Spanish pushed out as Connellsville coach
Some people have the strangest ways of saying thanks for a job well done. They might tell you to hit the bricks, or to find some other line of work, or move you to the other side of the building, and then again they might just look the other way all the while you are doing your job in a winning manner.
Then again, they might just open your position.
That’s what it’s called these days. No coach or manager ever gets fired any more. The ones in charge “open their position.”
That is a 50-cent word in the vernacular for “cowardice.”
Whatever you want to call it, it still adds up to the same result – the guy on the receiving end is fired. But when you ask his detractors the reason the victim was fired, they always come back at you, “we didn’t fire him, we opened the position.”
Bullfeathers. No matter what you want to call it, open, change, replacement, or whatever, it still amounts to firing somebody and “opening the position” is the coward’s way of saying what was done.
And that is what the Connellsville Area School Board, really five members of that lineup, accomplished the past week when it fired head football coach Dan Spanish. Oh, no matter how you say it, those five will come back with “we opened the position,” and expect to leave it go at that.
But it can’t be left at just that. If you are in a position to control someone’s present status or their future, and you make some decision affecting that other person’s status, then you should have enough backbone to stand up and defend your actions. Stand up and be counted. Tell the public, at least the taxpaying public within the school district’s environs, why you chose such a cowardly move.
On the night that he was betrayed, Spanish was backed by three members of the board – Francis Mongell, Jeff Harvey and Loretta Lint. Plus seven members of the Falcon football team, who spoke on behalf of their coach. Lineman Zack Blackstone was quoted as saying that while some might think Spanish was a little tough on his players, “that’s what you need. You need a coach to push you. It makes you better. Coach Spanish is a good coach and we respect his football knowledge.”
That in itself should have been enough to make the other five members of the board (one absentee) reconsider their actions, for who knows you better than the people you work with, who sees you as your real self day after day.
But their minds were made up and not even The Almighty sending Charlton Heston down from the mountaintop was going to change that.
It’s unfortunate that there are times when any coach’s future can be determined by x-number of people who don’t know which end of a football to pick up first. But as that bumper sticker tells us, you know what happens.
What happens is that somebody’s kid isn’t a first stringer, so maybe a board member and/or some of their friends get together and decide to get rid of the coach.
I don’t know how many times over the years I have heard people grumble that their kid is a senior and he’s on the bench with some sophomore or junior playing in his place.
They don’t want to understand that the underclassman is playing because he’s a better athlete and he worked a little bit harder to get that starting position.
Grade or years on the team are not entitlement.
The last three years haven’t been really good ones for Spanish and his Falcons, but that comes with the franchise.
A school can be on top in one sport or another for many years, then suddenly that talent well runs dry for a brief spell.
But good teams with good coaches, like Connellsville has had for the last 29 years, always rise back to the top and that is going to be the case here.
I’m not that good a judge of talent, but it still looks like there are some pretty good prospects in the lower grades. Patience and time will tell.
In his 29 years here, Spanish’s teams have won 190 games, and his 1990-92 teams compiled records than many coaches pray for.
His 1990 team was 11-1 (averaging 27 points per game) and lost only to Butler in the second round of the WPIAL playoffs. The 1991 team went 13-1, winning the WPIAL championship and reaching the state playoffs, and the 1992 team was 11-1, the only loss coming in the second round of the WPIAL playoffs.
But it comes down to the old question – what have you done for me today?
And why isn’t my boy playing first string?
It’s really unfortunate that a coach’s critics look only at his record on the field.
They never consider his record in the classroom, what is his relationship with the players and the others around him, and most of all how many of his players go on to attend college.
Whether or not they are stars in college, or even what college they went to, is not the main point. The fact that they got into school is very important, and how they do after getting into college and in their chosen life’s work is even more important.
But that doesn’t matter to a coach’s critics. They are concerned only with wins and losses and where somebody’s kids are on the team roster.
It’s a shame when a school board puts football way out in front of academic accomplishments in the school system they are supposed to be governing.
How many times have those opposing board members asked themselves about academic achievement in their system? For that matter, how many of Spanish’s critics can tell you right off the top of their head what the team’s record was last fall?
Board member Francis Mongell may have summed up the situation best of all when he was quoted as saying, “I am going to vote no on this (firing the coach) because I would like to see the head coach stay because of his character and what he has done for the district in the past.”
That alone should have been enough to hand Spanish, and his entire staff, a new contract. But since when does common sense overrule personalities?