The Look

John Parchman\'s stare gets his players attention, but it\'s his coaching that\'s turning him into a Texas football legend.
by: Brent Schrotenboer
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Every Friday in the fall of 1998, John Parchman would watch a big offensive lineman walk through his office and a ritual would begin

Parchman, a growing West Texas coaching legend, would look up from his desk at Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, give Rex Richards his famous look and ask the kid his famous question.

"Rex," Parchman would say, "you ain't scared, are you?"

"No sir," Richards would inevitably answer.

"Good," Parchman would continue. "I guess we're going to have to deal the pain then."

And so it went.

Week after week and game after game, Parchman would needle Richards and his other players with his trademark look and tell them to act like men, deal with the pain and win games at the highest level of high school competition in football-crazy Texas.

Parchman, 51, has turned the trick for years. He calls it an "old-school" style of motivation. He coaches with "eye-contact" intensity. He never wears sunglasses, always teaches discipline, and - guess what? - it works.

Check his record. Parchman has won back-to-back Class 5A state championships at Midland Lee, including the USA Today national championship in 1999. His Rebels have won state playoff berths since he became head coach in 1995 and he has produced nearly 30 Division I-A college football players, most of whom have their pictures hanging on the wall in his office in Midland.

Three of them are playing in the NFL: offensive lineman K.C. Jones (Broncos), Ryan Tucker (Rams) and Rex Tucker (Bears). Several more are playing at Texas A&M (two), North Texas (four) and Texas Tech, which has three starters from Lee, including Richards and starting cornerback Antwan Alexander.

"The first thing you notice about coach Parchman is that he's a big man," Alexander says. "You think he's going to be mean, and I guess you could say he puts up that front. He always had that look, that deadly stare when you messed up. He'll give you that look and tilt his head toward you."

Eyes and "the look" are a big part of his secret, Parchman says. He doesn't wear sunglasses when he coaches, even though summer and fall in West Texas can be bright, hot, and dusty with lots of wind.

"I want to be able to look in their eyes and want them to look in mine," says Parchman, who stands 6-foot-1 and weighs 270 pounds. "I try to coach with a certain amount of intensity, although I pride myself in being a coach instead of a holler-type guy. That involves the eyes. You have to coach by looking people in the eye."

Parchman has been looking players in the eye since he graduated from Texas Tech and began coaching junior varsity football in Atlanta, Texas in 1972. In more than a quarter of a century, Parchman has climbed the ladder at several different schools in West Texas, where he was born in East Lubbock County and raised on his father's cotton farm.

His upbringing there taught him at least two things about life in Texas. Number one, he says, he developed a great respect for cotton farmers. Number two, he realized he wanted to do something with his life besides drive a tractor.

"I grew up working on cotton fields," Parchman says. "But I was dreaming of being a football coach."

After 28 years of doing it, Parchman is right where he belongs. If he wasn't coaching football, "I don't know," he says. "I'd probably be cooking barbecue in a restaurant."

Either that or eating it.

Parchman, the oldest of four Parchman children, has become almost as much a part of West Texas fabric as barbecue brisket, making him a hit in Midland, where heat, cowboys and oil workers combine to fill the stands with an average game attendance of nearly 10,000.

Parchman is in his second stint at Lee after coaching there as an assistant from 1992-94. He left Lee in 1993 to become the head coach at Class 3A Llano High School, where he turned around a dormant program that finished 4-6 in his first season before winning the district championship with a 10-1 record the following year.

The turnaround earned him the honor of being named "West Texas Coach of the Year" by a local newspaper and catapulted him into the job at Lee, a traditional prep football powerhouse and the longtime arch-rival of Odessa Permian.

Lee football has long had a stranglehold on Midland and was known as a power program in West Texas for several decades, particularly from 1980-83 when former Texas Tech head coach Spike Dykes coached there.

The only problem was "the big one." Midland Lee's Rebels had never won it. Dykes' best record at Lee was 13-3. Neither he nor any other of Lee's coaches were able to win a state championship, including Earl Miller, whose retirement paved the way for the hiring of Parchman in 1995.

