Coach Sid’s Speech to Central Football Team

[Central City News editor Woody Jenkins’ notes from speech by Central head football coach Sid Edwards at first team meeting after his appointment.]

Since Mr. Wales has just introduced me as your new head football coach, I believe that my duties begin right now.

First of all, I want you to know that it doesn’t really matter to me whether you are an All-State player or any other member of the team.  Each of you is very special to me.  You’re a human being before you are a football player.

You may or may not have the talent to be All-State, but if you put in the time and effort, you will be a Central Wildcat.  You will be a Central football player today, tomorrow, and forever.

You are a Central football player here at school and away from school — on weekdays and on weekends.  And you will be expected to act like it 24 hours a day.

Character matters.  Starting today, you have to act right.  Not that you haven’t acted right up until now.  I’m just reminding you.

I am asking Amy Fountain to join our coaching staff as your academic coach.  Your grades are important.  We will be examining your grades this afternoon.  Make sure you have high grades.

Academically, get yourself booted up.  If you’ve been struggling, don’t worry.  We’re going to help you.

How do you carry yourself around this school?  How do you act, what do you do, and what do you say?  Learn how to act and make yourself a good example.  Act right with your teachers and your fellow students.  We haven’t had many problems, and I don’t expect any.

Looking out from the office, I see what goes on in the weight room.  Starting today, foul language will not be tolerated in the locker room or anywhere else.  Has Coach Sid ever cussed?  Damned right I have!  [Laughter]  But I don’t make it a habit.  We won’t tolerate it becoming commonplace or habitual.

The other day, I heard someone use the ‘N’ word.  I heard it two or three times.  I looked out the door to see who it was but they had moved on.  We will not tolerate foul language, but be sure never to let the ‘N’ word out of your mouth.  That carries things to a whole new level of disrespect.

Well, that’s done.

As far as the coaching staff is concerned, there will be a few changes. But don’t worry.  We will put the right people on the bus.

One thing I want to mention is the locker room.  That is your house, and right now it is not clean.

From now on, if I walk through the locker room and there’s 17 scraps of paper, it won’t be a problem.  But each of you will run 17 extra 100-yard dashes at the end of practice.  If there’s 10 pieces of paper on the floor, you will run 10 extra 100-yard dashes.  Pretty soon, you’ll realize there’s a price to be paid for a dirty locker room.

As long as you handle your business, there won’t be a problem.  By the way, extra running is unscheduled.  It occurs after we are supposed to end practice.

By the way, at the end of today, I’m going to walk through the locker room.  I want that floor so clean that I wouldn’t mind eating my lasagna off of it!

You might be thinking, “Somebody’s going to take care of it!”  Yes, you are!  It’s up to you to keep it clean.  So you figure out how.

We’re going to reactivate Men for Others.  We’ll have missions to go on and work to do.

My office is always open to you.