Steve Mask’s retirement is a sad day for a sport getting away from its roots

 

 

 

MOBILE — Steve Mask jokingly called his retirement announcement on Thursday a funeral service. Perhaps he said that so he’d laugh to keep from crying, which he’s been known to do.

But Mask’s retirement could be another marker that the funeral — not for the Hall of Fame coach but for high school football as we have known it — might be closer than some might want to admit.

Mask, 69, who won four state championships at St. Paul’s and finished his career at Theodore, opted to retire not even a year after his good friend Terry Curtis made the same decision. Central Clay County’s Danny Horn, the current winningest coach of all time in the state, may be on the cusp of joining them. The old guard is departing and along with them the spirit of a game that is becoming increasingly like a big business.

“A lot of my peers are gone,” Mask said. Then, after checking his own pulse with relief, clarified to laughter: “They’re still alive.”

Mask looked around the room at the iHeart radio studios and acknowledged the many family and friends, including Curtis, who came to show their love and admiration for an old football coach whose stature richly deserves such respect.

“I hope there’s this many here when I die,” Mask said. “It probably won’t be. I hope that’s a long way off. I said I couldn’t die because I’m not sure I’ve got six friends and it takes three on each side. If I keep eating, it’s going to take four on each side.”

Right now, there are far more than four on each side handling the sarcophagus of high school football with all the transfers, recruiting and the probability of legally compensating the players in Alabama.

Mask, who was often accused of recruiting when he, like Curtis, was at a private school, wants no part of it.

“We’ve had kids transfer in and the old days of winning for Hoorah High are over because you may have a great team at Hoorah High this year and then four or five transfer out next year, then what do you do?” he said. “We should stay where we are supposed to go to school. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the recruiting part of it. One thing I want to say publicly — don’t talk about private schools recruiting. It ain’t even close to what’s happening in public schools. A lot of people are afraid to say that. I’m not afraid to say that. Go see what’s happening in Birmingham. See what’s happening in Mobile. See what’s happening in Montgomery. It’s crazy.”

Mask has little hope the trend can be reversed.

“The genie’s out of the bottle and we can’t clean it up,” he said. “God forbid if they give them NIL. That’s the part of the peer thing I’m talking about. A lot of coaches are worried about themselves and not worried about their players and they’re not worried about the game. They’re not worried about that 75 kids they have in front of them. … That part’s out of hand and I hate it.”

 

‘Never cheated the kids’

 

Nobody can say anything against Mask, his character and the robust way he taught boys how to play the game properly on the way to manhood. While lying in bed a few nights ago, he estimated he had coached 4,300 kids in basketball and football over 46 years.

“I really think if I saw them all, I’d remember them,” he said.

They surely remember him, at least for one reason that made him barely avert an emotional cloudburst on Thursday.

“At the end of the day, you’re measured on the numbers — the wins and losses, the championships,” he said. “I hope at the end of the day, they can say, ‘Steve made a lot of bad decisions, a lot of poor choices in his life, but one thing he didn’t do, he didn’t cheat the kids.’”

There, he halted, his voice breaking.

“I threw my heart into it,” Mask said. “I’m very proud of that. If I do get lucky enough to get a tombstone, just put on there, ‘He did it right by the kids.’ That’s what I want to be known for.”

His Theodore players apparently agreed.

“I got a couple of texts last night that I can’t even read now before I bawl,” he said. “We’ve really tried to harp on the fact that you can only play football so long but you got to be a good husband, you got to be a good father and you got to be a good citizen. You can never be afraid to get close to your players. I would tell any young coach — remember, you’re the coach of somebody’s kid and those parents are trusting you to do right with those kids ’cause you spend more time, a lot of times, with the player than the mother and dad do. … I want to find out what makes them tick, find out what problems they’ve got. Everybody’s got a problem and you really see what you can do to help solve those problems.”

Mask had had his share. After resigning at St. Paul’s, he went through a 1-9 season at Pell City in 2022, lost his two dogs, endured a painful separation and battled throat cancer.

“You do a lot of self-reflecting,” he said, “but I survived it.”

Such turmoil may have also softened the way Mask dispensed discipline later in his career, which was a good thing.

“It’s hard to fire a kid,” he said. “You can kick him off. That’s easy. But can you save him? And we tried to save them. We took the philosophy, maybe too far sometimes, that we tried to save him because I always felt like everybody’s gonna belong to something and the best environment I know of was football ’cause it’s one big, ol’ gang. Love your players. Don’t be afraid to tell them you love them. I do love them. Sometimes we get caught up on how hard we have to work to get good at it. But at the end of the day, you’re playing the game. Let them go play. I tell them on Friday nights, ‘We don’t work football, we play football. Go play. Have fun. Play the game.’”

 

‘Still got gas in the tank’

 

How his teams played the game was fun to watch for everyone but the opposition.

“You knew that he was going to take away your best players or who you were trying to get the ball to or maybe a formation that he knew you liked to use,” said Curtis, who won eight Blue Maps at UMS-Wright and was 5-5 against Mask. “You better come up with something new. You knew he was going to check out your ability to coach and to change some things. Don’t go out there thinking you were gonna do what you did the week before. He was going to make you do something that he didn’t think you could do well or that you weren’t prepared to do.”

Mask conceded he doesn’t have the energy to coach on the field — “Somebody told me a long time ago that my feet would tell me and my feet hurt,” he said — so what is he prepared to do?

“Whatever God wants me to do, I still think I’ve got some gas in the tank,” he said. “I just think it’s time to step away from high school football. I’d like to do something at the next level if possible. I think I’d be great as a high school relations guy for somebody. Nobody can B.S. better than I can.”

Mask, who remains Theodore’s athletic director, has named defensive coordinator Randy Larson the interim coach with hopes he will be hired permanently.

“If Randy gets the job, and I hope he does, I’m gonna to sit up there and yell at him,” Mask said.

It should be difficult following Mask but Larson said the lessons he learned from him should make it easier.

“I feel like I’m ready, so I’m gonna hit the ground running like it’s mine ’til they tell me otherwise,” Larson said. “He’s a four-time state champ and you’re a fool not to sit back and take notes. When you get them to trust you and they open up to you, man, they’ll run through walls for you.”

Mask, meanwhile, can relax and bask in a career as golden as the autumn leaves he wants to enjoy.

“I’m looking forward to going somewhere, maybe seeing if the leaves change colors this time of year,” Mask said. “I hear it’s pretty. I’ve seen pictures of it. I’m gonna get in my little red convertible, I’m gonna ride that sucker and let the wind blow a little bit and see what it feels like for a while.”