A Few Notes On Coach Silva

I'll start off by saying that I'm a Duxbury kid, and it's odd for me to argue for a Marshfield icon. My natural instinct is to encourage things that harm Marshfield's football team and help Duxbury's team. For the most part, their pain is my joy. Schadenfreude, as they say in Germany.

Forgive the German allusion, I'm having brain lock thinking of a prominent fired general who was perfectly competent... but this is very much how people in the American military must have felt when Hitler sacked Rommel. "Oh, Adolph made a big mistake there... that's his best general."

Coach Lou Silva isn't Rommel and Marshfield High School isn't the Wehrmacht (Ed: and Hitler never fired Rommel, instead demanding and getting his suicide) but the comparison works. From where I'm sitting, it looks like Marsh Vegas just sacked their best general.

What's worse, they did so without a better man in place. Or, since I saw Goldie Hawn coach football in a movie once, a better woman.

Marsh Vegas was always tough under Coach Silva. He went  236-144-7 as a head coach, and he brought 5 Super Bowls home to Marshfield. Winning five Super Bowls in the NFL guarantees you a first ballot, undisputed entrance into the NFL Hall Of Fame... and the NFL only has 32 teams. Coach Silva waded through a state with hundreds of high schools, and he brought multiple titles home.

Is there someone who can do that out there? They have one chance of getting a better coach than Pretty Lou Silva.... and that is the longshot bet that a second celebrity inexplicably becomes enamored with operating a small business in Marshfield, a la Steve Carell, or however he spells that. This celebrity would have to be a retired NFL or Div. 1 college coach, and he'd have to be in place by the spring practices.

Other than that, Marshfield just cut off their nose to spite their face. The next coach will be someone who teaches there, his teaching experience will make little/no difference in the player's lives through his coaching, and the team will be less well-run.

Silva retired as Athletic Director in 2014, so the bump-him-upstairs option isn't there.

I would say something along the lines of "I hope they go 0-10," but that just seems mean to the kids. I could say something like "Any Marshfield kids who can really, really play are welcome to transfer over to Duxbury High School," but that may be illegal... especially where I have run several Gambling columns in my life. DHS is an Ivy league factory, however... just sayin'.

I should add that Duxbury- another Grade A program with multiple Super Bowls- has been through at least five or six coaches since Marsh Vegas brought Coach Silva into the mix. Many a Thanksgiving saw Deluxebury serve as Lou Silva's punching bag, and he won his last squabble with us by 50+ points.

It would be fitting if the whole MHS team quit en masse, and instead showed up at Coach Silva's house on the date of MHS's first practice like "Hey coach, split us up, let's scrimmage."

Or Marshfield could do the right thing, admit that they made a mistake, and hire Coach Silva back.

While speculating on a man's demise is never nice, I don't feel badly at all saying that Silva should get the Bear Bryant treatment, i.e. "he is allowed to coach until he is a week from death."

Marshfield shouldn't need a Duxbury guy to tell them this... and yet it seems that they do.