Dead Coach Walking

Warning: Coaching can be hazardous to your health.

Being a head coach for a big-name football program, whether professional or collegiate, is not nearly as easy as it should be. If you prove to have some talent at the coordinator level, there’s a good chance that at some point a bigger program will give you your dream shot by handing you the big clipboard and tell you that you’re the guy in charge from now on. Depending on which level you coach on, this can lead to remarkable career for the next 2-40 years. (You know, just like working on Law and Order.)

On the pro level, all it takes is getting into the coaching rotation before you’ve got solid money coming to you for at least the next 10-15 years. You’ve proven your worth on the staff of some successful team, and an order looking to shake things up hires you to be the main man. After 1 promising and 2 below-mediocre seasons, you’ve amassed a mighty 22-26 record, and you get the boot for not making the playoffs and being the “bane of this city’s existence.” You return the coordinator ranks, and then about three years later, the cycle repeats itself, as somehow the entire football world has forgotten that you were below-mediocre just a few years back. Why would this be any different? (Don’t believe me? I’d bet $50 that Mike Tice is an NFL head coach again by 2009.) (Probably for the Raiders.) (And he’ll get fired in 2011, as Al Davis gives the job to some guy named Art Shell.) (Again.)

On the college level, if you’re young and have won a few league titles, the pros will come calling soon. But for the Old Guarde, you’ve built a program for decades, during an era where coaches didn’t get fired because they looked at the owner funny. They’ve become synonymous with the program (example: Bobby Bowden and Florida State), and there comes a point where this fattens your paycheck to the point where you’re happy staying in College Town for the rest of your life. (Although, if you show up at a frat party kegger, you may have to put your house up for sale. Right, Mr. Eustachy?)

But no matter which path, coaching can be dangerous.

But at which level? As for the NCAA, let’s use Joe Paterno to illustrate.

Penn State Head Coach Joe Paterno has been coaching Penn State’s football team since the university’s inception in 1855. This makes JoePa roughly 191 years old. During his tenure with the Nittany Lions, he has won 360 games on the sidelines of the Navy and White. His legacy is so storied and so famous at this point that YABNews has heard unconfirmed reports that Paterno had actually gone on a safari on 1891 to Africa and killed the lion that would eventually become Penn State’s mascot. (Of course, we find these rumors to be largely untrue – flight didn’t exist until the 20th century, and there’s no way Paterno could take off the 1891-1892 season for a 3 month voyage to Madagascar.)

This past weekend, the aging head coach broke his leg after a Wisconsin player rolled into JoePa’s legs following a reception. And Paterno would lose more than his immediate mobility; the Lions lost 13-3. Apparently, despite the fact that this man’s life is at risk, not being able to get out of the way of the play anymore, Paterno remains determined to keep his day job. I guess he doesn’t need no stinking Badgers.

But while being directly in harm’s way may make Paterno a University insurance plan risk, he may not even me in the most peril within the coaching ranks these days. Is Dallas Cowboys front man Bill Parcells not a heart attack waiting to happen??? Aside from the crankiness and the man-boobs, Parcells coaches a team with a liquored up a kicker, a quarterback controversy, a tough intra-division schedule, Jerry Jones as a boss, the national media watching your every move – oh, and some guy named Terrell Owens. And after their completely improbable defeat to the Redskins in Washington yesterday afternoon, we’re just kind of amazed he made it to the post-game press conference without keeling over or murdering Mike Vanderjagt. Breathe, Bill, breathe.

So who’s going to die on the job first? Parcells or Paterno?