Athletics in the ‘80s : Veteran High School Football Coaches Say TV Has Been a Good and Bad Influence

Soon after Muhammad Ali proclaimed himself The Greatest, Bennie Edens, Point Loma High School football coach, noticed a dramatic change in his players’ attitudes.

They had gone from being relatively humble to startlingly Ali-esque.

“That flamboyant approach was not something we were used to,” said Edens, 60, who has been the Pointers’ coach since 1956. “We weren’t used to people saying, ‘I’m the greatest.’ We were used to kids saying, ‘Aw shucks, just doing my best.’ The humble approach.”

Edens has been coaching varsity football for 32 years, longest in the county. Second with 28 years each are Gene Edwards, 56, of La Jolla, and Herb Meyer, 51, who began his career at Oceanside and switched to El Camino in 1976.

These veteran coaches recently discussed how much high school football has changed, and the main influence, they say, has been television--for good and bad.

Larger-than-life images of superstar athletes were only a small part of television’s influence, they said. Professional football came into households regularly, prompting high school teams and players to:

- Pass more as pro offenses became more complicated.

- Expand training programs as the pros became bigger and quicker.

- Use video technology so that coaches could watch game films even before their teams finished showering.

But other factors helped change high school football, too, they said. Games once considered minor such as water polo and soccer have grown in popularity. Busing has added strength to some teams, while robbing others. And the boom of leisure activities has reduced crowds at prep games. Indeed, the times are a changin’.

TELEVISION’S HEROES

Sports stars who become television stars provide role models that are copied by high school athletes, the coaches said. And the models aren’t always positive.

“Too often the people who are being showcased are not necessarily the role models we would like to have for some of our youth,” Edens said. “Too often, kids are impressed with the flashy or the unusual behavior of the pros and they see some guy who taunts (other players) or does something like that, and they tend to emulate that.”

Said Meyer: “When you watch pro athletes on television and you see a bunch of guys who act like jerks and hot dogs and slamming the ball down . . . young people perceive that to be the way you are supposed to act to be the bad guy.”

The 1960s brought new styles and fashions--such as long hair and white shoes--and a willingness to rebel that some coaches couldn’t take.

“When white shoes first came out, the players were saying, ‘What’s wrong with decorating your shoes? What’s wrong with letting your hair grow longer?’ ” Edens said. “I know guys who got out of coaching because of it.

“It wasn’t so much the white shoes, it was that most of the coaches back then had a military background, a lot served during World War II. They had more of a ‘yes, sir, no, sir, no excuse, sir’ attitude. And, when kids suddenly started to rebel against authority, they had a hard time dealing with that.”

The image of athletes off the field also has made an impact, Meyer said.

“Years and years ago, it used to be taboo for professional athletes to have any type of association or endorsement of alcohol or tobacco,” he said. “Now, these guys are all over television with that type of thing. It’s the kind of things kids begin to relate to.”

UNREACHABLE DREAMS

Players such as former New York Jet quarterback Joe Namath gained reputations for leading what appeared to be glamorous lives. This gave student athletes more reason to try to make it to the top, Edens said.

The coaches said that such lives are beyond most high school athletes’ reach.

“I think the dreams have increased,” Edens said. “But they’re not realistic. They see so much (of the glamour of a professional athlete’s life) and they accept as fact that anybody can do it--and just anybody can’t do it.”

Said Meyer: “The biggest problem I’ve found over the years is that the marginal players expect instant gratification. Where it used to be that if a kid were a junior in high school and he was second- or third-string tight end or guard or whatever, he knew that if he worked hard, next year he was going to be a starter.

“That’s not the case anymore. Too many of the guys think, ‘Hey, if I’m not going to start, I’ll quit. I’ll come back next year.’ They’re not willing to pay their dues.”

Skills have changed with attitudes.

“The skills development is different (now),” Edens said. “Kids are bigger, they’re faster. I think if you could do it, and take the best team I had in the ‘50s and play them against the best team I’ve had in the ‘80s, I don’t think there would be any comparison who would win.

