Tribute to Tennessee High School Football Coaches

NOTE: Mickey Marley played football at Franklin High School (Class of 1976). He played football at UT-Martin and graduated in 1981. His head coaching career was exclusively at University School of Jackson (1988-2015).

I have a couple of stories to tell you, but they're both rather short. I hope that's OK.

The first one involves a kid named Jake Overbey. Jake was a great quarterback for us. He won the Mr. Football award in both 2009 and 2010.

This story goes to show you how you can make football a lot more complicated than it really is. Jake started for us as a sophomore. One afternoon, he and I were going over things on the board in a classroom setting. I'm drawing up all this stuff and explaining to him that if we line up like this against a certain defense, and this guy does this, and that guy does that, then this guy will do this.

And if we draw up this formation right here and this guy will do this, and this guy will do this and this guy will do this. I turn to Jake and ask him, "Jake, do you understand all this". He said, "yes, sir".

I said, "Jake, I want you to tell me exactly what I just said". He looked me right dead in the eye and said, "Coach, you said throw it to the open guy." I put my magic marker down and said, "Son, you're a genius. Just keep thinking that way and you'll never have a problem".

I've told that story a thousand times to other coaches. When you think you're trying to coach up a player, don't make it harder than it really is.

My other story deals with us playing in the state championship game in Murfreesboro at M.T.S.U. It was the first year to have the games there and we were the opening game (against C.P.A.) on the first day of action.

We're up underneath the concourse, getting ready to run through the sign that the cheerleaders had made for us to run through. Everybody's all jacked up and ready to go, but the cheerleaders had the sign placed right in front of the goal post.

Well, you know what's coming. One of our big, non-athletic tackles was the first to break through the sign and ran right into the goal post. I hollered at the rest of the team, "look out boys", and the rest of them, it looked like it was choreographed. Half of them went left and the other half went right, then they all came back together. I think that tackle ricocheted off every player on the team. I've never seen anything like it in my whole life.