With Vic Player Back, Lincoln Knows the Score

Marcus Allen had a nickname for Vic Player, Lincoln High School’s football coach. He called him “Little Napoleon.”

It had to do with Player being 5-feet 7-inches tall . . . and tough.

Keith Mitchell, Lincoln’s quarterback last year, said he was scared when he heard Player was returning after three years away from coaching. Quarterback Freddie Stokes, a senior this season, was apprehensive because he, too, had heard stories about Player.

Even Player’s dark, mirrored sunglasses are foreboding.

“He does that so the kids never know who he’s looking at,” said Roy Reed, assistant coach.

So Player is tough, and maybe mysterious, too. But he is also more mellow than he was in the old days.

“As you get older, you mellow,” Reed said. “He has mellowed, but he had developed a reputation.”

Player has another reputation, that of a winner. In his 10 years as Lincoln’s head coach, the school has won four San Diego Section championships. The biggest game thus far in Player’s 11th season will be the showdown against Crawford for first place in the City Central League at 7 tonight at Mesa College.

But Player had found that being too big a winner can be a stigma . . . and winning big was part of the reason he stopped coaching from 1983 through 1985.

“I had a difference in philosophy with the previous administration,” Player said. “I had been called a cavalier coach. If I’m going to be the coach, I’ll be the coach in terms of who I play. Members of the administration came on the field when it was 30-0 or 40-0. They would walk on the sideline and say, ‘You’ve scored enough points. Don’t pass the ball.’ ”

Said Reed: “A lot of people complained that Lincoln was running up scores. People didn’t realize that we never had more than 25 or 26 players. When we were scoring 40 points, every kid played by the second quarter.”

But there was another side to the story. Player says he had his players’ futures in mind.

“When you are trying to get scholarships for your players and they are trying to make all-CIF teams, statistics count,” he said. “What are you going to tell the kids? Don’t pass? It was a ridiculous situation I didn’t want to be part of.”

But after three years, Player came back for the 1986 season because of the urging of a new administration

“I asked him to come back,” said Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer, Lincoln’s principal since May 1986.

Cremaschi-Schwimmer wanted Player back in the interest of academic credibility. Lincoln had won the 2-A title in 1985, but its coach, Skip Coons, did not have a teaching credential.

“I wanted a coach who had a teaching credential,” Cremaschi-Schwimmer said in the fall of 1986. “If you’re trying to preach to athletes that they have to study, I want a coach who exemplifies excellence in academics as well as athletics.”

When Player returned to the field last fall, his athletes were at least mildly surprised.

“Maybe in the past, he was tough,” Mitchell said. “We heard how rough he was with players, that he made them run 1,000 yards after practice. When I was there, he wasn’t that tough.”

Player, 44, is still tough, and he can make a point with an icy stare, but he believes he has changed in his second go-around as coach.

“I’m not as strict as I used to be,” he said. “I don’t need to be. These kids are different. Now it’s a lot easier to tell them what you expect of them and have them do it.”

Former Lincoln wide receiver Patrick Rowe, now a freshman playing for San Diego State, perceived Player as demanding, but also as being his “main man.”

“He’s a tough coach to play for because he has high expectations for his players,” Rowe said. “He won’t take anything less than the best. He doesn’t want to hear excuses. And he didn’t care for prima donnas. But he did things like make us run for our own benefit. To get us in condition. He wasn’t doing that to make us suffer.”

Player himself doesn’t buy the “Little Napoleon” tag.

“People talk about short people having Napoleon syndrome . . . that I overcompensate for being small,” Player said. “I don’t think so.”

When Player stepped down as football coach five years ago, he didn’t think he would return to the sidelines. He had already had a successful career, as Lincoln had won three 2-A San Diego Section titles from 1974-1982.

“As far as I was concerned, coaching was no longer a part of my career,” Player said. “I missed parts of it, but not a lot of it. I didn’t miss the worry over eligibility, the down side of coaching. I didn’t even really miss the game. I missed going out to practice every day.”

