We watched guys like Harold Carmichael and Burrough work out. You couldn't help but get better because you were with guys who were already doing it in the pros and college. Those kind of relationships were in place long before we ever went off to college. We weren't in awe of anybody because we had worked out with the best. Johnson, who later became Raines' principal and is now a School Board member, believes those informal workouts with NFL players were instrumental in elevating the program to the stature it enjoys today.
Kids begin to believe they can make it.
When you see Harold Carmichael running up and down the sideline and your next varsity quarterback is throwing passes to him, your players see the respect these NFL players had for the high school coaches. It was a win-win situation for us. It's like a kid coming to school for the first time who already knows how to read. If he's reading, he's ready to learn. A lot of the athletes we got at Raines were ready to play football, so my task as a coach wasn't as difficult because the players already had a lot of skills and basic fundamentals.