Butkus to serve as coach at Montour for televised season
Western Pennsylvania high school football is going prime-time. The Montour High School team will be the focus of a reality television show on ESPN beginning Sept. 20. The show, “Bound For Glory: The Montour Spartans,” will consist on eight one-hour episodes and will document the team’s season and its community involvement.
The star of the show will be former Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, who will help Montour’s first-year head coach, Lou Cerro.
Montour, a Class AAA school in suburban Pittsburgh, was 1-8 last season and has not qualified for the District 7 playoffs for the past six seasons. Cerro had been the head coach at Seton-La Salle High School in Pittsburgh the past 12 seasons. He guided the team to a 13-1 record and the District 7 Class AA title last year.
“I think it will be a good thing for the team,” Cerro said. “The school will certainly benefit from it. The toughest job I’m going to have is keeping the teams focus with five cameras running around. I was a bit skeptical about it at first, but then I talked with Butkus and felt better about things.”
Butkus, who will probably live in the school district during the season, has no high school coaching experience. He did play a high school basketball coach in the Saturday morning TV show “Hang Time” and has acted in a number of films.
Actual Reality Pictures is producing the show along with Reveille and Full Circle Entertainment. Montour was selected from nearly 500 high school football programs nationally.
Cerro said he has had students come out for the team this season who haven’t played for the Spartans in the past.
“A couple of the better athletes in the school are out. I don’t know if they can play football, but we’re glad they’ve decided to give it a try,” he said.
Montour’s training camp starts Aug. 8 and Cerro expects the first few days of practice to be a challenge. The Spartans stay at the school for camp.
Cerro isn’t worried about watching his language during practices. “I’ve never cursed on the field in 12 years as a head coach,” he said.
But he isn’t sure he wants 10 million people to watch him work. “I don’t know how I’ll react when I see something I don’t like two or three weeks down the road, because that’s going to be the time between a game and when the show comes on,” he said. “I’m just glad we’ll have two weeks in camp for everybody to get used to the cameras”