That time of year

Letter to a friend—well, acquaintance

DEAR COACH from the oldschool days, Hello, sir. And all the odds are that you are a sir, not a ma’am. And probably over 45, too. Not to stereotype too much, but you might even have a buzz cut. And maybe the shirts are getting a little tight around the ol’ mid-section these days. The last is just a guess, and a snippety one at that. Forgive us. Hi. Those young guns who call themselves football coaches these days . . . . All they do is sit around and draw up diagrams of plays for their players. All those passing plays, too. What ever became of the fullback, anyway? Any day now, practice fields all over Arkansas, and all over America for that matter, are going to be filled with kids getting ready for the upcoming fall football season. You only have so much time to get ’em in shape.

While those young bucks, your competitors, are drawing up their fancy plays, you get the advantage of having a meaner product on the field, right?

You probably don’t have much use for all those football coaches from the new school. Some of them are barely into their 20s! They coach the way they coach because they never had coaches like you, poor misguided souls.

You remember those summers. Two-a-days in pads. Full contact. Coach gave you salt tablets to help you retain water—then withheld the water!

That toughened you up, right? Made a man of you, right?

You might have gone home after a particularly brutal practice and told your old man about how three players passed out after doing wind sprints. And how somebody lost his lunch. The old man probably smiled and patted you on the back. Attaway, son.

Those were the days—when a coach might have even gauged how good a job he was by doing by the number of young men who had to be carried off the field as the day’s shadows grew longer. And you’re going to coach the way you see fit, and the way your own coach doubtless saw fit back in the 1980s or ’70s, or even before.

Your kind is a rarity these days. Most football coaches—or ’most any coaches these days—would see their careers flash before their eyes if a student started showing signs of heat stroke. These new-school coaches keep their players full of water, not only allowing water breaks every 30 minutes, but encouraging their players to drink, drink, drink— even before they’re thirsty. Because the folks who study these things say it could prevent heat stroke. And today’s coaches would rather keep their players on the field than in an ambulance.

But there are still coaches like you out there. Maybe not as many as there used to be, but somewhere in deepest, darkest Arkansas, good ol’ Coach Old School still keeps court.

ESPN was in Arkansas last week filming a piece about heat injuries. Why Arkansas? Because (a) this state gets hot in the summer and (b) is crazy about football, not unlike others in these latitudes. And that’s just to begin with. This state also has an impressive number of young men who have been hurt on the football field in the recent past. Not just from concussions and broken bones, but because of the heat.

But ESPN didn’t come to your campus. You probably wouldn’t allow it even if the folks at ESPN knew who you were.

You’re going to run your team the way you run your team, right? And if one of your kids can’t hack it, you’ll know sooner rather than later, and everybody’ll be better off, right? If the kid survives. The thing is, coach, kids talk. Just as you did to your old man when you bragged about how many kids threw up or passed out. Back then, Dad may have thought his son was one heckuva football coach to make so many kids sick. Dads don’t think that way any more. Not most of them, thank goodness. And they’ve been listening to the experts who say it’s dangerous to deny their players water in this heat.

Here’s hoping that soon all the state’s coaches will agree. Maybe you’re one of them. If so, this letter is unnecessary. We hope so.

But if you’re still out there, Coach Old School, and haven’t yet gone the way of the ivory-billed woodpecker, and you’re withholding water from your players in this heat, and putting your kids at risk, then some of the kids are going to tell some of their parents, and some of those parents won’t be pleased. And there’s a statewide newspaper in Arkansas, one that covers every county in the state, and all the reporters have phones on their desks.

Just saying.