The Birth of the Nickname Doc

OK, so Vin has been after me for months to tell the story about where my nickname came from so I figured it was time to share. Now don't get me wrong, its not as exciting or as creative at Mountain Cat but it will have to do. Now I could tell you as many people assume that the name came from one of my favorite movies "Tombstone" which featured a fantastic character named Doc Holiday, played by Val Kilmer. It would fit especially since I spent my college days hanging around with another of my best friends who is named Wyatt. But that's not how it actually happened so I better stick to the truth.

It all started (as everything does) with High School football. Now those of you who have been reading YJKOBT for awhile will remember that I was a super duper high school football hero years ago even if it was in my own mind. I suppose that every HS football player has that coach that they can't stand and who can't stand them. The coach who is always after you for even the slightest little thing. Well I certainly had such a coach and his name was "Coach O". He was my defensive backs coach and he was evil, mean spirited, and took great pleasure in torturing us daily. Even the head coach didn't like him and thought he was too hard on us. This guy was so mean that he wouldn't die, hell he was even bullet proof. This was proven my junior year when he was actually shot on the sidelines during a game but somehow survived to continue torturing us. He didn't even miss practice the following Monday after being let out of the hospital because he would have missed torturing us too much. If anything getting shot only made him meaner. Ask Vin if you don't believe me.

One day during football practice Coach O had the defensive backs including me run a specific coverage known as cover 2 during a drill against the first team offense where I ran the cover 2 and the rest of my teammates ran man-to-man coverage and of course the offense scored on us because of the busted coverage. Coach O was pissed off. He started screaming and yelling at me for being in the wrong place and allowing the offense to score. Well no one ever stood up to Coach O but this time he had gone to far. I was the only one who was in the right coverage and the other guys had run the coverage wrong but here I was getting yelled at. I snapped. I broke the cardinal rule, committed the big no-no and ripped of my helmet and yelled right back at Coach O that I WAS in the right coverage because he had called for "cover2" and my responsibility as free safety was the deep half. He paused surly about ready to rip my head off of my shoulders and drop kick it out of the stadium for daring to question him. It was one of those moments where time stops for an instant. You could have heard a pin drop. Someone had yelled back at Coach O. Uh oh... I was certainly in for it but something else happened instead.

All of a sudden Coach O whirled around almost seeming to be in slow motion and began pointing at the strong safety and cornerback. "He's right, he's right, you guys were all in the wrong place... He may not be the fastest thing on the field but he is a freaking genius, he is gonna be a doctor someday and all of you are going to be working for him!!" he chastised the other players mercilessly. Needless to say this new revelation from Coach O didn't go over too well with my more talented but less cerebral teammates who were now being berated double over the busted play when they thought they were in the clear. Good grief I heard mimicking of Coach O in the locker room the rest of the year. "He's gonna be a doctor. Ooooooh He's gonna be a doctor. You guys are gonna work for him" Yeesh I got sick of it them calling me Doc or Doctor over and over... However it was far better than what they had been calling me prior to that day which was Flash. Named after Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane's dog from the show "Dukes of Hazzard" so when they asked me in college what my nickname was in high school I chose to tell them Doc instead of Flash... It just kind of stuck. If you got a chance to pick you would done the same thing.

-Doc