I have a confession.  I don't have the slightest idea who is competing in the Super Bowl.  I couldn't even tell you what number it is.  I'll probably watch portions of it, but Big Love and Flight of the Conchords air on Sunday nights. In fact ,the best part of the Super Bowl for me will be the hour long episode of The Office.  For my entire Super Bowl semi-watching life, the special episodes or premieres that follow it are always the best part.  I remeber the premiere of the Adam West series The Last Precinct in 1986, and I recall my glee at The X Files  episode that followed one of the games.  It was the one about Leonard Betts, the cancer eater, that featured him going after Scully.  Holy Pete ! Scully had cancer!

Now, this confession might not mean much to some. After all there are plenty of people who would rather pass a kidney stone than watch football, not to mention the endless pre-and post-game shows, but I am a football coach.  I have coached for seven of my eleven years in education, and I'm not bad.  I understand the game, and I am an excellent teacher of technique, particularly proper techniques for linemen.  However, I cannot recall the last time I watched an entire profesional football game.  The last time I had a favorite team was probably 1991 when I was a junior in high school.  (For the record, I liked the Raiders because they seemed like they were hard-nosed, and they had the coolest t-shirts.) Since then I have rarely been botheres to watch games, I'll watch bits and pieces ,and I'll watch cut-ups of plays, but I don't have the time nor inclination to spend my Sundays watching football.

This does make me the odd man out sometimes on my staff.  I have a great relationship with the head coahc and he gives me hell abot my lack of interest, but he seems to understand.  I see enough football. I played football for half my life.  I do not need to spend more time watching it. I go to clinics' I talk to other coaches.  In this community, a large portion of my identity is tied to the sport.  I have to escape some how.  My escape is to avoid the pros.

I also refuse to watch NFL because I'm not impressed by it.  Over-paid athletes doing battle in multi-million dollar stadiums whilst millions of people sit, sit, sit, sit simply doesn't excite me.  I also think that to a certai nextent it is a perversion of the sports original purpose.  There are lessons in football that don't carry over tothe elite level.  The first thing is that football is a populist sport.  Basically, bad athletes can excel at football. I don't know that I was a bad athlete, but I certainly wasn't the best, and I earned a college scholarship through sheer hard work.  Now, my guys see the pros and their parents tel them they can do the same thing;however, if they don't, iti s the coaches fault.  Sudedenly, coaches who encourage athletes to reach their highest potential are the enemy because a 5'4" 160 pound senior wide-out cannot go play for the Oklahoma Sooners. (If you aren't hep to football-y things, the Sooners are usually decent, and the height and weight is not.)  This doesn't mean a coach doesn't want and try to support an athletes ambition; it means that sometimes a man's reach must etc.,. 

 The lesson learned in football on its most basic level is dedication and hard  work will pay off, but you must accept that pay off on its own terms.  You can run and lift, and still be a second string running back, but , if that is the height of your potential, you haven't failed.  Too often kids are branded failures not by those who work the closest with them and see the strides they make, but by people who jusdge them on an unrealistic scale.  Comparing your fifteen year old son to T.O. is asinine.  Seeing his ability grow and seeing him grow confident as an sthlete and a man is rewarding.  That's why the game is important, and everything else is vanity on top of vanity.

Who the hell's in the Super Bowl, anyway?