The Coach Stayed Put

It was March of 1981; our family had been relatively successful building up the convalescent hospital business started by our mother in the late sixties. Our company was now one of the largest of its kind not only in California, but nationally. We had established a routine of having semi-annual seminars for our hospital administrators and members of senior management. We always held the winter meeting at Harrah's Hotel at South Lake Tahoe, my favorite meeting site of all.

For this meeting, it was my responsibility to provide the keynote speaker. We wanted to have someone special, someone who could motivate our management team. Of course I reached out to my football coach, Coach Lavell Edwards to fill the spot. I assured him it would only take one day out of his schedule; I would pick him up at the Provo Airport in our company plane (Cessna Citation II), take him to Tahoe for his presentation and then immediately return him to Provo before Patti even knew he was gone; it was a relatively short flight.

Coach accepted the assignment and, I remember that the message he delivered that day was received quite well by every member of our team (even some of the ladies who could care less about football). However, the only specifics from his delivery that I can truly recall so many years later, is that he made a point to let everyone know that I actually did play middle linebacker on his BYU football team a decade earlier and that "the older I got, the better I used to be!"

One memory that does stand out to this day (other than the fact that our son David was born in Fullerton the next day, but that's another story), is that The Coach seemed to want to use me as a sounding board during our flight back to Provo. He explained that he had been approached, rather aggressively, by a group of individuals in Arizona who wanted him to become Head Coach for their start-up football team which would be part of the emerging USFL (United States Football League).

Of course, I was very delighted to hear this news. I listened intently as he started supplying the details. He would have major decision making authority and be paid something in the neighborhood of a-quarter-million-dollars per season. And, even more, they would put ten-years worth of his compensation in a separate account that would be kept safe by a third-party; just in case the team failed financially.

Big Money! And a Ten-Year Guaranty! Wow!!! I couldn't have been more excited for him! At the same time, I couldn't imagine him moving on. What would BYU be without him?

"That's great news" I assured him, are you taking the job? When do you start?... "I don't know" he softly muttered. (To say he had a scowl on his face would be redundant.) "What do you mean you don't know?" I questioned him out loud; now I was getting confused.

He became quite reflective as he started to explain to me how beautiful Provo was with its mountains, rivers, canyons and etc. He talked about his great neighbors, his friends, and how much his family loved Provo. He declared that Provo was a great place to live and stated how much he loved being part of BYU.

"I can see what you mean", I conceded. "So, are you going to turn them down?"

"I feel like maybe I should... but on the other hand," he continued, "if I stay put and have a couple of losing seasons, I could find myself down the hall teaching coed badminton making forty-thousand a year." It was a good punch-line, but at that point I knew he was staying.

I suppose he needed to talk it out with someone outside the community who would keep his mouth shut, but I don't really think he ever sincerely considered moving on as a viable option. Lucky for all of us!!!

@Ted D. Nelson

January 10, 2017