"Midland is a unique community. I don't think there's any secret about that," Parchman says. "But they've given me pretty much complete control over our football program going all the way down to the elementary grades. Once they plug in as a seventh grader, then they're plugged into our system for good."

Parchman's second hiring at Lee came a year after Midland opened its fourth junior high school in 1994. The new school allowed Parchman to establish a true feeder system in which Midland Lee and Midland High draw future student-athletes from their own two middle schools.

Before the fourth junior high opened, players from each of the three junior highs went to either of the two Midland high schools so there was little opportunity for coaches to establish early development plans for young players.

When the new junior high was built, Parchman was given the authority to hire the coaches at two of the junior highs and to start teaching players the Lee system as early as the seventh grade.

"We call them Lee coaches," Parchman says. "When we win state championships, those junior high coaches get state championships rings. It's very important we have good coaches down at that level."

The proof came in 1998, when Parchman led Lee to the school's first state championship. The season marked the fifth straight year Lee had used the the feeder system. That meant players who were first taught the Rebel way in 1994 when they were in seventh grade were upperclassmen at Lee.

One of those players was Richards, now a starting right tackle at Texas Tech. Richards used the lessons he was first taught in seventh grade to become the first true freshman to start on the Tech offensive line in at least 16 years.

"He's one of the best coaches I've ever been around," Richards says. "He demands perfection. He's just a real aggressive coach. He expects it to be done, no questions asked. All the people at Lee know how he is and really appreciate him for it."

The people at Lee aren't the only ones, though. Parchman's recent success has brought him national acclaim: He was named USA Today's national high school coach of the year in 1999 and the Fox Sports coach of the year in 1998.

He entered the 2000 season with a career record of 124-55-1 and a 56-8-1 record at Lee, giving him growing stature among the state's legendary schoolboy football coaches, including Gordon Wood, the most successful prep football coach in Texas history with 405 wins.

"I think he's a great coach," says Wood, now 86 . "I've always thought he's really a great football coach. He apparently gets an awful lot out of the kids he coaches."

Parchman does it with that self-described old-school style in which he teaches discipline and fundamental blocking and tackling. His middle school and high school teams run a "Nebraska-style" offense with an I-formation and two tight ends. His defense runs an over-shift 4-3. Parchman calls it "power-type football."

"Over the years, if we're known for anything, we play a physical brand of football, and we play with a certain amount of discipline," Parchman says. "It's certainly not flashy or innovative. We do it the way they did it 20 or 30 years ago."

The system has suited his players for years despite the new world of gizmo offenses and pampered star players. Though Parchman has coached several major college players over the years, few move on from his program with a superstar attitude. Most respond to questions with a "Yes, sir," or a "No, sir," and keep a fearful love for the man in charge of the team.

The reasons are as obvious as the antecdotes his former players carry with them.

Alexander, for instance, vividly remembers Parchman's reaction when one of his receivers was penalized for clipping during a 1996 game against El Paso Franklin.

When the receiver came to the sideline, Alexander remembers Parchman asking him, "Why did you clip him?"

The receiver responded, "He pushed me in the back."

With his trademark glare, Parchman tersely said, "Well, you ain't going to have to push him no more because you're going to be way back on the sideline."

"He had more words than I can tell you," Alexander says. "He's the type that if you don't cross him, you'll do OK with him. He's a good man. Once you get to know him, he's one of those big cuddly bears."

Parchman's personality continues to mark his current team, which features senior running back Cedric Benson, considered to be one of the best running backs in Texas high school history.

Parchman calls him "the best player in the nation." In the summer, Benson became the first high school player to grace the cover of Texas Football since the magazine's inception in 1960. Benson has made an oral commitment to play next year at the University of Texas and is trying to lead Lee to its sixth straight playoff appearance under Parchman despite two losses in its first six games, including one to West Monroe, La. in a nationally celebrated interstate game in September.

Lee's 25-game winning streak snapped with the 36-8 loss against West Monroe - a game that Parchman says left a "bad taste" in his mouth and not just because his team lost.

