The Great JV Debacle of 2015

**Sorry for the length**

I believe I've mentioned before that we have an older guy on our staff who isn't exactly up-to-par with the current game of football. If you throw it more than once a half, you might as well just sound the air raid sirens, and line up in quads and chuck it 80 times a game. He's been coaching since the late 80's. Every suggestion he makes is something that this team ran somewhere between 1989 and 2003, when there were something like, 4 HC's and they were all wishbone teams. Nothing wrong with that, I'm just making a statement that this is what the teams were. And they weren't very good at it, at all. 

For the last 2 seasons, we've been all no-huddle (something that has never been done in this schools 50+ year history.) And the older guy thinks if you get more than 2 plays off in a minute, you're just going Oregon fast. And to him, "that aint' real football."

Anyway, I've done the JV offense for the last 2 seasons, along with another asst, who is one of my very best friends. And our JV DC is also one of my best friends. Our JV team isn't much of a JV team, it's a freshman team. JV games are just easier to schedule. We had a game coming up against a team that was just awful. Their next talented group of kids coming through their system might still be in elementary school. Area was hit hard with the recession and the population has vanished and it's kind of gotten to be a sad situation for them. It's a game that we should win, but it would be a close game. 

Our HC, varsity OC and DC and STC all do varsity film during JV time. Our asst JV OC was at a teachers conference that was required and 2 hours away. We didn't want to pull any coaches from film because our game coming up was a pretty important game against the best team we had played so far. I woke up, and felt like death. Couldn't keep anything down. I had an involuntary loss of fluids, either end, 16 times between 6am and noon. I called the doc, and the only time they could get me in would be towards the end of their day, which is when the JV game would kickoff. Our JV DC was also at the same teachers conference 2 hours away. I was caught on what to do, because I couldn't leave the entire JV team with our older guy, but I couldn't not go to the doctor. 

So I rallied, and made a call sheet for the guy and just had our base stuff on it. Rocket, counter, trap, power, and a handful of throws. Our JV team doesn't run any of our reads, triple or RPO's. We're a Faster than the Fly team, and we don't have a TE for JV. I take out all the stuff they can't run, because it just cleans up the sheet a whole lot. I do it for myself, because it's a lot easier to see what there is when it's not crowded with stuff that can't be done. I email it to him. He responds: Is rocket the same thing as toss???

I inform him it is, and then go back to a fever dream nap in which my teeth fall out and my GF leaves me. 

I go to the doctor, and while I'm in the exam room, a kid texts me "Hey, um, they're running wishbone ISO. It's not going well. They haven't had a positive yard in 3 series." 

I get out of the office, and hurry over to the school. And I'm getting on the sidelines, he burns a timeout on 3rd and 1 with 5 seconds left in the 1st half. We're down 21-0. He uses the TO just to scream at them for nothing being good at football. He then calls a play, he doesn't give them a color-number combination, he just calls a straight play. He almost foaming at the mouth, and just barks out "22-51-T Pipe W Corner" and storms off. The kids don't know this play. Heck, I don't know this play. Or this formation. I don't even think this is a real thing. They ask him what that means, just comes back, just to yell "22-51-T Pipe W Corner!!!!!" at them before storming off again. I have to intervene and call a 2nd time out. He's livid by this time, just losing his mind, and I successfully push him away from the huddle and call trap. We get to the half. 

The kids go in the locker room and he's still just absolutely losing his crap over that last play. "Them dumb kids don't know a dang thing. I'm giving them a good play, and they're too stupid to run it. Can't even run ISO. Didn't know how to line up the wishbone. Idiots..... idiots...." 

So I say "Man, I don't know that play either." He proceeds to belittle me, which I'm fine with. If that's what he needs to feel good about himself, that's fine. I've been called worse. However, when he says that I should be fired because I don't know what I'm doing, I take offense to that. I keep pressing him about the play, what it is, what his terminology means. 

Turns out: 22 is a formation from 2001 that was for 2x2. 51 was a 5 step pass to the left, from 1994. T pipe was when the T ran a seam to split the 2 high safety (we were playing a 1 high team, but that's neither here nor there), but it was from 1996. We call our T an F. And W corner was a corner from the playside wing, from 2008. Obviously, none of our kids were on the teams that used these terms, and none of our coaching staff was here when these terms were used. Heck, almost our entire staff was still in school for those years, and I don't mean college. 

He never really accepted that he was just making up something on the spot, with terms from 4 different HC's he's worked under at this school. He still blamed the kids for not knowing what he meant to say. 

I take over the O, and let him have the defense. We battle back, score 3 TDs and get 3 2pt conversions. We end up losing 27-24 because we just couldn't punch it in at the very end. Parents came up, told me that they were proud of how the O battled back, and things like that. 

I go back in our office, and the older guy is sitting there, scowling. "You ruined it! You should have scored at the end! And if you ever tell me that I don't know how to call a play to these kids again, it won't be pretty." I've never seen this side to him before, he's always be a very excitable person, but never mean or violent. Maybe sometimes a jerk when he gets flustered, but a lot of people are like that. So, I throw my hands up and say "Listen, I got us back into the game. I'm going home to have a beer, I'll see you tomorrow."

I get a call that night from our HC, asking what happened. Apparently this guy told him that he got us back into the game in the 2nd half, no thanks to me. And that I was telling parents that he was stupid and everything like that. Which our HC knew was bull, because I don't like talking to 90% of our parents. So, I tell him what happened, and how thing played out, and he isn't surprised. The three of us sit down before practice the next day, and he's still extremely defensive about it all. When our HC just basically says "we don't run that play, and we don't use any of those terms" and complains that he just keeps forgetting. We haven't used those terms in 5 years now. 

Nothing ever came of it, although things were never really friendly between he and I after that. He never apologized to me, and he never apologized to the kids for that situation. He stopped being so defensive about it, which I guess is the best we could have hoped for. 

He wasn't there for anymore JV games. If we were short handed with coaches, we cancelled the game. That's probably the better option, anyway.