“Not to say that those guys (in the ‘50s) wouldn’t have done better if they weren’t coached differently.”

HIGH-TECH FOOTBALL

It didn’t take long for pass-happy offenses to move from the pros to high schools. Summer passing leagues, something unheard of in the ‘50s and ‘60s, became common.

“The offensive philosophy of most coaches now has so much emphasis on throwing the ball and on wide-open football,” Edwards said. “I think television brought about a lot of that.

“Not too long ago, if the two teams playing threw six or eight passes in a ballgame, that was considered a lot of passing.”

Watching the game also has changed with the advent of video technology. Videotaping has allowed coaches to review their own teams’ films as well as opponents’ with ease.

“I still spend long nights looking at films, “ Edwards said, “except now it is easier looking at videos than looking at the eight-millimeter film . . . that was pretty hard on the eyes.”

But is it any easier to coach now?

“To me, football is like a chess game and I think it is a much tougher game to play than it was 20 years ago,” Edwards said. “Because of the wide-open offenses, there are more things you have to do to prepare a club for a Friday night ballgame.

“It used to be that you could sit there and tell your kids that when you run a play, this guy will be here and that guy will be there and this is what’s going to happen. Now, your team comes out of the huddle and they might see 15 or 20 different combinations on the defense--different types of blitzes, different types of fronts, different types of coverages in the secondary. It’s much tougher to get kids ready for a ballgame.”

“With the passing game, we are teaching fundamentals that we used to not be as proficient at,” Edens said. “Staffs are also a lot larger and you might say that it makes it easier to have a lot of coaches. And that is true. But you have to coach the coaches. They have to know what to do.”

BUSING

School busing has helped some programs and placed limits on others.

Edens said his team would not be as good without players bused from southeast San Diego. But busing also presents problems.

“When a person lives here in the community and I’m having two-a-days (workouts) and they’re not here by 8 o’clock, it’s much easier for me to be tough,” Edens said. “But if I have a kid who has to come from southeast San Diego and get on a bus and transfer and pay a buck every day (in the summer), it’s different.

“We used to be able to have the whole group right there and have a we’re going to stay out here until we get it right approach. But now, you’ve got buses to catch, you got kids that have to get home. It’s a tremendous obligation on a kid’s part to get on a bus every day and ride two hours to a school that is out of his own community.”

TOO MUCH TO DO

Community support for most high schools has decreased, although Vista and Fallbrook are exceptions.

“Used to be the school was the center of activities for the community,” Edens said. “If you didn’t go to the football game, where did you go on a Friday night? It’s not that way anymore. We’ve got so many activities, so many sports and everybody has spectators. Now, at the same time we have a football game going on Friday afternoon, we’ve got a volleyball game at another school, a cross-country meet somewhere else. So kids who used to be spectators are now participating.”

GROWING WITH THE TIMES

But for all the changes, the coaches say the most significant were the changes in themselves.

Meyer: “When you get older, you develop a little more maturity and you put a different perspective on winning and losing. When I was a younger coach, every Friday night was a confrontation with death. If you lost, the whole weekend was a dismal failure.

“Now, you realize each confrontation each Friday night is the most important thing in the world for the two hours that the game is going on. But if you come out second best, you put that in perspective and relegate it to its importance in the world and try and build from there.”

Edwards: “In football, when I went into it, you made the kids buckle down and wear their hair a certain length and you established dress codes. Every kid that wanted to play either did it or didn’t play on the team.

“Now, I could care less. If a kid comes out with hair down to his backbone, he can play if he’s good enough.”

Edens: “I have to bend a lot more. I coached an all-star game about four years ago and saw one of my former players and he says, ‘I can’t believe, Coach, how you’ve changed. You don’t have the guys do this, you don’t have the guys do that anymore.’ Those were things that were very important to him in his development as a person.

“I said that you have to change or you’ll make yourself crazy.”