I’ve always had a thing for coaches. Especially Southern coaches. A woman I know has made a career of marrying them. I’ve never gone that far, but I’m in the neighborhood. A few years ago, Jim Foster, who coached Vanderbilt’s women’s basketball team to the Final Four in 1993, gave me away at my wedding. Several family members initially questioned this. ¶ “Marshall, you have two brothers-in-law who adore you,” said one. “Not to mention three uncles. Have you thought about family?” ¶ “Marriage is a play only a coach should call,” I replied. Foster now coaches at Ohio State. We became close during his eleven-year tenure at Vanderbilt. He’s a Philly guy, and I consider my inability to convert him to our Southern way of life one of my biggest failures as a Southerner.

“Too many churches” was his terse comment upon fleeing Nashville.

Both Foster sons have since married girls from the Deep South. This fact alone has done more to strengthen my belief in a just and loving deity than all the churches in Nashville.

 Last spring, I wrote a love letter to Coach Bob McKillop after watching his Davidson team upset Georgetown in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. How could I not write him? My father was a Davidson graduate. In the mid-sixties, even on school nights, he would drive us the seventy-nine miles up I-85 from Spartanburg to Charlotte to see those great Lefty Driesell teams play in the old Charlotte Coliseum. I can still see Barry Teague dribbling the ball up court to distribute to his teammates—Terry Holland, Fred Hetzel, Don Davidson, and Dick Snyder. My father died at a relatively young age in 1983, so it was with great interest and emotion that I watched the Davidson-Georgetown game. But it was more than the memory of my father that had me so engaged. It was the way McKillop’s team played with so much heart and desire. They simply believed they would win. So that’s what they did. So yeah, I wrote him a letter.

I once wrote a letter to Gene Stallings, head football coach at Alabama (1990–96), to express my concern about one of his players. Stallings wrote me back on official Crimson Tide stationery. For years, the letter was pinned to a wall in my office. One time some painters were in there doing some work and when they saw the letter, they freaked. “You know him?” said one in a hushed tone.

I miss the old-school coaches, especially the more colorful ones from the South. Guys like Paul “Bear” Bryant—Stallings’ legendary predecessor. On a bet, Bryant once wrestled a real live bear to the ground, which is how he got his nickname. At Alabama, he won the national championship a record six times, yet never wore his trademark houndstooth hat in a dome or covered stadium because his mama always told him to take his hat off indoors.

Then there’s Frank Howard, who was head coach at Clemson for thirty years. I grew up in nearby Spartanburg and can still remember watching The Frank Howard Show with my mother on the little black-and-white TV she and my father had in their bedroom. Coach Howard was talking in his usual homespun manner: “He don’t” this… and “Son of a gun” that… Finally, my mother couldn’t take it anymore.

“Just listen to that damn Frank Howard,” she said, “just butchering the King’s English. He knows better than to talk like that. Why, he’s got a Ph.D. in English! He just talks that way ’cause he thinks it’ll help recruiting.”

She was standing there cussing. But all the cussing in the world couldn’t cover up the fact that she admired him. It’s true. The only thing my mother loves more than she hates bad grammar is winning. And Frank Howard was winning way too many football games for her to write him off on a grammatical technicality.

Wimp Sanderson coached the Crimson Tide men’s basketball team from 1981 to 1992. (Only in the South can a coach named Wimp be a male role model.) Besides winning SEC championships, Wimp was known for wearing garish plaid sports jackets during games. Pretty soon, everybody in the Alabama band was wearing the plaid jackets, and the Alabama A at center court was repainted in a red plaid pattern. Wimp was a character and everybody loved him. Then came the unfortunate incident with his longtime secretary that left her with a black eye. Depending on whom you talk to, there are two versions of that story: In one, he hit her. In the other, he was protecting himself while she was trying to hit him. In the latter version, her eye happened to come into contact with his elbow while he was fending off her blows. Two lawsuits and a settlement later, Alabama’s athletic director—Hootie Ingram—had no choice but to let Wimp go. (Only in the South can a man named Hootie rise to the top of his profession.)

I once saw a bumper sticker that read: FEMINISM IS THE RADICAL NOTION THAT WOMEN ARE PEOPLE TOO. If that’s true, then I am most definitely a feminist. The Wimp incident appalled some of my more radical feminist friends. I concede that it was unfortunate, but it didn’t change my feelings for Wimp. I told them, “Hey! There’re two sides to every story.” But they didn’t want to hear about it.

Two years after Alabama fired Wimp, he was hired by the University of Arkansas–Little Rock to coach their men’s team. I remember one time seeing his Little Rock team play in Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gym. It was at some early-season tournament. They weren’t playing Vanderbilt, so the game was sparsely attended. I was sitting in the stands with my husband when I noticed that some guys I’d gone to Vanderbilt with were sitting behind Wimp’s bench having a big old time. Evidently, Wimp was holding court as only Wimp can do. It was obvious they were having way more fun than I was, so I turned to my husband and said, “Honey, I’m going to move over there for a while.” My husband has grown accustomed to my nomadic ways at sporting events. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that tickets are for admission only. Once in, I tend to move around.

The minute I joined the Vanderbilt crew, Wimp seemed aware that his audience had just increased by one. All born entertainers know when they’ve got an audience, and Wimp seemed to instinctively know I was there to be entertained. And if I happened to see a good basketball game in the process, so be it.

Then one of the referees called a foul on one of Wimp’s players right in front of us. Wimp didn’t like the call and proceeded to get in the referee’s face. He began vigorously questioning not only the call, but the parentage and gender of the referee. I’d never heard such language. It was damn creative. Why he didn’t get a technical, I’ll never know.

As play resumed, Wimp walked right over to me and said with a wink, “Aw hell, I’m trying to get him to throw me out of the game, but he just doesn’t have the guts!” I’ll never forget the look in his eye. All I could think was, This guy really loves what he’s doing. Maybe the ref saw it, too. Maybe that’s why he didn’t T him up.

Everybody loves a winner. But winners come in many varieties. Some people like their winners packaged and sold—perfect like Tiger Woods. Some like theirs flawed and human like John Daly. When it comes to Southern coaches, I like mine colorful.