Have you ever seen a picture of Kansas ex-coach Mark Mangino? I am not going to guess how much he weighs. Suffice to say he is morbidly obese. He will probably die as a result.
Charlie Weis, the soon-to-be-ex-coach of Notre Dame, is slightly less obese. But he is still enormous.
If you look around football as a whole, you’ll see many such cases. I recently did just that. I looked at pictures of every single NFL coach. The following are obese, not all of them morbidly, but all of them significantly: Bill Parcells, Rex Ryan, Eric Magini, Tom Cable, Wade Phillips and Andy Reid. This constitutes a fairly large group, meaning its likely that during any given season, a kid watching his favorite team will see on the sidelines an obese coach.
Yes, their job requires no real expenditure of energy. They don’t have to be in shape in order to do their job, but still, they coach some of the most fit athletes in the world. They are surrounded by workouts. I mean, they lead them. Mark Mangino has repeatedly been criticized by his players for working them too hard, for making practices too physically demanding and too exhausting.
But I have yet to hear any announcer comment on their obesity. Anyone’s first thought, upon seeing Mr. Mangino for the first time, would have to do with his weight. But it is entirely ignored. What isn’t ignored is when a player shows up to camp out of shape. Jamarcus Russel, the Raiders’ six foot six inch quarterback, came into training camp weighing 300 pounds, 30 over his game-shape weight. The media exploded with condemnations. How dare he care so little about his fitness! Yet Mangino’s obesity shouldn’t be ignored and neither should Charlie Weis’.
The NFL airs commercials on national television advocating their NFL PLAY 60 program. It advocates that each child should get 60 minutes of exercise per day “in order to combat childhood obesity.” Yet they allow morbidly obese coaches. They say nothing. We ought to be appalled. How can we expect kids to take the NFL’s method to heart when they see so many obese coaches on the sidelines, being showered in praise and garnering massive contracts?
This double standard is disgusting. It is detrimental to the league’s well-intentioned programs and by rewarding these coaches it certainly sends the wrong message about what is and isn’t OK.
But this isn’t just football. As a culture we seem to largely ignore the fact that obesity ought not be acceptable. It hurts everyone and benefits no one, not the people who will die because of it, not the kids who we beg to get fit early and stay fit. I am tired of hearing that obesity isn’t a lifestyle choice or is simply genetic or is only a symptom of a culture awash in fast-food and grease and sugar. At some point we have to hold obese people themselves somewhat responsible. I wonder how anyone who played under Coach Mangino could stomach the irony of his demands that they work, work, work!
