'Friday Night Lights' writer outlines how 'Coach Walz' can bring his skills to the Hill

Before Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz entered politics and became Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, he was an assistant football coach for Mankato West High School, who helped turn around a little-known team into state champions. It's a different skill set than politics, wrote Buzz Bissinger, the creator of "Friday Night Lights," for The New York Times.

Nonetheless, he wrote, Walz's experience as a coach matters, and it signifies something unique he can bring to D.C. as a vice president.

"Along with a pastor and a potbellied sheriff with a dog on the porch, the high school coach has come to occupy a central role in the lifeblood of an idealized small town," wrote Bissinger. "Everybody knows who he is and everybody wants a piece of him: backslapping when he wins, starting a whisper campaign to get rid of him when he loses. He is in charge of a precious resource — teenage boys — and his job is to push those kids to realize their potential. He can be responsible for the way a town feels about itself, bringing pride and excitement to a place that has little of either."

The real "Friday night lights" culture Bissinger has seen in places like Odessa, Texas, has a dark side, a "cautionary tale" with "shocking excesses," and a reflection of our "winning-obsessed society."

"When winning is the only goal, corners will be cut and abuse is all too common." But the best football coaches, he added, understand their role as mentors who hold kids' futures in their hands.

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When it comes to "Coach Walz," Bissinger continued, "we should hope for that kind of coach: One who understands how coaching can maybe carry over into politics, not just as an approach to winning, or to motivating people, but in excelling at the details and responsibilities that go beyond merely Xs and Os," he wrote.

This includes navigating everything from the press to faculty to troubled parents.

"Politics is often a glorified form of horse trading: listening, cajoling, knowing when to push and when to recede, knowing your opponent beforehand with the equivalent of scouting reports to find little holes of weakness, through the discipline of complete preparedness. A great coach can do all that, in the locker room and beyond," he said.

Ultimately, he wrote, Coach Taylor's iconic line “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” may not work so well if Walz's goal is to get members of Congress to listen to him as "sensible human beings." Rather, "For that task, he might be better to draw on his experience in a high-school lunchroom, monitoring disruptive brats."