Time to put an end to WCHS football
As the Warren County Pioneers head toward yet another 0-10 season, I have to wonder: why do we continue to bother? There comes a time when the best course of action is to cut one’s losses and, for the Warren County football program, that time has come.
Let’s start with the numbers. Beginning with the 1984 season and ending with Friday night’s 41-0 loss to Cookeville, the Pioneer football program has a record of 27 wins and 151 losses.
The program hasn’t seen a winning season since 1990, when the Pioneers went 8-3. And that season, it would appear, was a fluke, considering to find another winning season, one would have to go back another seven years to 1983. Keep in mind also, that the year after that lone winning season, the program returned to its losing ways and brought about its first ever winless season.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse. The past eight seasons have seen four 0-10 seasons for the Pioneers. Count’em folks, that’s half. The most impressive record in this stretch came in 1997 when the Pioneers posted a record of 4-6. As everything’s relative, that’s like going the state championship by Warren County standards.
It seems everyone has an opinion on why the Pioneers can’t win. The most popular, it would seem, is coaching, or lack thereof. That can’t be the case, however, considering that in the past 10 years the program has seen five head coaches, with an average tenure of only two years a coach.
The second most popular excuse is the kids. They’re lazy, it’s said, and they don’t know the meaning of hard work and sacrifice. They’d rather spend their time working jobs to buy new rims for their trucks or they prefer spending time with their girlfriends over spending time sweating on the practice field. They’re coddled, they’re spoiled, etc., etc.
When combined with the my-kid-is-the-greatest-athlete-ever-and-the-coach-doesn’t-know-what-he’s-doing attitude held by more than a few parents, the student laziness argument might make a little sense. However, if that were the case here, we’d see losing football programs everywhere as this type of behavior is not unique to Warren County.
I don’t have the answers. Whatever they are, the fact remains that the program continues to get worse, year after year. Hope, it seems, is always present though. How many times, including this year, have we heard how players at the middle school are going to turn the program around? But for all the success at the middle school level (they’ve had three winning seasons in a row), it has not carried over to the high school.
In analyzing the football program, the financial aspect must also be considered. While the program does produce revenue (to the tune of about $5,500 a home game), it does, at the end of the year, lose money, when considering the annual $15,000-$20,000 it receives every year from the school system, as well as coaching supplements of over $20,000 a year.
Granted, most high school’s 10 sports programs do lose money. And that’s okay — sports are about teaching things like teamwork and cooperation and should not be expected to turn a profit. The only thing the football program seems to be teaching its players, though, is how to be gracious losers. All of the high school’s other programs at least make respectable showings on a consistent basis.
The reasons listed above would be more than enough to justify to the folding of the Pioneer football program. When coupled with the fact that a 5-A school with a student population of nearly 1,800 can only keep about 45 players on its roster, it’s a no-brainer.
And contrary to popular belief, folding a football program wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’s been done before, most recently at Clarksville Academy. Plus there would be the added bonus of putting the money used to fund the program where it could be of better use and where results would be of more lasting value — academics.
Will Stewart is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].