Hell, it’s not a position I asked for. It’s a position I inherited.

A few years ago, I was a mere assistant, happy to simply be a part of a bigger machine, a team that seemed like it was engineered to win. Every time. We won seventy straight games, blowing away the previous record by twenty-three. We pulled in five straight national championships along with tons of awards. Our team was populated with gods.

And coached by a man who never felt the sting of defeat in five years. Someone who seemed immortal.

But it was amazing the day that an NFL team came calling, asking the Coach if he’d be interested in coaching them. “I have no desire to leave this city,” he said. They took that to mean the interview was over. He elaborated, and they understood that what he wanted was a pro team in our little bitty city. And that’s how the Tallahassee Gladiators were born.

The deal was that he would be bound to a ten-year contract, but that the team would also be obligated to build a stadium in town as well as covering all fees associated with moving the franchise. The city of Houston hated us forevermore, but we didn’t care. We had an NFL franchise and they no longer did (for the second time).

The Coach (whose contract with the pro team wouldn’t start until the team was in town for a full year) asked nearly all of us at the University to join his staff with the Gladiators and nearly all said yes. I did immediately, seeing a lucrative future in the pros, and maybe using it as a stepping-stone to a head coaching job for myself. All-in-all, a bright future.

(Let me get this straight, though: this isn’t a story that will descend into “then it all went to shit” like so many others do. I’m not setting a stage just to bring you down about me being brought down. I’m simply telling my story. So don’t go looking for a kicker or anything. Just relax your sphincters, people.)

After a season of roughness in Tallahassee (only one win for the Glads), we came in and turned things around, drafting some of our finest players from the University and made the city proud. The Coach, they’d say, could work miracles. And I was one of the believers. Everything he touched turned to gold. His only loss as a head coach came against the Bears in year one with the Glads, the lone blemish on an otherwise otherworldly pristine record.

But then the Universoty team fell like a brick. Despite being populated with superstar players recruited by the Coach, the team lost six games, dropping off the rankings entirely. The interim coach seemed to have been given the best team that humanity could recruit and he screwed up the bloody team.

So the University, wise as it is, fired the sorry SOB. But they came begging, asking the Coach to recommend a replacement. “Somebody who knows the players,” they said. “Somebody who knows the system,” they said. “Somebody GOOD,” they howled.

And that’s how I got hired in my first head coaching job. I returned to the University (which allowed me to take a hike in pay without having to move)and decided to offer up a new version of the Coach’s venerable and successful Power Offense combined with my own dream of a Power Defense. We were going to return to glory.