Coach Dietrich is gone now. But I think about what he’d say every time I watch modern sports.
High school coach discipline shaped who I am today. Franklin “Bull” Dietrich coached varsity football at Central High for thirty-one years. In all that time, he never once let a player skip practice for a “personal brand opportunity.”
Coach Dietrich died last spring. Eighty-three years old. I was second-string wide receiver, class of 2007. Unfortunately, I blew out my knee junior year and never played a varsity snap after that. However, that high school coach discipline taught me things I still carry.
What High School Coach Discipline Looked Like
Here’s what Coach required: first, you showed up early. Then you practiced harder than you played. Additionally, you called adults “sir” and “ma’am.” Of course, you kept your grades up because a stupid athlete was still stupid. And above all, you never quit on your teammates.
Violate those rules and you sat. Didn’t matter if you ran a 4.4 forty or your dad donated money. In fact, I saw him bench our starting quarterback for an entire half because the kid showed up two minutes late to film session. Consequently, we lost that game by three points. Parents were furious.
Coach didn’t blink. “The scoreboard doesn’t care why you lost,” he told us. “What matters is how you lost. Today we lost with discipline.”
Try finding that philosophy in professional sports today.
What I See Now
I watch a lot of sports. Maybe too much. And here’s what I see: athletes who think talent entitles them to special treatment. Meanwhile, coaches let it happen because they’re scared of losing.
Receivers celebrate first downs like they cured cancer. Similarly, basketball players argue every foul call. Then there’s the choreographed celebrations, the constant self-promotion, and the absolute certainty that they’re the main character.
Coach Dietrich would’ve run them until they puked. (Speaking of people who think they’re above the rules, my colleague Dalton recently wrote about turning his divorce into a tax strategy—same energy, different arena.)
Why High School Coach Discipline Mattered
People say professional sports are different. Supposedly, the money changes things. Maybe. But character doesn’t have a salary cap. In other words, being a good teammate costs zero dollars whether you’re playing for free or for millions.
My knee still hurts when it rains. Essentially, I’m forty years old with a second-string career and a leg that predicts weather. By any athletic measure, I failed.
But I remember what Coach said after my surgery. “Football doesn’t owe you anything,” he told me. “You showed up. You worked. You got hurt doing something that mattered. That’s not failure. Rather, that’s the price of admission for a life worth living.”
When I watch today’s athletes skip that lesson–the part where you earn things, where you sacrifice—I don’t get angry. Instead, I feel sorry for them. Ultimately, nobody loved them enough to demand better.
Coach Dietrich demanded better. And for those of us who had him, that was the real championship.
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