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Quite a few schools in the bay area have new football coaches this season, and the Times will profile some of them this week.
BROOKSVILLE — Step into Mike Einspahr's office, and clues to his life are printed on red-and-white Post-it notes and a handful of picture frames are scattered across gray cinder-block walls.
As a child, Central's first-year football coach served cups of 7Up in exchange for admission to Nebraska Cornhuskers games. His life is driven by football, a game he played most of his childhood then at a pair of small colleges before chasing a coaching career.
These days his most meaningful moments revolve around wife Jenny and daughters Bailee (5) and Sage (2).
Football coaches often preach family during pregame speeches, hoping their words might ring loudly in the fourth quarter when a linebacker needs an extra jolt. Einspahr insists it's a cornerstone for him.
He has placed family above all else, even sidestepping a chance to climb the Division I-A coaching ladder. When his first child was on the way, he was bringing in what he called a "subpar" salary. He remembers staring at a clock at 6 a.m., another staff meeting followed by seemingly endless film sessions and all the behind-the-scenes work that kept the Concordia University football program chugging along.
"The only two hours of the day that I loved was practice," said Einspahr, leaning back at a small desk in one of Central's classrooms. "The rest of the time you're dealing with all the rigors of college football until those two hours when I got to go out and see the sun again. I remember thinking, 'I'm not doing this.' "
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When Einspahr was 10, his parents divorced. He was raised by his mother and took a five-hour car ride to see his father every other weekend. Those drives across Nebraska's sparse landscape were agonizing reminders of the huge wedge separating the family.
Einspahr, now 38, said he wished someone would have shown him the value of joining the Air Force or Naval Academy. But his parents were divorced, and there were tougher lessons.
"A lot of times in single-parent families you're getting by," Einspahr said. "You're in survival mode and you're not thinking about 10 or 20 years ahead."
The closest Einspahr would get to his D-I dream was working as a graduate assistant at New Mexico State, then returning in 2002 to become director of football operations.
He briefly left football to sell horse trailers for a friend in Kansas. Einspahr returned to the game most recently at Blue Rapids (Kan.) Valley Heights as an assistant (he was head coach at the school in the late 1990s). The move to Florida came at the encouragement of a friend and his brother, who lives in Orlando, and the desire to return to a warmer climate.
"I don't regret anything I've done," Einspahr said. "… I didn't have to lose a family. I didn't have to neglect a family. The experiences I had are invaluable."
At Central, Einspahr takes over a team that finished 1-9 last season (the victory came by forfeit). A 41-0 spring loss to Bradford might not encourage the Bears' fan base, but the players are rejuvenated.
"There's something different about the air and intensity," said junior tight end/linebacker Elijah Leon. "I feel he gives everyone a fair chance. When you fight for a position, you're actually fighting for a position. It's helping us get better as a team. When we came to practice last year it was dull. This year, we come out and hit each other. We're throwing each other.
"Trust me, I know we're going to do better this year, I can guarantee it."
And that family feel, well, Central players want to buy into it. Of course, building a bond comes through shared experiences.
"We've been getting at everything good," said junior running back/defensive back Jeremy Williams. "I think he can turn it around. He teaches us a lot of things we don't know.
"He wants us to play as a family on the field and be a family on the field."
Izzy Gould can be reached at igould@tampabay.com or (813) 421-3886.
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