  the players are fungible. But college incentives push coaches to invest more time and energy in the developmental aspects of players. Coaches not only get to the know the players and parents when they are younger, but they have them for four years--they cannot just cut them at well. Most good schools and coaches put strict limits upon dismissing a player just for competence issues.

Interestingly in college because coaches are stuck with their kids for four years (I know a few schools permit coaches to run off the players they believe are not good enough, but surprising numbers of coaches for moral as well as self-interested reasons live with "my mistakes). If a student-athletes gives their all, commit to the program and compete with honor, then most coaches and most schools will not run them off. This stuckness means coaches  have to work with what they have. They have to teach harder and work harder to connect with players and help players really develop their potential.

College coaches can't go buy free agents or trade players who don't live up to their potential. College coaches have the opportunity and the constraint to work with young men to grow in skill, commitment and learn as they must master complex schemes and master judgment under stress.right. They experience the satisfaction of being a real teacher or educator that transcends just coaching.

Pro coaches seldom get to experience the joy and satisfaction of watching young men blossom or the pain of watching them implode and fail. College coaches have more responsibility for the humans in their charge; because of that they also have more fun.

Pay to Maim--Making Football Players Felons

Football is a violent game; the violence powers its structure and attraction. I have written at length about how this violence requires greater moral discipline from players and coaches than any other athletic endeavors. The game grows from the disciplined application of force against other human beings. In its normal practice within rules, the sport almost guarantees elite college and professional players will have shorter life spans, physically disabled futures and, worse, more than a few will lose their personhood to the depredations of brain injury.

Grown physically large men unleash focused aggression upon each other to block, tackle, run, pass, and catch. The level of force they inflict with this aggression would destroy most of us physically if we were not wearing weaponized armor and superbly trained. Only the tightest self and peer discipline among players and coaches keeps the game intact. Its intensity, ferocity and energy resembles a fusion reaction barely contained by internal forces. It can easily destabilize and explode into something worse, where the game becomes criminal assault.

The key here as with uniformed services lies in intention. The infliction of violent force upon another human being must serve a distinct and limited purpose to be defensible. If I tackle someone to stop the run, that fits with the norms and defensible approach to the game. If I a ball or cause a fumble, that fits. If I block someone hard within the rules, that fits. All this skilled and fierce force hurts, but if serious injury occurs, it is not intended but flows from another action—to block tackle, run, strip within the context of the game. These rules and intentions keep the game from being criminal assault.

Criminal assault occurs when a person  physically attacks or asserts force against another human being with the intent of maiming or injuring them so they cannot go on in their life role. It lies in the intent to injure and harm. Criminal assault that occurs because a person is paid to hurt someone involves a more heinous crime than one that involves passion or loss of control. So intentional maiming or injurying for money involves moral and criminal assault.

Now we know the New Orleans’ Saints turned football into criminal assault.

"The league’s investigation determined that this improper “Pay for Performance” program included “bounty” payments to players for inflicting injuries on opposing players that would result in them being removed from a game," NFL said in a statement. “Commissioner Goodell will determine punishment." "The players regularly contributed cash into a pool and received improper cash payments of two kinds from the pool based on their play in the previous week’s game," NFL said

Now we learn that a largely player financed fund provided bounties to players on the NFL New Orleans Saints over the last three years. $1,000 for a knock out and $1,500 for a cart off. 25 players over three years earned their reward.  A coach administered the fund, the head coach sanctioned it by his silence.

The sheer physical dangers of modern football are well known, and now the deeper dangers of later life crippling or loss of personhood from brain injury.  Football regimes from peewee through high school, college and professional are developing regulations that try to reduce the inevitable damage. The NFL union finally gained significant medical attention in the latest NFL.

Let's not romanticize football. It is hard, harsh and can be physically ugly. Long ago it lost any pretense to sportsmanship and coaches from Vince Lombardi to Bill Belichick mock the notion of football sportsmanship.

What scares me the most, the players did this to themselves. The players contributed the money and egged each other on. As mentioned, the “inmates are running the asylum.” It lets us know the reason why you need outside regulation rather than relying upon 24-28 year old aggressive males caught upon a culture to make rules. As Gregg Williams the coach who arranged it admits "It was a terrible mistake, and we knew it was wrong while we were doing it.”

They knew it was wrong! They knew they were maiming their compatriots, this is insane. The money is actually a pittance given the modern salaries but taken seriously for its symbolic importance. They were doing this at the same time retired football players are committing suicide as their brains disintegrate from damage sustained in the game.

Pay to maim moves a very violent sport from controlled violence with intent to win under the rules to rewarded felonious assault. It makes football players criminals.

Now football culture and media attention thrive on the big play and big hit. College players wear stickers on their helmets celebrating big plays. Replays go over it and controlled executed aggression can take on its own fearsome beauty. Even now old defensive players grumble about taking the football out of football, and Mike Golic talks on the ESPN about how this is blown out of proportion.

I am sorry, it is not. You do not violate the basic code of the sport, even one as elastic of footballs, by paying people to purposely injure, damage or maim other players.

Every football player has been injured, often many times. Every football player knows their career can end in a nano-second. A critical unwritten code permits players to play hard but not play to injure or maim,

Pay to maim violates the moral code and justification for football as a game or sport in at least three different ways.