There is more to Player than coaching. Now in his 18th year at Lincoln, Player, the chairman of the school’s social studies department, has been selected by the district as a mentor teacher who instructs teachers throughout the city.

In fact, Player has wanted to be a teacher since he was in 10th grade . . . but he has never sought a coaching job.

Player was a player for St. Augustine back then, a halfback and rover back from 1957-60.

“Any time you needed to count on an individual, he was there,” said Joe Galindo, who coached Player at St. Augustine. “He did not have the speed, but he hit with authority when he ran the ball. His expertise was on defense.”

Player was offered college football scholarships by Cal Western, the University of San Diego and Oregon, but he opted to attend Villanova and study theology with plans to enter the priesthood. After a year at Villanova, he decided that the priesthood wasn’t for him.

“I always wanted to be a teacher,” Player said. “In 10th grade, I read a book about careers that change the world. Being very Christian, the most important thing about Christ is that he was a teacher.”

He transferred to Cal Western, where he made the football team as a walk-on and played flanker as a freshman and running back as a sophomore and junior. Off the field, he earned a degree in education.

“I really wanted to be a math teacher,” Player said. “Math was my forte. But I was told (by professors) that if I wanted to get a job, to major in social science and minor in physical education.”

Player majored in social science, minored in physical education and got a job at his alma mater, St. Augustine. He taught social studies for three years at St. Augustine before he moved to Lincoln in 1969. Player has been a teacher, counselor, athletic director, vice principal and football coach at Lincoln.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve been everything except the principal,” Player said.

Last season, Player’s first year back, Lincoln went 12-1 with only 20 players on its roster. The team scored 544 points, the highest total in San Diego County history.

“You can beat his teams for 120 plays,” said Crawford Coach Roger Engle, “but they’ll beat you on five plays. That’s the kind of athletes they have.”

In the 2-A championship game last year, Lincoln defeated Oceanside, 41-7.

“Last year’s team was the best football team I ever coached,” Player said. “No doubt. It had size, speed and experience.”

And Player has coached some excellent teams, including the 1977 2-A championship team whose quarterback was Allen. The main reason Player and Allen did not see eye-to-eye was that Player wanted Allen to convert from defensive back to quarterback. According to Player, Allen did not want to play quarterback because there were very few black quarterbacks in the NFL. Eventually, Player won out during Allen’s senior year. And Allen was named the San Diego Section Player of the Year.

Allen, who donated $6,000 to the Lincoln football program in 1986, could not be reached for comment.

This year’s Lincoln team does not have the experience of previous Lincoln championship teams. It does have 36 players now, which is considerably more than it has had in recent years, and Lincoln is 5-2 and tied for first in the City Central League.

“This year’s team is not as experienced, not as fast, and we’ve had more injuries,” said Player, who has only three returning starters.

“This team has been extremely bewildering,” Player said. “But nobody here cares if it’s a young team. You’re supposed to win all the time.”

There is no such thing as a rebuilding year at Lincoln. At least that’s what Lincoln fans and opposing coaches think, according to Player.

“You have to keep that tradition going,” Rowe said. “There’s pressure from fans and people in the neighborhood. Not so much from the coaches.”

Player said he wanted to schedule all 2-A opponents except for Morse this season, but “nobody believed we’d have a down year.”

So Lincoln ended up playing 3-A powers Point Loma, Sweetwater and Morse earlier this season before opening City Central League play with victories over Hoover and Christian.

Lincoln did have one of those old-fashioned blowouts in its season opener against Wilson of San Francisco . . . an 82-0 victory.

The inevitable question surfaced.

Did Player run up the score?

“I didn’t see it that way,” said Bob Miles, Wilson athletic director. “I didn’t see that taking place. They’re an outstanding team, but at the same time, we were not prepared. Most of our scores have been whatever the opponent can score.”

Vic Player took 40 players to San Francisco and used them all. Only the first two touchdowns were scored on pass plays. The second half was played with a running clock.

It was not a very dramatic way to start the season. However, Vic Player and his Lincoln players are much more concerned with dramatic ways of ending seasons.