His name isn’t Jeff Sunday

Some jobs aren’t meant for the masses. Take professional football coach. This is a job that requires a lot of work and a lot of money. You need to be familiar with the shape and weight of a clipboard. You need to be comfortable to wear over-the-ear headphones. However, what you need is outnumbered by what you don’t.

Like a blazer. Gone are the days of Hank Stram wearing a natty sport coat racing up and down the sidelines yelling big words. You don’t need a sense of time. While football is a game strictly governed by a clock, few coaches ever find the time to appreciate its finer points. Many struggle with time outs as well as managing the game in a coherent manner. There is one guy who likes to cut off hooded sweatshirts who seems to have a better understanding of time. But his moral compass, not his clock, is the one that’s broken. And more than twice a day. 

 

It’s offensive to suggest that someone without the experience of sleeping under their desk or yelling obscenities at dehydrated rookies can perform the duties of a coach. What about all the people who’ve had a whistle around the neck for decades? Or those who like to clap and call people exclusively by their last names?  

You can’t let just anyone run a football team. They need to understand how to mark up a whiteboard with the scribblings of a seasoned tic tac toer. 

You can’t get some random person off the street to run a football team. Not if you want to prove to fans at home that they can do the job. Football is more complicated than war, and a good deal more dangerous. 

When ex-players inevitably run into trouble coaching, they can always do the next best thing: run for office.