A former North Jackson football coach had his team on the road for a playoff game and made sure to carry a grease board to write on.
At halftime the coach forbade anyone to speak. He pulled out the board and a marker and used them and sign language because he was certain the visiting locker room was bugged.
Such is part of win-at-all-costs football. Like “black ops” or spy missions, they may have been merely gamesmanship to yesteryear’s coaches.
Coaches once were quite secretive about their scrimmages, especially in the preseason, but most coaches now will show up at an opponent’s scrimmage.
“An old coach I respect said that it wasn’t done, but I talked with a friend who’s still coaching and he said, ‘Man, that’s the way they do it now,'” Polk County coach Derrick Davis said. “Usually it’s their Week Zero or Week 1 opponent that coaches will go watch.”
Scouting an opponent during games once was the norm. Prior to film-swapping, a coach would send a couple of assistants out on Friday to watch the next week’s opponent. It’s the rare occasion these days.
“We sent two coaches last week to get an up-close look at Gordonsville [tonight’s opponent], because sometimes you want that live look instead of just film,” South Pittsburg coach Vic Grider said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever done that. A lot of other guys start getting film or preparing weeks ahead, but we can’t do that. The biggest change is we’re spending a lot more time watching film than we do in the regular season.”
The swapping of game videos has replaced in-person scouting.
Dade County coach Bradley Warren had employed the tradition but ran into a situation that is unique now because of the advance in technology.
“I met the coach – he was an older guy – on Saturday morning to make the exchange, and he had VHS tapes and I had DVDs,” Warren recalled. “He didn’t have a DVD player and I didn’t have a tape player, so we wound up exchanging equipment, too, for the week.”
That’s the nice approach.
“Sometimes you have two coaches that don’t like each other and won’t swap,” Davis said.
It wasn’t a matter of dislike, but Signal Mountain coach Bill Price called and left messages for Trousdale County coach Kevin Creasy about a video swap to prepare for tonight’s game. Price said Creasy never returned his calls.
“I didn’t talk with him personally and we didn’t [swap videos]. Just say I left message after message and leave it at that,” Price said. “We both have films of each other, so we’re OK with it.”
Baylor coach Phil Massey remembered a story from his days an assistant at Memphis University School.
“The way I heard it, a Christian Brothers coach was returning tape to MBA and when he gave the films to [MBA coach] Jeff Rutledge,” Massey releated, “he wound up telling on himself because he gave Rutledge tapes that Rutledge hadn’t given to him.”
Massey then recalled an occasion regarding a blatant rules violation by a Memphis coach who later lost his job because of a recruiting violations investigation by the NCAA. It is against TSSAA rules to video a team you aren’t competing against.
“I was coaching at Haywood County and this coach’s team had a first-round bye in the playoffs,” Massey said. “He and two assistants [dressed in their coaching gear] come into our stadium and they set up a camera and tripod in our stands. Our principal said, ‘We don’t mind you coming and scouting, but you’re not going to film.’ They told him they did it everywhere. They didn’t try to hide it. They admitted it.”
But that would be child’s play to some.
“I know for a fact that there have been coaches in the woods watching our practices,” Ridgeland coach Mark Mariakis said. “They park down in the Flintstone area and walk up through the woods all camo’d up and sit up in the trees. And we’ve had to have a coach stand up on the hill by the road to keep people from parking up there and watching practice with binoculars. I have even heard stories of teams filming the other team’s practice.”
Heritage coach Tim James heard a similar story when he was playing for East Ridge.
“There was an ROTC instructor that crawled up through the bushes to scout a team for his school’s coach. The notes the guy brought back, though, couldn’t be deciphered,” James said. “And as a player I remember a plane circling our practice field the week every time we’d be scheduled to play Bradley County. We always thought that was somebody from Bradley.”
There actually have been spies, including an occasion this year when a guy lived in one community and worked in another. This person would stop on his way home from work and walk on the high school track [observing the football team’s practice] and then go back and report to the coach at the high school in the community where he lived. Ironically the spy’s team lost.
There have been occasions, too, where teams have the same microchip in their headsets and one school has picked up the other school’s conversations. Some teams even have ad spies on the opponents’ sideline.
“We were at a rivals’ field and had one of our coaches in the press box, and he noticed that a guy on the chain gang [volunteers who handle the down-and-distance markers] was signaling,” Davis said. “He held his hand high if we were passing and low if it was a run. I wondered why they were playing us so tough early. I called him on it and he denied it, but after that we got to playing better.”
Davis was shocked, but he and his peers know there are different sets of rules.
“I don’t know that there’s a code. I guess it’s what each coach thinks is ethical,” he said. “Shoot, up until this year I never thought coaches would go watch somebody else’s fall scrimmages.”