Sports

Is Les Miles a Good Dad?

ESPN.com recently did an extended feature on Les Miles and his family. The life of a college football coach is typically dominated by the job. Consequently, these coaches are notoriously terrible family men. They simply don’t have the time to do it all. This story from ESPN.com takes a look at how Miles is measuring up as a family man. Here is an excerpt that gives the gist of what this article is all about:

How does a coach make time for a life? How does he make time for a family? Many don’t. Vince Lombardi knew he was a terrible father; a friend said he “never should have had children.” Bill Walsh saw maybe five of his son’s football games, from junior high all the way through college. “I could count on one hand the number of times I played catch with my dad,” Craig Walsh said in a book about his father.

The game withers people, literally. Urban Meyer retired after he found himself dropping weight, unable to eat. One look at the tortured face of his replacement, Will Muschamp, and it’s easy to predict a similar end. The state flower of the college football meeting room should be an empty Red Bull can half-filled with dip spit. Men burn out. Marriages crumble. Kids grow up fatherless. The game becomes a crack house for those addicted to competition, days marked by caffeine and stress, the random nature of a game turning ordinary people into miserable control freaks. “I’ve been around guys who feel that way,” Miles says. “Anxiety kills them. The stomach — they keep drinking Maalox. They’re miserable. I couldn’t do it that way.”

In my opinion, it sounds like Miles is doing his level best to make it all happen. Miles may very well be doing better than others in his position, but it still seems like the demands of the job do not allow the necessary time for leading and raising a family. Read the rest here.

One Comment

  • Dillon

    Who cares if he’s a good dad as long as our team wins on Saturday, Sunday, or any other day of the week. ( sarcasm ).

    I’d be willing to wager that 99.99999 percent of the people won’t be given his family a second thought this weekend.

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