Mississippi Today
Can a high school football coach make a good U.S. vice president? It depends.
As many Americans, this writer eagerly read all I could about Tim Walz after Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate.
I didn’t have to hear or read more than three paragraphs before I became far more interested. There it was: Tim Walz was a former high school football coach, the defensive coordinator of a state championship winning team in Minnesota. He also taught geography and social studies.
Now then, I have spent a professional lifetime dealing with high school coaches and have some observations:
- Number one, some of the smartest, most inspiring, most common-sense leaders I have ever known were high football coaches.
- Number two, some of the most intellectually challenged, ineffective people I have ever known were high school football coaches.
You could say the same about workers in just about any profession, including doctors, lawyers, business execs and sports writers. There are really, really good ones; there are really, really awful ones. I have known scores of high school football coaches who would have been successful in any profession they chose.
Gulfport coaching legend Lindy Callahan comes immediately to mind. Coach Callahan is 96 years young now, and I’d probably still vote for him no matter the office. He could, in the words of the great Jake Gaither, take his’n and beat your’n, or take your’n and beat his’n. He would have been a terrific mayor, congressman or governor. You could say the same about Marion “Chief” Henley, who won 116 games and lost only eight as the coach at old Carver High School in Picayune in the days before integration.
Callahan and Henley both possessed all the qualities and traits and people skills that make football coaches successful. They were smart, yes, but they also surrounded themselves with competent people. They inspired the young folks who played for them. They commanded respect, but they also engendered uncommon love and devotion. They were quick on their feet, adjusted well when the game was on the line. They worked and worked and worked. They inspired others to work just as hard as they did.
I play a lot of golf these days with Mike Justice, another highly successful, championships-winning high school football coach who would have been successful no matter what he did, even if he had been a pulpwood hauler like his father was in Itawamba County. We were talking the other day about whether or not the same qualities and characteristics that make a successful football coach might also make a good vice president or even president. As we know all too well, a vice president is just one heartbeat away from a promotion.
Justice believes the No. 1 path to success as a high school football coach “is the ability to surround yourself with good people, run a system that you believe in and get really good at it. Stay hitched to it, no matter what.”
Said Justice, “You better believe in what you are doing and you better be able to inspire your players to believe in it and buy into it.”
Sounds a lot like qualities and characteristics you need to be an effective leader in government, although I still have a difficult time imagining Justice in the Oval Office – or wearing a suit and tie every day for that matter. So does he.
Here, we haven’t that many coaches venture into politics, although in small-town Mississippi a winning football coach is often the most popular, most respected man in town. One possible reason: By law, a retired coach would have his or her PERS state retirement payments frozen the day he or she took office.
For what it’s worth, we have had more cheerleaders than players or coaches become powerful movers and shakers in government. Sen. John Stennis was a yell leader at Mississippi State. Sens. Trent Lott and Thad Cochran were both Ole Miss cheerleaders. I am not sure what that tells us. “Hotty Toddy” and “Hail State,” I guess.
And I know what many readers are thinking: But what about Tommy Tuberville, the ex-Ole Miss football coach-turned-Alabama senator, who told us he would only leave Oxford in a pine box but then left on a private jet bound for Auburn?
Frankly, I don’t count Tuberville any more than I trust him. He spent four years at Ole Miss during which he won 25 games and lost 20. Indeed, I am not sure Alabamans should count him as one of their own, either. After all, he was living in Florida – and had been for years – when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate from Alabama.
You ask me, Tuberville’s record as a senator is not a great advertisement for coaches becoming politicians. For nearly a year in 2023, he held up all promotions of U.S. military senior officers, drawing the ire of the nation’s military brass and many in his own party who believed he was putting the nation’s security at risk.
“There’s nobody more military than me,” said Tuberville, who has never served one second in any branch of the service.
But back to the original theme of this column. Can a high school football coach become an effective national leader?
My take: Some could, and many could not. This much is certain: Many of the same qualities that make for a highly successful coach would serve a vice president or president equally well.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1750
Nov. 4, 1750
Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the “Father of Chicago,” was born.
A man of African descent, he became the first known settler in the area that became the city of Chicago. He married a Potawatomi woman, Kitiwaha (Catherine), and they had two children.
According to records, the property included a log cabin with two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, a smokehouse, a fenced garden and an orchard. At his trading post, DuSable served Native Americans, British and French explorers and spoke a number of languages.
“He was actually arrested by the British for being thought of as an American Patriot sympathizer,” Julius Jones, curator at the Chicago History Museum told WLS, but DuSable beat those charges.
In Chicago today, a school, street, museum, harbor, park and bridge bear his name. The place where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River is now a National Historic Landmark, part of the city’s Pioneer Court.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Mississippi’s top election official discusses Tuesday’s election
Secretary of State Michael Watson talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance ahead of Tuesday’s election. He urges voters to remember sacrifices many have made to protect Americans’ voting rights and get to the polls, and he weighs in on whether a recent court ruling on absentee vote counting will impact this year’s elections.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Insurance chief willing to sue feds if Gov. Reeves doesn’t support state health exchange
State Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney is willing to sue the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if it does not allow Mississippi to create a state-based health insurance exchange because of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential opposition.
Federal officials, who must approve of a state implementing its own health insurance exchange, want a letter of approval from a state’s governor before they allow a state to implement the program, according to Chaney.
“I don’t know what the governor’s going to do,” Chaney told Mississippi Today. “I think he’ll probably wait until after the election to make a decision. But I’m willing to sue CMS if that’s what it takes.”
The five-term commissioner, a Republican, said his requests to Reeves, also a Republican, to discuss the policy have gone unanswered. The governor’s office did not respond to a request to comment on this story.
Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a law authorizing Chaney’s agency to create a Mississippi-based exchange to replace the federal exchange that currently is used by Mississippians to obtain health insurance. The bill became law without the governor’s signature.
States that operate their own exchanges can typically attract more companies to write health insurance policies and offer people policies at lower costs, and it would likely save the state millions of dollars in payments to the federal government.
Chaney also said he’s been consulting with former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who also supported some version of a state-based exchange while in office, about implementing a state-based program.
Currently, 21 states plus the District of Columbia have state-based exchanges, though three still operate from the federal platform. Should he follow through and sue the federal government, Chaney said he would use outside counsel and several other states told him they would join the lawsuit.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
-
Kaiser Health News6 days ago
Vance Wrongly Blames Rural Hospital Closures on Immigrants in the Country Illegally
-
SuperTalk FM7 days ago
Tupelo teen Leigh Occhi declared dead after going missing 32 years ago
-
News from the South - Georgia News Feed6 days ago
Co-defendant takes plea deal in YSL RICO trial | FOX 5 News
-
Mississippi News Video6 days ago
Free Clinic of Meridian Celebrates 10 Years
-
News from the South - Arkansas News Feed6 days ago
Buc-ee’s set to open second Arkansas location
-
News from the South - North Carolina News Feed6 days ago
FBI arrests NC man known as 'AK Guru' who is accused of selling hundreds of machine guns
-
News from the South - Alabama News Feed3 days ago
“There is a man here trying to use your ID” Suspect caught in Elberta using stolen ID at victims wor
-
Mississippi News Video6 days ago
Macon enacts Halloween curfew