This past high school football season in Florida, NFL quarterback turned high school head coach Teddy Bridgewater, did what many of us coaches at heart could only dream! In his first season as the head coach for his alma mater, Miami Northwestern (MNHS), ‘coach’ Bridgewater led his team to the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) Class 3A state championship.
Unfortunately, the fairy-tale start to Coach Bridgewater’s tenure at the helm of the Bull’s football program appears to be over following a suspension by MNHS over a potential FHSAA violation regarding impermissible benefits. While requesting donations for his football program on social media, Coach Bridgewater, a multi-millionaire, disclosed that he has contributed money to pay for the following needs of his players: meals, uber rides, team gear, painting the field, and other essentials to make his program one of the best in the state.
FHSAA 36.2.3 “An “impermissible benefit” is any arrangement, assistance or benefit that is not offered or generally made available to all students and/or their families who apply to or attend a school, or that otherwise is prohibited by FHSAA rules…”
Coach Bridgewater’s reportable violation was ‘feeding his players’ and ‘making sure they had rides either to or from school and/or practice.’ What an egregious monster right? Wrong! In most cases, I know of coaches who have reached in their own underpaid pockets to feed a player because the player’s parent could not afford to give them meal money to eat after a game, and I know of underpaid coaches who have used their gas to drive players home because the player had no one to pick them up after practice and/or a game.
Reporting Myself
Years ago, I was an assistant high school basketball coach in Virginia, and one of the first players I ever coached was a fifteen-year-old kid named Bryce. At the time, Bryce was a single parent of a two-year old daughter and had the responsibility of primarily caring for a child; imagine seeing a ‘baby’ with the full responsibility of raising a baby! Bryce would sometimes come to practice late, or leave practice early, because Bryce also worked a part-time job in fast food so he could take care of his daughter.
The first couple of times I met Bryce, I assumed he was an adopted son of the head basketball coach because they usually arrived or left together. Soon thereafter I learned that our head coach sacrificed time with his own family to pick up Bryce, sometimes even with Bryce’s child (when he had no one to watch her) and bring him/them to and from practice. I can even recall a few times putting a car seat in the back of my old Nissan Sentra to give Bryce and his daughter a ride home a few times.
When I took on the role as a head coach, I can remember reaching in my underpaid pockets to take out cash to feed a few players when we stopped to eat after games. I did not feed players as a recruitment tool, I did it because I can remember being a player, after a game, hungry with no money, and my coach reached in his underpaid pockets to feed me. As a head coach, I was guilty of burning my gas to give players a ride home, not because I wanted to impress the player, but because I remember being twelve and walking home on a rainy night because no one picked me up after practice. So here is my confession and I will gladly await execution at dawn; however, before anyone signs my death warrant for violating the code for ‘impermissible benefits,’ I ask ‘what real high school coach hasn’t made either of these sacrifices for their players?’
The Double Standard of Florida High School Sports
Miami Northwestern High School is a lower socio-economic, secondary public high school and too often coaches at schools, like a Miami Northwestern, are the targets of these type of reporting violations. Recently I read a local report of one private catholic high school in the area enrolling several highly ranked football players for the up-and-coming 2025 season. Several of the players, who are now enrolled in this catholic school, transferred from a neighboring private Baptist high school; however, it is not suspiciously reportable that high school players are out here changing religious denominations to play for certain programs.
In most cases, private schools do a much better job at protecting each other than public high schools here in the state of Florida. A few years ago, a public high school coach was reported to the FHSAA by another public high school coach for giving a player a ride home after a game. I can speak on several other cases where public high school coaches have tried to disqualify other public high school coaches through petty technicalities; all the while, many of these reporting public high school coaches sit in silence as private schools take their players each year.
Let me be clear, I have stated my concerns with school choice’s impact on public high school athletics here in Florida. I have seen a student-athlete transfer to five schools in four years, only to not graduate from high school. However, still as a coach at heart, I could never feel comfortable forcing a player to stay in my program who didn’t want to play for my program. My main point is if a head coach is going to put on the cape of being ‘super reporter,’ then he or she must stop treating private schools as kryptonite.
I Got Some Questions for Miami Northwestern High School
If Coach Bridgewater, as he stated in response to his suspension, is an “unpaid volunteer,” then where did the head football coaching stipend go for the school year?
If Coach Bridgewater had to pay such an exorbitant amount for Uber rides, why did the school not provide transportation and/or wasn’t aware of attendance issues with these students?
Since Coach Bridgewater, who never coached high school sports previously, was hired by the school to lead a sports program, then is it not the responsibility of the school leadership to give him proper guidance on how to fundraise?
Why did Coach Bridgewater have to pay for the field to be painted?
It is possible that the school administration was aware of the gifts that Coach Bridgewater had been doing for his program. I make that conclusion not in judgment of any malicious intent of the school leadership, but because if the field was specially painted, then the question from school leadership should have been ‘who paid to have the field painted?’ If the players are walking around in new track suits, then the question from school leadership should have been ‘who paid for the new track suits?’
The most unfortunate point of the Teddy Bridgewater coaching debacle is this, ‘if Coach Bridgewater just gave a blank check to the school district for the same amount of money, no one would have even cared!’ To think that a millionaire coach is a villain for only wanting what is best for his program, not only is wrong, but also, it is the reason that fewer and fewer professional athletes return home to coach and/or donate to their alma mater once their playing days are over. If feeding and giving rides to players in need is a violation, then I close in saying a lot of coaches over time have given ‘impermissible benefits.’