1. 1)   It disrespects the moral core of the game. The players intend to injure individuals for pay. They unleash their controlled violence not to pursue a designed play. The players act to injure or end the careers of other players,
2. 2)   It destroys mutual respect among players. It turns fellow players into enemies rather than opponents. The moral structure of sport depends upon that distinction. While football spawns Rex Ryans of the world who think you have to hate your enemies to be effective players, athletic competition requires this distinction. This is even more important in a league where players move contantly and often end up playing with their opponents the next year.
3. 3)   It violates the contract players make with themselves. No one expects deep rationality from 22-27 year old males embarked on football careers. They all claim to “know” the risks, but no one that age can understand the risk to their future selves and personhood posed by physical disability. They enter the game expecting to risk unintentional injury. They do not expect other players to play or be encouraged by coaches and rewarded to wound them so that they cannot play the game.

Everything about this stinks. Too bad the NFL does not have the power of the NCAA to vacate victories or take away championships because this deserves that treatment. Remember the Saints got to the Super Bowl by injuring Curt Warner and Brett Favre, now we  know why and how.

Careers should end for doing this. The fines should be immense. Suspensions should be long term. Football has to keep pushing on its culture. Even as players push back against Commissioner Goodell, this represents a classic case of needed regulation to protect players from themselves and protect the culture from its worst tendencies. 

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football I & II

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II  follows and examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

Love and Basketball: John Wooden as Coach

I don't have any more accolades to add to those being heaped upon John Wooden at his death at the age of 99. I did have the pleasure of growing up watching his teams play and having his style of play and coaching imprinted upon me as an ideal to be sought and admired. But more important for me and some students, I teach his books, especially his biography/coaching manuel They Call Me Coach.

The book always startles my students who aspire to become coaches. At first they get impatient because he really tells a love story between him and his wife Nellie from Indiana. His growth as a hard working midwestern country boy weaves through the love story and ties in his discovery and love of basketball. His earliest high school coaches taught him how to grow but also deal with failure and success.

The students wonder why they are reading about this story that seems so far away. Young basketball players have no clue about him, and very few students have heard his name. But slowly its power holds sway as he discusses various coaching and playing styles he assimilated as well as how he strove to create a balance with family, Nellie and basketball. He was lucky because his passion for Nellie matched, nourished and renewed his passion for basketball. His first lesson for my students is that love matters in life and you need to work hard to find, nurture and respect it.

After establishing that loving centers living, he discusses coaching and the cumulative impact of his championship teams. He speaks of the roots of his conditioning and defensive philosophies. He speaks at length about the need to adapt to the talent you have and how his teams evolved in light of his various teams and players especially Lew Alicinder/Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and Bill Walton.

In modern America we don't normally associate coaching with love. Too many of us have memories of psycho-dads screaming and demanding as coaches or spectators. The indelible image of Vince Lombardi and win at any price and Woody Hayes attacking players at the end of his career tend to erase the deeper more lasting reality that many great coaches and Wooden excelled them all, coach from and through love.

The biography reveals the second love, love of the game. He revels in exlpaining how much he learned from others. The book is not about X's and O's, but he reveals a deep curiosity and sheer joy in discovering a complex zone defense, adapting it to his players and other teams and integrating conditioning and quickness into a philosophy of play. His stories reveal how the losses linger and at the end of each season and beginning of each he sets goals that infuse what he does. The game and its intricacies always remain with him with his fine mind mulling, thinking, inventing. The point of the game is love of the game.

But the most important love for a coach is love of his players. I don't mean love in a sort of dry agape way that thins out because it encompasses everyone; I certainly don't mean love in an erotic or homoerotic channeling towards players. No I mean an abiding care, a rock bottom emotional commitment to the player and team as individuals. This care, this emotional focus upon the person seeks the best for that person. It has a family resemblance to parenting, but without the sometimes twisted variations or self-identifying that can infuse parental love. Abdul-Jabaar said "he was preparing us for life." His players often mentioned they knew he cared for them even if they fought him, and his lessons only really sank in later. The truest test of a coach and teacher is if students return to meet with him, and his players constantly returned.

Wooden was not a nice coach. He makes that clear. He rode referees and players (something he truly regreted later). His coaching style demanded an immense commitment from student athletes. Essentially it demanded that individuals meld or subordinate their talent to a team concept. His most interesting stories and the ones he clearly values and relishes are discussing how players like Sidney Wicks and Bill Walton fought with him and worked with him to grow into superb players. Over some issues, it was simply "my way or the highway." Wooden also makes clear he learns from them. He demanded that players earn respect but gave them love. He may not like them but gave them love, and they knew it as a rock bottom reality to their lives.

This mutual learning never sacrifices his authority, but it grows from his love of the players. He knew them, watched them, demanded of them. His intimate knowledge of them coupled with his vision of whom they could become enabled him to match their talents to the evolving system.  Even when one would quit, he always gave them second chances because once long ago, and he never forgot, he had quit a team out of anger at perceived injustice. His own high school coach let him back and Coach Wooden believed that loving a player required room for players to redeem themselves.

I sometimes think his idea of love can only flourish at high school and college. Something about the nature of professional sports, of the contractual nature, the money, the self-protective brutality of the sport to both its players and its coaches--in most sports it is cheaper to fire a coach than a star player, makes the type of patient, demanding, forgiving love that Wooden exemplified, impossible.

Wooden's testament, as he insisted, has never been the trophies or the unexcelled record of 10 NCAA championships. It remains the quality of people his players became. Wooden did not walk in the sands of time with footsteps that blow away. He helped boys grow into men, and those men helped their own children grow into adults. Even today his books help me help others grow into coaches. Certainly that is love at its best.