Raising a glass to Sprague
Longtime Riverview football coach dies at 75
SARASOTA — The Celebration of Life for John Sprague will be Saturday, Dec. 2 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Evie’s Tavern & Grill, 4725 Bee Ridge Road in Sarasota.
Reading this, those wondering, “Who has a celebration of life at a bar?’’ obviously didn’t know John Sprague. Con Nicholas knew John Sprague.
“His preference would certainly be for us to all get together,” said Nicholas, the defensive coordinator for the former Riverview High head football coach, who died Friday at 75, “have a few beers, and tell stories about him and Riverview football. That’s exactly what he’d want.”
Amp Campbell knew John Sprague. “No doubt, no doubt,” said the wide receiver who, while still a 13year-old at Brookside Middle School, was told by Sprague, along with Shawn Bane, Tim Alexander, and Bubba Mays, that he was going to “represent” Riverview football. “A beer with a cigar. He wouldn’t want anyone to be sad. He wants you to cherish what he left you. What he gave you.”
Indeed, every day was a celebration of life for John Sprague. In my 40 years writing sports, interviewing literally hundreds of coaches, no one was more unique, more genuine, with more of a take-me-or-leave-me attitude than the 30-year head coach of the Rams. He was unabashedly old school when old school was the only school.
“There was no filter with John,” Nicholas said. “If you were close to him, it was a double-edged sword because he was so volatile at times, and he would cuss you out like you were his worst enemy, and you just had to get past that. But he was easy to forgive. John was such a fun and funny and loyal person.”
I didn’t know any of these things the first time I met him for a story for the paper. It was 1988, and even then, Sprague had a reputation for helping his players get college scholarships. By the time he retired in 2010, 239 had received the opportunity to attend college and play football.
“That’s what John saw his role to be,” Nicholas said. “‘I got to get this kid into college. I’m going to get this kid the best opportunity I can.’ And then let the chips fall where they may.” Some of Sprague’s players were so talented, they didn’t need his help. Their game film spoke for him.
But others not as gifted, those not as fast or physical or athletic, were the ones pushed by Sprague, perhaps their skills exaggerated to make them appear attractive to colleges. But once in college, more than a few dropped out, and I asked him if, ultimately, he might be doing a disservice to these former Rams.
I had wandered into the forbidden zone. Picking up a pencil off his desk and firing it at me, Sprague called me a 10-letter bad word. I had somehow questioned the most important part of the coaching experience to Sprague. His players.
“To me, Sprague was just a caricature of several coaches I had,” Nicholas said. “The hard guys who would grab you by the face mask, cuss in your face, and you would go ‘yes, sir’ and line up and try to do it better. Even the kids who never played, Sprague would know who they were and made them feel special. We had 80 kids on varsity; that means 30 kids never played, and no one quit. They were part of something special.”
John Sprague the wrestling coach
Before Sprague took over the Riverview program in 1981, Ram football was anything but special. But he had established a track record for building. At his previous school, Rockdale County High School in Conyers, Georgia, Sprague started in 1973 with the understanding he’d coach football and baseball. But the school needed a wrestling coach, so he took on that job as well.
“I owed it to the kids,” he said. Sprague attended wrestling camps and learned everything he could about the sport. He even had written his 126-page master’s thesis on how to set up and organize a high-school wrestling team. By the time Sprague left the school in 1981, he had coached 11 state champions and won two team titles. His squads finished with a dual record of 85-5-2. In two matches, all 12 of his wrestlers recorded pins, for a perfect score of 72.
In 2016, Sprague was lured back to Rockdale on the premise of taking part in a reunion. Once there, he was honored by having the wrestling portion of the school’s newly built state-of-the-art athletic facility named after him. The building of the Ram football program didn’t take nearly as long.
“No. 1,” Nicholas said, “he was 110% committed to it. He lived, ate, and breathed Riverview football. There was no stone unturned, if John could do it, to prepare for the next game.” He organized a crack assistant coaching staff which stayed together for nearly 20 years. Sprague was all about running the veer and wishbone, and executing both with the maximum amount of physicality and toughness his players could muster.
“The speech on Wednesday the week of the Riverview game,” said former Southeast head coach Paul Maechtle, “I would tell our players, ‘Now don’t anybody get scared when we get to the game at the Ram Bowl because all of you are going to hear an echo go “pow, pow, pow,” and it’s going to be Riverview practicing and scrimmaging on top behind the field house’ as they were preparing to run the football.
‘You better strap it up an extra notch’
“I heard pads popping and whistles being blown. I told the kids, ‘You better strap it up an extra notch because it’s going to be a physical football game,’ and it was. That was the brand he taught. He wanted to keep the ball out of your hands and not let you have possessions.”
An offense that succeeded, until it didn’t. And then the Rams were without horns, because passing the football wasn’t something that was stressed with Sprague. It may have been the chief reason he was 0-2 in FHSAA title games.
That fact bothers Campbell, as it will until the day he dies, that he and his teammates were unable to get Sprague a state title. “That one regret,” he said. “I really wish we could have won one for him.” On the surface, it seems incongruous that players who laugh at the speech, language, or even baggy shorts and wrinkled tee-shirt of their head coach, would be hard-pressed to respect him. But that wasn’t the case with Sprague.
His players knew he loved them, whether the example was Sprague inviting them over to his house for a barbeque, or telling them to take whatever they needed from his tee-shirt store at the Sarasota Square Mall. “He was a genuine guy,” Campbell said, “but a loving guy. He would give you the shirt off his back. When somebody shows you how much they truly care for you, you’ll run through a brick wall for them.”
You want to measure Sprague’s impact on the Ram program? Before he died, he got to participate in the renaming of the Ram Bowl. Forever forward, it will be known as John Sprague Field at the Ram Bowl. Such honors usually are reserved for head coaches who win multiple state championships.
Sprague reached the finals of two title tilts, losing both. Yet trophies in a trophy case would be a short-sighted way to calculate the contributions of a gridiron Renaissance Man. Yep, the guy who sounded like he gargled with razor blades, swore like a longshoreman, and dressed like he spent the night in a dumpster, was more layered and nuanced and intelligent than most anyone you’d meet.
Sprague knew U.S. history better than many U.S. history teachers. He restored guns. He owned for years a teeshirt shop at the Sarasota Square Mall. For about 10 years, he delivered papers in the morning’s wee hours. “Imagine throwing a newspaper from 3 to 6 a.m.,” Nicholas said, “then going to school all day, then coaching football. Even after a Friday night game, he had to throw the paper.”
He owned a ranch at Saddle Creek Trail which had cattle. He was an avid fisherman, and later in life, took up golf and became nearly a scratch golfer. “He was a very varied guy,” Nicholas said. “He wasn’t one dimensional. Not just a football guy.”
John Sprague sucked the most life he could out of every day, but during many of them, he also sucked the smoke of cigarettes and, later, cigars. The freshman Campbell remembers Sprague telling him to go to 7-Eleven to buy him a pouch of Red Man Chew.
“A year ago, he told me, ‘Nick, I can’t even walk to my mailbox and back (without being out of breath),’ ’’ Nicholas said. “And he’s standing there telling me that with a cigar smoking in his fingers.”
The John Sprauge who died Friday is the last John Sprague anyone will ever know. Society today doesn’t allow John Spragues anymore. And even if it did, there’s no way this one had a doppelganger.
So expect the stories to flow on Dec. 2 as freely as the brew. He would want his Celebration of Life to be a celebration of his life.