That night Lee lay awake, staring into the darkness and wrestling with his problem. Jean was asleep beside him, her breathing slow and regular. Why do I coach? he asked himself. Why don't I get into something else?
He turned on his side, smoothed his pillow, and thought about it. He liked boys. He and Jean had even wanted to adopt a boy, but so far they hadn't been successful. Also, he was fond of basketball. Every time he saw a basketball game he wanted to get into it. With him, coaching ranked next to playing. Like an architect or a composer, a coach created an exciting something that the whole community could embrace. It was fun to get wrapped up in a team and all the boys in it, and to watch them develop and mature.
Lee sighed and flipped over on his back. Coaching was like narcotics; once you started, it hooked you. He remembered his friend Jim Fessenden. Jim had a degree in mathematics from Princeton. He had also played tackle on the football team there. On the day they handed him his diploma an insurance firm offered him ten thousand dollars a year to start as a junior actuary. But the position wasn't exciting enough. Jim turned it down to take a job at six thousand coaching a high school football team in Kansas.
But this wasn't Kansas. It wasn't even coaching boys. This was a new town and a new job. He hated to be pushed around, by that surly school board president or anyone else. If he was ever going to get his team back, now was the time. He had to act fast. Enrollment started at nine.

I’ve met with many coaches and they ask me: “What happened to the coachable athletes? Where did they go?” Many of the coaches lament that when they give their athletes corrective feedback, the athletes grumble that their confidence is being undermined. Sometimes the athletes phone home and complain to their parents. They seem to want coaches who will simply tell them how talented they are and leave it at that. The coaches say that in the old days after a little league game or a kiddie soccer game, parents used to review and analyze the game on the way home and give helpful (process) tips. Now on the ride home, they say, parents heap blame on the coaches and referees for the child’s poor performance or the team’s loss. They don’t want to harm the child’s confidence by putting the blame on the child.

What I want to do is make Americans aware that they're fucked-up when they equate everything a person does with some sexual trip. You know, if you hold a pencil in your hand, it's a phallic symbol and you really want to hold a cock in your hand. And a football coach doesn't really want to be a coach, he likes to slap football players' asses...he's a latent homosexual. And it goes on and on and on, all the fucking time.

If you are a coach on my staff and you say, ‘I wish we had,’ you won’t work for me. I’m a firm believer in, 'This is what you have. Now it is your job to go coach the holy heck out of them.' I don’t care if it’s a fourth-team tackle. You find a way to win.

My favorite byproduct of monogamy, it didn't even dawn on me that this would be the case. When I figured this out, I felt a huge weight just flutter off shoulders. And a lot of you guys might not realize this so this could be a big night of your life because I'm about to impart to you the most important thing I've ever learned. So, guys, I want you to open up your senses and really take this in. Don't waste this moment. Because here it comes...Ready? Here it comes...Guys, if you only have sex with your wife, you can't get caught. [Audience cheers. Makes a fluttering gesture with his hands on his shoulders] Feel it? Feel it? Nobody gives a rat's ass! Nobody's ever gonna kick in a bedroom door, "You motherfu--Is that your ol' lady?" [Makes motions like he's having sex doggy-style and turns and looks over his shoulder, annoyed] I may be exaggerating that stroke just a little. [Makes motions again, but faster] But still a ferocious piece of ass. Although easily winded.

O'Connell: It's been suggested [...] by teachers that live football should be shown after kids have gone to bed. Is swearing in football really such a big deal?

In my first marriage, my husband wasn’t really supportive of me being a coach. But I am stubborn; coaching is what I do and what I love, and so I went for it. One of the major reasons that marriage failed was because of my career. We were together for 12 years, but there was a lot of quarrelling going on, especially when I had to travel for competitions or when I had to go to the stadium to train my athletes. I wasn’t ready to give up my career as a coach, so I formally ended the marriage in October, 2021. When you hear that a lot of women had to quit coaching because of the lack of support of their spouses, that’s actually the truth.

It had even occurred to him that sticking firmly to one girl could be unethically used to obtain exemption from the sometimes gruelling task of promiscuity.

"When you're a head coach, you don't know where to stand," Edwards said. "You're screwed up. You go on the field, no one's talking to you. `Somebody's gonna talk to me.' You don't know what to do. So you go over and talk to the other head coach, and kind of shake his hand, then you go, `Where do I stand?'"—In an interview with South Florida Sun-Sentinel Reporter Ethan J. Skolnick.