RIP Coach

This was supposed to be a week of fun and excitement around the NFL. Training camps are opening, players and coaches are getting down to it. Preparation for the 2018 NFL season is starting. Every team is 0-0. Every team has hope. Then the news broke early yesterday that Minnesota Vikings offensive line coach Tony Sparano had passed away. He was only 56.

Football is a sport. A game. It's a job for the players and coaches. It's entertainment for those of us that care even a lick about it. We are often entertained to a degree that the coaches and players that entertain us become heroes, icons, GOATs, whatever. I fear that we sometimes forget that these players and coaches are people too. That they have lives beyond the game. The Vikings lost their offensive line coach. Some fans thought of that first and foremost yesterday because they wondered who would replace Sparano. The football machine must move on. Jeanette Sparano lost her husband. Tony, Andrew, and Ryan Leigh lost their father. Tony and Gabriella lost their grandfather. Mike Zimmer, the Vikings coaches, coaches around the NFL and the college game lost a friend. Hundreds of football players lost a father figure. Sparano coached for over 30 years. He was a football-lifer and he impacted the lives of a lot of people. He even impacted the lives of people he never met. I realized this when Korey Stringer died during the Vikings 2001 training camp. I couldn't understand why the passing of a man I'd never met hit me as if I'd lost a family member. I suppose I discovered then that the Minnesota Vikings had become something more than simple entertainment. Perhaps they always had been. I was an itty-bitty kid in 1970s California learning about football and falling for a team that played in Minnesota. I had to know everything about that team. I had to know everyone tasked with getting the players ready to play on Sundays. Knowing the players was easy. They were the face of the team. They were there in front of me every time they were on TV. I had to get know the people that weren't so easy to know but were part of the team. The coaches, trainers, equipment staff. Fred Zamberletti to Eric Sugarman. Stubby Eason to Dennis Ryan. John Michels to Tony Sparano. All of the people in the Vikings organization were becoming something much more than entertainment to me. I certainly didn't realize it then. I was a kid. I started to get an inkling to these feelings when I was stunned more than I anticipated at the sudden passing of Chip Myers in 1999. He'd just been tapped to replace Brian Billick as the Vikings offensive coordinator and a month later he he was gone. Then I was simply floored by the death of Korey Stringer. Now, Tony Sparano. Last week I watched a video of him talking about his players on the offensive line. It just doesn't seem possible that he's gone.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Sparano family and everyone that actually knew him. I am so sorry.

RIP Coach.