So, you've lost 12 of 12 Thanksgiving football games to your hated rival, Dennis-Yarmouth. You've had a field goal attempt knocked down by a seagull before... sure, it was just during practice, but c'mon.
You're pretty much the last football team in America before the Big Puddle... and after you cross that puddle, when they talk about football, they mean soccer. Your coach just quit to be the assistant principal. Due to your remote location, a 2 hour bus drive to some games isn't out of the question.
You play so far away from the city that your black players listen to The Cure and stuff. Maybe only Gloucester High has a better chance of having an important player miss a game because of a fishing injury. Actual actuaries actually have calculated that there is a .000000019% chance that one of your players will be eaten by a shark.
Your arch-rival D-Y is generally a very solid program. Nearby, you have Barnstable High, a perennial state powerhouse. You aren't too far from football factories like Duxbury, Brockton and Mansfield. Itty-bitty Upper Cape Tech has a Super Bowl championship. You don't.
What do you do to reverse that?
You hire a former NFL coach to run your high school team, of course.
Nauset Regional High School just hired Mike Sherman to coach the football team. Mike is the former coach of the Green Bay Packers, and of Texas A&M. Two of Mike's QBs were Brett Favre and Johnny Manziel (who he recruited, but never coached). He also brought us Von Miller, Ryan Tannehill, Johnathan Ogden and several other pros. He coached with UCLA, Pitt, Tulane, the Houston Texans and the Miami Dolphins.
His last game as head coach was in front of 90,000 people. That's everyone in Eastham, times 25. As opposed to playing at iconic Lambeau Field, Sherman will now work at Nauset, which is the only team in America located in a national park. It's also one of the few schools where the teachers all pause mid-lecture because a lighthouse foghorn is going off.
The Green Bay Packers have as many Super Bowls as any franchise. Sherman has their second best winning % ever, trailing only... oh, Vince Lombardi. Pro and college teams can't hire him quickly enough.
How does Nauset get him?
Simple. Cape Cod and the Islands are where football coaches go to get away from it all. Patriots coaching legend Bill Belichick has a place on Nantucket. Cleveland/Jets coach Eric Mangini had and might still have a place in Brewster. Mike Sherman has a place in Dennis. John Hannah and Mosi Tatupu coached high schools in the EMass area. While he doesn't coach, Bob Kraft has a house in Mashpee that no one is allowed by law to harvest oysters around. He might get bored in retirement some day, and decide to tinker with the local high school team.
I think that, after a season or even a career cooped up in film rooms and practice bubbles, coaches only feel free at the beach... so they head off to Cape Cod. All that open space, the limitless sea spreading out before them... yeah, I can see how it works.
In this particular case, Sherman and Mrs. Sherman had tired of moving constantly after new jobs, and wished to retire. They had been vacationing on the Cape for decades (he's a Northboro/Northborough native), so they settled in Dennis. Coaches tend to be Type A, so a few months of striper fishing soon wasn't enough action for MS. He had that itch to get back on the sidelines, working.
There may also be a bit of charm to the prospect of not coaching millionaires. There will be no mistake at all made about knowing who the Boss is at NRHS. Brett Favre is 1000 miles away. As a former small-school high school coach, I can tell you that he may even end up having to buy the team Burger King out of his own pocket if they get a big win.
Nauset Regional High School had been taking a football beating for many moons. They brought in a new coach- Keith "Grand" Kenyon- who installed a single-wing offense similar to what Knute Rockne used to run. They made the playoffs a couple of times, but they did nothing that would let them laugh off the chance to hire a legitimate NFL head coach. Sherman plans to run a modern, pro-style spread offense, btw.
A good coach can make all the difference at the high school level. Duxbury was a soccer town before they hired a prominent assistant from the dynastic Everett High School program. They have enjoyed great success ever since. As nice as Everett and Duxbury are, they can't hold a candle to the Green Bay Packers.
So, as well as Duxbury's coach has done, I think the Green Dragons may need an upgrade. Duxbury is a rich town with a couple of Aerosmith offspring in the high school, they should be able to scratch up enough paper to hire Coach Saban away from Alabama. While we're at it, we should get Werner Herzog to direct our school plays... if he's not dead, of course.
Of course, I live in Bourne these days. We lack Duxbury's bank power, and I have no idea how we'd attract a pro coach to our little high school. Maybe we have to make it like High Plains Drifter, where the coach gets "a free hand in this town." Shoot, we might have to give him a virgin a month.
We'll see how Sherman does against local coaching. Sure, he has that fancy NFL pedigree, but I'm pretty sure that the local Pop Warner system isn't going to hand him the next Brett Favre. In the end, once you shake off all the bells and whistles, you're basically handing a ball to some kid, pointing him towards the goal line and daring the 11 guys on the other team to stop him.
We've suggested having a Cape school hire a pro coach living here as a snowbird before, when Eric Mangini became available. We just didn't think anyone would take us seriously.
Now, Nauset is changing the game. How will the other towns adjust?
We've suggested having a Cape school hire a pro coach living here as a snowbird before, when Eric Mangini became available. We just didn't think anyone would take us seriously.
Now, Nauset is changing the game. How will the other towns adjust?
