The Bridgeport times and evening farmer. (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1918-1924, 1918-01-12
(By Sol Metzger)

Nearly everybody in college ath-
letics is taking a crack at the salary
of the professional coach. They seem
to have the idea that the coach has a
soft sinecure, especially the football
coach. They say he works two or
three hours a day with a fine assort-
ment of perfect physical specimens,
repeats this dose daily for something
like three months and at the end of
that time gets a check for more
money than the PreXy of the college.
OF course the supposition is that
the coach spends the other nine
months in idle luxury and that at the
age of fifty or sixty he retires with
nothing to do but exercise his muscles
the first of each month clipping cou
pons. One may picture life of
dreamy outdoor existence for the
coach and most everybody does. Ac-
cording to many of the academic men
mixingin college sport the coach is
getting too much out of it and he
isn't doing his Bit as others are.
That is just about the way the Ma
tional Collegiate Athletic Association
thinks of coach. At its recent holt
day meeting it spent much time lam
pooning this product of intercollegi-
ate athletics and it devoted as much
| as one line to him in its recommen-
dations anent the guidance of inter-
collegiate sport. But that line was
full of pep. 1t said that coaches were
overpaid, and it really had back of it
hope that the professional coach
should get it in the neck. He's con-
sidered bad form, has never been
worthy of his hire and is responsible
for all the ills in college athletics.
AS a recent member of the coaching
fraternity, which is not a union for
elf-preservation-th it should
bel rise to the occasion and ask for
| space in which to defend the coach
! Upon several occasions l have prob
ably been guilty of drawing down
more cold cash than some eminent
professors and at other times 1 have
not. Upon occasions I have had jobs
of three months duration that netteG
me more than these same self-made
college profs got in one year. But
have never been paid an adequate
salary. A football coach-the wors
of the breed-rarely is.
Looking back-Gs I now may-up,
on the coaching proposition 1 unhesi
tatingly state that the game is no
worth the candle; that it is the hard
est job a young man can tackle, an(
that after his years of usefulness ar,
at an end he is fitted for nothing bu
the scrap heap. l have never known
a coach who advised others to coach
My old college chum, Pop Warner
Perhaps the most successful o
coaches, tells me it is no fit job 70
man and that other fields in educa
ton are more lucrative in the lon
run.
Coaching, at it's best, is the mos
competitive of jobs in all creation, ex
, cepting possibly leading armies. Blu
being a general has its fine points
il you win. Then one may run for an
be elected president, or join a Wa
Street firm and be MIXED. All c
which occupations serve to continu
7 the excitement of life. But a coac
, who is successful eventually gets
the scrap heap-and there he stay
, Politics has nothing on coaching.
: The trouble with coaching at il
. best, even when you are winning an
getting top salaries and all that,
that there is a turn in the road ju!
! aheaS In order to be popular tn
Z coach must win and in order to wi
= there much be material of the ultra
physical type. I have heard coach'
deny this. In fact one of my own co
lege mates went sof ar as to state
could develop teams without mate
ial He was in another line of wor
right afterward. From a long e.
perience and study 1 may say will
out chance of challenge that a coac
cannot win without material, Neith'