Saturday, January 26, 2013

The Coach is Dead! Long Live the Coach!

It is a tragedy!  Enema U. has lost its beloved football coach, Coach Falter.  Somehow, a coachroach with a win/loss record that even France can best has been hired away by the NFL.  Not much work was done this week on campus as we all stood outside looking for a bright star in the east.

Truthfully, it was one of the worst NFL teams that hired him (and not as the head coach either) but still, he is gainfully employed and he is no longer on our campus.  Who knew that the path to promotion was abject failure and humiliation?  The rest of the university has always told our students that the correct method was hard work and achievement--no wonder our students neither believe us nor try that approach.

How will Enema U cope without the talents of Coach Falter--the innovator of the Hokey Pokey Linear Defense and the All-You-Can-Lose Tailgate Party?  And who will forget Coach Falter’s volunteer work as a safe driving instructor?

Now the university will begin the process of searching for a new coach.  Without a doubt, this means we will hire an expensive search firm, form a search committee, then hire the first yokel who will agree to move here and lose games for us while being paid the paltry sum of half a million dollars a year until he, too, can be hired away.  I’m not sure that I can remember all the coaches who have come and gone, come and lost, and lost and left.  As far as I can remember, we have not had a winning coach in the last three decades.  I wonder how much money we have spent over the years to lose.  It has to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Naturally, I have several suggestions.  Let me be the coach.  I’ve thought this over, and I am willing to sacrifice—I’ll do the job for only a quarter million dollars a year.  Why not?  As an alumnus, it is the least I can do for my alma mater.  And I think I can safely guarantee to lose at least as many games as my predecessors.  What was Coach Falter’s win/loss record?  3 in 1100?  Something like that.  I live in a house that was formerly the home of an Enema U football coach.  According to the neighbors, he had a losing record so bad that one Saturday night someone stole a pickup and deliberately drove it through the garage wall.  I promise, if I can’t equal that losing record, I’ll drive my own truck through that wall.  Remember, I’ll do it for half the money.

While we are making changes, it is time to re-brand our team.  We need a new image and a new name. Hell—the team needs to go in the witness protection program.  A colleague of mine (and I will not reveal Jon’s name) suggested that the team rename themselves the “Zombies”.  This name would allow a new motto:  “We get killed every week and we keep coming baaaack!

While we wouldn’t have to change the rules much, the referees could be dressed as undertakers and every penalty would be a death penalty.  Yes, our football program is dead, and if we aren’t going to bury the moribund, then we must give it life—or perhaps just label it the undead. 

I think the students would enjoy dressing up as zombies.  (Some already do.)   I think students would be positively dying to attend the game.  I have to admit that I am getting tired of our present mascot: the Eneman.  Our new cheerleaders and mascot could be the Walking Dead.

Besides, I would attend the games myself just to hear the student body chanting from the stands, “We want brains!  We want brains.”

5 comments:

  1. I will undercut you and run the program for 50k per year, with a bonus of 5k for every game that I don't lose by more than a touchdown! If I were as good as our last coach I would make about 65k a year. If you get hired I would make a good assistant coach... Just sayin...

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  2. Hey I will be the coach I know nothing about football and I would guarantee that the team would lose because I think football is very very silly. If Mark takes the head coach postition I could be the side coach or the mascot - fish packing mama.

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  3. See? We already have three applicants. We don't need no stinkin' search committee.

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  4. I think I detect just a hint of sarcasm. Football at your Uni is no different from boxing, or wresting. One party pre-agrees to take a beating at the hand of the other party in exchange for a percentage of the gate receipts.

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  5. That would make sense if our football program even remotely financially self-supporting. Historically, gate receipts and alumni donations fall far short of paying for the program. In fact, some schools, even our nearby neighbor schools, have threatened to stop playing us because the gate receipts are so low. The only way the program can survive is to receive millions--each and every year--from academics--money that is robbed from our students' and the state's future.

    In the years I have been here, the school would have been far better off investing the money in Gone With the Wind Commemorative Plates.

    Let's go back to your boxer analogy. Suppose that it cost each fighter a million dollars to hold the match. The winner will receive a purse of half a million and the loser gets a quarter million. If they hold this match regularly, you just have to believe the two fighters enjoy getting beat up. The only logical place to hold such a match is inside an insane asylum.

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Normally, I would never force comments to be moderated. However, in the last month, Russian hackers have added hundreds of bogus comments, most of which either talk about Ukraine or try to sell some crappy product. As soon as they stop, I'll turn this nonsense off.