And I don’t want to see him go.

But I still enjoyed this piece. Keep it up!

Coach Nolan I salute you!!

My wife says I do fist pumps in my sleep.

Classic.

For some reason I feel compelled to actually offer a review for this. Maybe it’s because you obviously put effort in, maybe it’s because you appear to actually know a thing or two about comedic structure and form, or maybe it’s something else altogether… but I feel like this warrants whatever candid feedback I’m about to give.

I think the effort you made is obvious to anybody reading. The writing itself, particularly, is strong. The first thing I notice is a very controlled pace and rhythm. The second thing I notice is a distinct and recognizable voice. To me, these are two really important aspects of selling the comedy in this piece. I’m a firm believer that selling any comedy ultimately comes down to rhythm to begin with, but since you’re writing from the persona of Mike Nolan, it’s all the more “aware” of you to approach that persona as a candid voice unto itself. The voice here is obviously disconnected from the way that Nolan actually speaks, but it’s significantly recognizable by his patterns. The terseness, the self-assuredness, the hard-nosedness. These touches allow the voice to be recognizable as Mike Nolan without having to actually mimic the man mannerism for mannerism.

This is also where I would criticize your execution, though. There are select and repeated moments where the credibility of the voice breaks down, which is to say moments where the voice is either 1) not taking itself seriously, or 2) telegraphing the satire. Notably I would say these occur in moments where the voice says something like “somehow I still have a job” or “I have no freaking clue what’s happening around me.” These are statements that the voice you’ve chosen wouldn’t make, and – more importantly – these are statements that are directly transporting the intended satire, rather than being statements that are satirical.

With that in mind, I think the last 4 paragraphs are extremely strong. There’s not a single moment in these paragraphs in which the voice breaks down in this way. The way the voice assures itself that being criticized on fourth down is a sign that first, second, and third down are uncriticizable is probably the most well executed line in the entire thing, from the perspective of rhythm and voice that I’ve been parsing to this point.

There’s more there that’s worth both accolades and criticism, but I’ve made the points that I was, by far, the most keen on making, and I think that, criticism aside, it’s clear to everybody that this is a very succesful comedic writeup.

I don’t even know how to read a compass, let alone use it for football.

Now that’s a coach!

is broken

Write more stuff.