Before Gov. Tim Walz became the most famous person in America to coach high school football, there was Eric Taylor. Coach Taylor was sensitive.
Coach Taylor put his players first. Coach Taylor could motivate without screaming and denigrating. Coach Taylor took a back seat to the career of his wife.
Coach Taylor was cool and handsome. He’s what we think of when we think of the ideal high school coach: empathetic, humane, with a drive to win but compassion after a loss. He was the embodiment of masculinity without the obnoxious edge.
If coaching experience was the only criterion in running for vice president — and it feels hard to forget that it’s not, given the media frenzy around Mr. Walz — Coach Taylor would be the hands-down choice. But Coach Taylor is a fictional device, a character of calculated Hollywood imagination, played by Kyle Chandler in the television show “Friday Night Lights.
” Vice President Kamala Harris sprinkled her running mate with a little Coach Taylor fairy dust when she introduced Mr. Walz at a rally in Philadelphia. “Under those Friday night lights,” she said, “Coach Walz motivated his players to believe they could achieve anything.
” I have to admit, as the originator of that phrase with the title of my book, I was flattered, and the crowd definitely responded. Along with a pastor and a potbellied sheriff, the high school coach has come to occupy a central role in the lifeblood of an idealized small town. Everybody knows who he is and everybody wants a piece of him: backslapping when he wins, starting a whisper campaign to get rid of him when he loses.
He is in charge of a precious resource — teenage boys — and his job is to push those kids to realize their potential. He can be responsible for the way a town feels about itself, bringing pride and excitement to a place that has little of either. But fiction rarely meets fact.
The image of Coach Taylor is embedded in popular culture — but it is just that, a Hollywood image, in which every great quality was accentuated. My experience with the real Friday night lights culture was markedly different, a cautionary tale about high school football in Odessa, Texas, and the shocking excesses that took place. I have been around plenty of high school coaches.
I have researched them. I have noticed their increased professionalism, the high salaries they are paid and the multimillion dollar stadiums that have been built for their teams. This goes beyond a football-obsessed state like Texas: We are a win-obsessed society, and your life as a high school coach depends on winning.
When winning is the only goal, corners will be cut and abuse is all too common. Much as we romanticize the vanishing college athlete, who plays for an amateur’s love of the sport, we romanticize the football coach as an inspirational motivator who pats babies and small children on the head. The best high school coaches, and there are some out there, believe in their players as more than just puzzle parts.
They want to win, but much like Gary Gaines, the real coach featured in my book who inspired the character of Coach Taylor, they show qualities of grace when losing. They understand kids and approach them as mentors, as the kids struggle with adolescence and maturity and moodiness..
