I Guess I Thought Better of Easton

After 24 years of leading Easton's Football program, Steve Shiffert was not retained on Tuesday night at the school board meeting. He went 216-89-1 in 24 years. That's nine wins a year. That's less than four losses a year. In terms of coaching a high school program, that's amazing. He's missed the district playoffs once this century, and just five times in his nearly quarter century of coaching. If it were really about wins and losses, frankly, that's stupid.

Every parent in every town thinks their child is Matt Ryan or Tom Brady. In reality, they are most likely never going to start. Don't tell them that though. If only Shiffert would run a spread offense, and showcase their kid, then Easton would win state championships, and their kid would go to Alabama. Because the kids who left Easton for Bethlehem Catholic won championships and are NFL bound. Same for the kids at Notre Dame. Too many adults live in some fantasy world where Easton would beat St. Joe's Prep or LaSalle out of the Philadelphia Catholic League, recruited private school teams in the fifth largest media market in the country, if they just had a "more innovative" coach. They live in a fantasy world.

The truth of the matter is that change was coming to Easton, and there's actually some merit to that. It's not that a new coach would win state titles and send all the kids to Division I programs, but you do have to keep modern with the times. High school coaches don't hang around a quarter century anymore, and there's a decent argument that they shouldn't. It's not really the decision itself that is wrong here.

I thought of Easton, the place I grew up, as a tough, blue-collar town, where loyalty was the highest currency we had. I always knew we had some crazy parents who think their kids are much greater than they are, but we always handled them, and eventually they came off their clouds. I figured someone who gave a quarter century of their life to our community got exhaustive opportunities to go out on better terms. I thought wrong. Easton's not a bad place for not being loyal to a football coach. It's just not exactly the place I believed it was, for better or for worse.