Bound for Glory - ESPN / Dick Butkus

a response from Coach Hugh "double wing" Wyatt

Hugh, Did you see that show on ESPN last night which had Dick Butkus as a (temporary) HC at a high school in western PA (Montour?)?He started bringing in pro guys to help when he saw how hard it really was? What kind of fluff/bs is this? Am I supposed to believe that just because someone has been blessed enough in the genetic pool and could "play in the day" that he will automatically be a good coach? I wonder how other FB coaches feel about this? Come to think of it, I wonder how the "other" coaches at this high school feel about this! Matt Bastardi, Montgomery, New Jersey

For those of you who missed my earlier heads-up about Dick Butkus' being hired by ESPN to pose as a football coach p specifically, the head coach of Montour High School, a Western Pennsylvania team with a strong of losing seasons, as part of a weekly "reality" series...

The REAL coach wasn't fired, exactly. Shoot, this would have been his first year, and he hasn't even had a chance to coach the kids. But shortly after he was hired (from a championship program), he was informed that his school district - in return for the promise of big bucks from ESPN - had arranged for "Coach Butkus" to stand in for him - to play "head coach" in a "reality" series using the Montour team as its props. Never mind that "Coach Butkus" has never coached a team of any consequence in his life and wouldn't know how to if he had to.
I came home from practice Tuesday night in time to catch about half of the first show, and I came in at a part where "Coach Butkus" drives to the airport to pick up Ray Crockett, a former pro with two Super Bowl rings, who will help him with the defense because (it is implied) ordinary high school coaches aren't up to the job. Something like flying in a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins because there's nobody local who can do brain surgery. But not quite.


I'm sure Mr. Cockett was just sitting around doing nothing, waiting for someone to call so he could drop whatever he had going and fly someplace to coach a high school team. (If you really believe he flew out there because "Coach Butkus" asked him to, to work for a high school coach's stipend, you probably also believe that "Coach Butkus" is really a coach.)

Of course, I kept watching. I am fascinated by any look inside any high school or college program. Overall, though, my reaction to this show - and to "Coach Butkus" - is, "What a piece of sh--."

Butkus' performance is, in a word, fulsome. (Fulsome, although it sounds complimentary, actually means "disgustingly excessive.")
Except for his numerous vulgarities, the words he mouths are probably not his, more than likely written for him by some writer who thinks he knows what a coach is supposed to say,but in the space of the first five or ten minutes I heard him mouth at least a dozen tired old coaching cliches. He did spend a bit of time telling the kids to look at "the man in the mirror."

What really grew tiresome, though, was hearing him tell the kids what a winner he is. And what losers they were. Now, that I resented. No coach worthy of the title would do that. (Hell, half of those kids haven't even played in a varsity game yet, and they haven't had a thing to do with the school's run of failure.)

I almost yorked when I heard him say, "I'm not gonna let anyone here make me a loser!"

Okay, Mister Big Winner, says I. Before we let a bunch of high school kids make you look like a loser, let's have a look at your record. Let's see what kind of a winner you are, anyhow.

Uh-oh. Better not let the kids see this, "Coach"...


See, Dick, while you were the quintessential Chicago Bear, perhaps the hardest hitter the game has ever seen, you know and I know that you really don't have much of a record as a winner.

The record book doesn't lie, "Coach," and what it shows is that, in a career that lasted from 1965 through 1973 (nine years), you played on exactly two winning teams. Two! One was your rookie year, when the Bears went 9-5. The other was your third year, when the Bears's record was 7-6-1. Not exactly sterling, but at least a winning season.

But it was pretty thin gruel from there on out. Your fourth year, the Bears broke even at 7-7, but then you finished out your career with five straight losing seasons, including 1-13 in 1969, and 3-11 in 1973, your final year.

The Bears' record during the last five years of your career was 20-48. Some "winner."

Now what was that you were saying about those kids being losers?

The show is being presented as "reality," with Butkus as the head coach. The "reality" is staged, which is to be expected, but what bothers me the most is that millions of viewers will be deluded into thinking that that bozo is actually a coach, when the reality is he that has never earned the right to be called "Coach." Coaches everywhere should be offended, in the same way real combat veterans resent the barroom heroes who falsely claim Purple Hearts.

Nevertheless, I'll continue to watch, in much the same way that I'll keep scratching a boil.

If you were the real HC wouldn't you be pissed off that ESPN refers to Butkis as the HC? I would be pissed off at my district for selling me out too. Honestly I do not know if I would have stuck around. From what I have seen Butkis just stands around then gives some motivational talks. Crockett seems like he is a good coach. I saw him working with the kids and actually teaching them technique. I undertand from the Pitt newspapers that Crockett and Butkus do not call any plays or seemingly make any game decisions.

Overall I enjoyed the show. I like just about anything dealing with HS football so I will continue to watch it with great interest. I hope they get rid of the scripted game play by play announcer as that grew old in a hurry.

Leave it to a school board and administrators to sell out not only the coaches but the kids too. Granted I do not know all the facts but Butkus leaving sounds pretty bush league to me.