The Mime

Coach’s daughter (whose name I cannot remember) was dating this really pansy guy who was a mime. He was so pansy. He wore, I think, a helmet whenever he went out running because he was afraid of getting hurt. Also, I think he got nose bleeds all the time and Coach’s daughter would always dote over him and make sure he was okay and be hell of worried about his nose. But worst of all, from Coach’s point of view, he was a mime. Clearly if you are the head football coach at a Big-10 (I think it was the Big-10 or at least some fictional equivalent of the Big-10) college you do not want your daughter dating some pansy, nose-bleeding, effeminate mime. Also, the mime’s name was, I’m pretty sure, Stuart. Not only did the writers take the time to make him a weakly feeble mime, they also gave him a name that they knew football coaches the world over would detest; no one who is a football coach likes a guy named Stuart.

So much hilarity ensued when Stuart tried to show Coach how good he was for Coach’s daughter, and how strong he really could be. It was sort of tragic though, because he always failed, no matter how hard he tried.

Even though it was technically tragic I do not think it was sad, however. That guy was a real douche bag.

Dauber's Girl

I’ve previously made a couple references to the tall basketball coach chick that Dauber totally had a thing for. This created some hilarious situations on Coach because Coach really didn’t get along with the basketball coach chick. I think maybe the whole point of contention was that she thought women were good athletes and Coach was a sexist asshole. Anyway, it probably made for some pretty funny material when, for instance, she would be addressing Dauber and Coach was in the room and she would say something to Dauber that was just totally ordinary, but Coach would overhear what they were talking about and turn the phrase so that it was insulting and sexist. Then the basketball chick would like, maybe, roll her eyes and kind of mug at the camera, but Coach would just be hell of nonchalant, and not even look up from his paperwork. Man, Coach always played it so smooth, even when he was at his most sexist.

I think that chick had a southern accent or something.

The Other Door

So, most of the time during an episode of Coach we would see Coach in his office. People would usually enter the office from a door that was sort of in the middle of the wall perpendicular to Coach’s desk. However, there was another door that was on the wall parallel to Coach’s desk (kind of off to the left). I don’t know where that door went. I remember all sorts of people coming out of that door, but never people outside the Minnesota State football program. Like, Luther or Dauber (or both) would come out of that door all the time, and I think maybe players would as well, and I seem to remember the Athletic Director coming out of the door, but you’d never see Christine or Coach’s daughter or that basketball Coach that Dauber had a thing for come through the door. These people always entered through the main, regular door.

The thing that is bugging me is that I remember one time Coach went through the side-door and it was like some sort of empty meeting room thing to draw out plays in. Maybe there was like a chalkboard or something. I think the team had their pre-game conference in there. So what the hell were all of those people doing coming through that door? What the hell?

My best guess is that Luther and Dauber didn’t actually have an office, so they spent all their time in that other room, probably just coming up with zany things to run in and yell at Coach in a way that was confusing upon delivery but that obviously held some other soon to be explained meaning. That way, they’d come in and say: “Hayden, we’ve got to blah blah blah…” where the blah blah blah was some sort of non-sequitur sentence that made the audience laugh and then Coach would deliver some flippant one liner (probably insulting Luther and/or Dauber’s masculinity) and the audience would laugh at this too. Then Luther would explain what they were actually talking about. This would help progress the plot of the show probably.

Coach on the Phone

So, considering the fact that Coach was a football coach, one would expect him to have been on the phone quite a bit. I mean, certainly he’d have to be talking to that bald athletic director boss of his quite a bit on the phone, and probably he’d also be calling up recruits on the phone, and probably making dinner plans with Christine on the phone, and you can imagine that after Luther did some screwy thing that made coach mad he’d call Luther up on the phone and be like: “Get in my office right now Luther!” and then Luther would come in sheepishly and make some hilarious jokes, but for some reason I can’t seem to remember any phones whatsoever from the show. In fact, if we think about the places where we see Coach (usually either his office or in the Coach Haven) we realize that about half the time there does not even exist the POSSIBILITY of a phone call (the Coach Haven being hell of rustic). I wonder if maybe Craig T. Nelson was a terrible actor on the phone; like he just couldn’t act natural and he never knew what to do with the other hand (the one not holding the phone) and his intonation sounded hell of stilted because he wasn’t actually talking to anybody else. But this doesn’t seem that logical, because I bet there could have been hilarious situations where Dauber was in the office and Coach gets a call about some stupid zany thing that he did and you can just see Coach getting madder and madder while he’s looking at Dauber and Dauber’s just looking more and more guilty and maybe like sinking in to his chair or looking at some trophies or something on the wall. Man, that would have been hilarious.

So what the hell, Coach. What do you have against phones?