The head coach must develop community ties

I sat in the Logan Field press box on Sept. 22, just as I had for the past 31 seasons, surveying the sizable crowd, dismayed that a program I have so loyally followed since 1956 had fallen to this.

I suppose a lot of this dates back to that cold 1979 night at Clinton when the Nevada Tigers lost that infamous shot after the buzzer district semifinal basketball game to Warrensburg. I was sitting with a bowed coach Steve Rutledge in the cafeteria a while after the game when NHS principal Bill Wynn strolled by our table and hesitated only long enough to say to Rutledge in a soft voice, "Get your head up. You're from Nevada."

It was awfully tough to hold your head up if you are a Nevadan after the 69-25 loss to Carthage at Logan Field that warm September night when we honored Ed Streich. Things like that happen, you say. Well, not very often.

That game was the 828th played by the Tigers since football, in its current incarnation, began at Nevada in 1921. In 826 of those games, the opposition had scored fewer that 69 points and only once, in 2004 to be exact, the Tigers allowed more, one more in a 70-0 loss to Webb City.

How can it be that Nevada has lost 24 consecutive games to Webb City? The last time the Tigers beat the Cardinals, Ronald Reagan was in his first term and a certain number of the parents of today's players had yet to meet.

I guess you get out of a program what you put into it. So how do you turn it around? As much as I hated the Commie rat, Joseph Stalin had the right idea when he uttered those now immortal words, "Whatever it takes."

I can't say I know John Skeans. He sat in the living room of my home shortly after he came here, and we haven't talked since. I did know some other coaches, though. I'll list all the former NHS football coaches I knew and you can assess my knowledge of the program from that. Here goes: Finis Engleman, E.A. Markey, Paul Howell, (Orville Gregory said he remembered me when I was a baby, but I can't recall those days) Gene Rimmer, Danny Clopton, John McKinley, Chuck Shelton, Moe Cotter, John Osborne, Shane Cavanah, Lynn Erickson, Alan Spencer, Larry Hurst, Doug Cogan, Bruce Humphrey, Doug Martin and Jerry Cornelius.

As I look at the program now, it is easy to see some of the things it lacks. Back when Nevada had a winning football program, at least most of the time, there was a definite connection between the community and the school. If you ask me, a school without a sense of community is taking a lot more out than it is putting in. I have noticed that most of Nevada's winning coaches were a part of the community. They knew people. They mingled. They took an interest in building the younger leagues.

Coaches who lock themselves up in their ivory tower and set themselves up as kings, or dictators, are always ripe for a coup. I have talked to I don't know how many people who would be willing to make the type of contributions local people make in places like Webb City that make Webb City what it is. It takes a community effort, which is something we don't have in Nevada right now where everybody goes off in a different direction wanting to help but being rebuffed at every turn.

A lot of people in Nevada can still remember how things were back when Osborne had the program and the community in the palm of his hand. Back when the fire engine roared around the Logan Field track and intimidated opposition.

I remember it. And let me tell you kids something. It's a lot of fun to win. I just wish you had a chance to experience a championship. But to attain that, the head coach has to get closer to the community. Until he does, it's not going to happen. It hasn't. Has it?