TERRY COLUMN: Calming down the coaches

Old school coaching doesn’t have to include making a fool out of yourself.

That’s a lesson University of Florida head football coach Jim McElwain learned this weekend, the lesson given to him by none other than his 94-year-old mother.

McElwain, who was born and raised in Missoula and played quarterback at Sentinel High School, was caught on the sidelines of Saturday’s game berating running back Kelvin Taylor, shouting down the junior in a profanity-laced tirade in front of the team, fans and thousands watching at home.

Taylor was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct after a touchdown for making a throat-slash celebration. The gesture has been outlawed in college and professional football.

Even if his intentions were in the right place on the sideline, there was one critic who thought there might have been a different way to go about it.

In a phone call after the game from her Missoula home, McElwain’s mother, Marjorie, gave her son “an earful” for the tirade.

“Rightfully so,” Jim McElwain said Monday in his weekly press conference. “I’m by no means perfect and I do know our players know how much I care about them.”

The tirade itself has become part of a larger debate in amateur athletics.

At what point do coaches cross a line when trying to discipline athletes? Can a frothing public embarrassment be considered discipline? Should high-level coaches, paid like CEOs, be held to a more professional public standard?

The issue has come up in multiple sports, with coaches in other fields also getting wrapped up in discipline scandals. It’s football, however, that continues to draw the attention, with the image of the hard-nosed, tough guy coach almost ingrained in society.

McElwain isn’t the first to get wrapped up in controversy, either, with fellow Montana product Paul Petrino falling into the same problem earlier this year at Idaho. Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly has been asked to calm down his sideline demeanor and McElwain’s predecessor at Florida, Will Muschamp, was often criticized for yelling more than coaching, leading to his eventual departure.

It can also be argued that some of the best coaches of their generations had fiery personas, including legendary coaches like Ohio State’s Woody Hayes, Michigan’s Bo Schembechler and Alabama’s Nick Saban, a McElwain mentor.

It’s a fine line though between teaching, motivating and making a scene.

Flathead football coach Kyle Samson, whose dad, Mark, is also a coach, currently leading Havre High, knows there is a fine line when it comes to yelling at players, especially in high school and college.

“I think the biggest thing is having respect for your kids,” Samson said.

“I know that coaches get fired up, they get hot, but it just comes down to how much do you really care about your kids as a person and how much respect do you have.

“We talk all the time that we want to be 95 percent positive with our kids but there’s five percent of the time where, yes, we’ve got to get after them and get them going, but we’ve got to be the first guys to pat them on the tail when they do something right, and they like that.”

McElwain has since expressed remorse for his outburst.

In a sport where many coaches are also teachers, their job on the field, while one filled with emotion, should be an extension of the classroom.

Watching an algebra teacher berate a student for not showing work or a history teacher lay into a student for writing an essay short would be unacceptable. That too should extend to the playing field, where tough lessons can be taught equally with compassion and understanding as with anger and embarrassment.

“Our kids know that we’re going to push them, we’re going to get after them, but at the end of the day we’re going to love them, too,” Samson said.

“If they know that you care about them you can get after them but there has to be that line of respect where you don’t embarrass them.”

“Every situation is different, but I think it comes down to relaxing a little bit and understanding that it’s just a football game and everyone’s going to be okay.”