Before the game, he says, West Monroe agreed to have out-of-state officials referee the game. When they got there, he says the officials were not only from Louisiana, they were from Monroe.

"Basically, they said, 'If you don't like it, get on the bus and leave,'" Parchman says. After driving eight hours in the pouring rain to get there, that wasn't an option. "We also had a return clause in there for them to play a return game (in Midland) the following year. At the same time, they told us they weren't going to honor that commitment."

Make no mistake, however. Parchman isn't trying to blame defeat on officials or outside forces. "They had a good team," Parchman says. Just don't expect him to see him venturing too far away from West Texas any time soon.

Parchman was born there, played there (as a defensive lineman at Cisco College) and graduated from Texas Tech. Parchman is married to Diane and they have two children, Annie and Sarah, both of whom attend their father's alma mater.

Parchman doesn't see himself leaving Lee to coach at another high school, but says he'd be interested in a coaching a college team if the right one called at the right time.

For now, though, Lee is the only job he wants. In a funny sort of way, he dreamed about it way back when.

"When I first got into athletics in junior high, I thought, 'What a neat deal,'" Parchman says. "These coaches get paid for doing something I'd love to do. I knew right then it was something I had an interest in. I wanted to get out and do something besides drive a tractor."

With a touch of his Texan-style humor, Parchman then pauses and says, "At the same time, there are other times I wish out there on that John Deere." Brent Schrotenboer, a sports writer at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, is a regular contributor to American Football Monthly.

BIG DADDY

Gordon Wood is the winningest high school football coach in Texas history. At 86, his zest for the game still runs strong.

By Brent Schrotenboer

There are coaches, there are heroes, and there are legends.

Then there's Gordon Wood, the most successful high school football coach in the history of the football-obsessed Lone Star State.

Wood retired in 1985 with a career record of 405 wins, 88 losses and 12 ties. His victory total ranks best in Texas history and is tied for second-best nationally behind John McKissick, who has more than 450 career wins and was still coaching this season in Summerville, S.C.

Wood won two state championships in Stamford, Texas and seven more in Brownwood, Texas, where he coached for 25 years before retiring at age 71. He was known for the Wing-T offense and ran it for most of his career, which began in 1938.

Fifteen years into his retirement, Wood still lives in Brownwood with his wife of 56 years, Katharine, whom he privately calls the secret of his success.

"More coaches fail because of their wives than any other reason," he says. "I really believe this. Furthermore, if you accept that, then you've got to accept that if you succeed, they're largely responsible. Lots of women can't be coaches' wives. They can't put up with it."

Katharine put up with it for decades. They married in 1944 when he served in the Navy, and then he bounced around to several jobs before working his way to Stamford, where he was hired for a salary of $4,900.

He won two state championships there in 1955 and 1956 before getting the job that made him famous in Brownwood, which had won only one district championship in the 40 years before Wood was hired in 1960. Brownwood has since named its stadium "Gordon Wood Stadium."

He still sits in the press box during almost every home game, keeping himself "as busy as ever" at age 86. An author is currently writing a book about his life, and Wood still gets calls from coaches seeking advice.

"He's one of the icons in our business," says John Parchman, head coach at Lee High School in Midland, Texas. "He's the old warrior. He's one of those kinds of guys I hope to be like. He's been out of the business for some time now but still keeps up with what's going on in our profession."

He does it despite a recent stroke, an artificial hip, a triple bypass in 1990 and a "low-key" diabetes problem.

"I lead a normal life," Wood says. "I've cut back on cookies. Otherwise, I eat everything I want. My health is real good. I'm so thankful."

Wood, who was born as the youngest of eight children in south Taylor County, Texas, has two children and two grandchildren. He also has a sense of humor.

Asked how often he looks back on his career, Wood says, "I look back all the time. I look back and can't believe how stupid a coach I was at times. I lost ball games and can't believe the things I did."

But, he quickly adds, he has no major regrets.

"If I could have changed my life, I still sure would have been a coach."

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