They inspired players while coaching, but now those days are gone

Here is today's startling revelation: Our corner of the world isn't Texas. You know. Where the stars at night are big and bright ... and the lowest paid high school football coach in the Greater Austin area makes $65,393, per a published report.

That's not a teaching salary with a coaching stipend. That's the man's salary to coach high school football. Some of his colleagues make six figures.

This is not to begin a harangue about the intoxication of athletics and subsequent misplaced priorities. It's merely an example of how the other half lives. The half that values coaching as a vocation and not recreation.

Consider that prologue for a disturbing movement afoot around here. In the last 16 months, three of the best high school coaches I've ever known have left coaching for administrative "promotions." I couldn't be happier for Greg Gwudz, Phil Orbe and now Jim Buonocore, who can go from the Toyota to the Lexus if they want now. And I couldn't be more disappointed for the kids and the profession, losing three men of accomplishment, passion and depth.

Buonocore, who took three different football programs to the playoffs in 17 years of coaching, became the latest to inspect the greener pastures last week, leaving Ledyard football to remain as athletic director and assume a new role as assistant principal. Nobody else ever worked harder at his craft. Nobody.

Gwudz spent five years coaching

Waterford basketball to almost hilarious success, given its history, bringing home the first state championship in the school's 59 years. He left after the 2015 season to become an assistant principal in North Branford.

And Orbe won three state baseball championships at Montville, his alma mater, before leaving after last season to become the school's athletic director.

The night of Gwudz's last game, a loss in the 2015 state quarterfinals, one of his players said that Gwudz "changed my life." Graduates of the Buonocore and Orbe programs have said the same to me over the years. Hard to imagine anything more profound or poignant within our educational system.

And this is why I wonder if Texas doesn't have it right, this idea of understanding the tentacles and depth of coaching. I hear coaches who become administrators say things like they can "reach more kids," not just athletes. But at what level? Coaches change lives because they foster relationships and fortify them on fields, courts, buses and locker rooms. They share the deeply emotional experiences of winning and losing with their players, not to mention all the inside jokes that age better than good wine.

There's no way administrators do the same. Who'd have the time? They may see more kids daily, but at far less meaningful levels. And yet they're paid as though all their ideas and pronouncements come down from Mount Sinai. My great friend and longtime Fitch teacher and coach Tom Doyle likes to say good teachers and coaches "are too talented to be administrators."

Per the Austin American Statesman newspaper, most coaches in Texas "are paid a base salary if they serve as athletic director or a teacher's salary, along with stipends to coach and other stipends to cover expenses. The Leander school district is starting a new program and transitioning football coaching salaries to an administrative pay scale."

Fancy that. Coaching salaries on administrative pay scales. Try that here and taxpayers would picket town hall. Perhaps, though, there is a more modest proposal:

What if we tried to pay coaches more than their $6,000 stipends, money that amounts to pennies per hour? What if stipends became more commensurate with the time and effort many coaches — especially guys like Orbe, Gwudz and Buonocore — to perhaps entice them to stay longer and not be so quick to pursue administration?

I can say this: Orbe, Gwudz and Buonocore may be damn good at their new jobs. But they were made to coach kids. Period. That's why many of their kids say their lives have been changed because of them.

Again: I have no idea the specific circumstances that led to the graduations of the three aforementioned coaches. And bully for them: bigger salaries, more responsibilities. Always good to have sports people who are among the decision makers.

But I've seen the effect they've had on their players. It's inspiring. And I'm saddened those days are gone.

Somebody make me an argument why high school coaches aren't paid more.

Bet you can't.