Few television roles from the past twenty years are more iconic than Kyle Chandler’s Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights. Chandler was born in upstate New York and spent most of his youth in the Chicago suburbs and rural Georgia, but in Coach Taylor, the actor captured a particular strain of Texan identity. Chandler’s performance was an incredible feat; he somehow managed to embody all of the admirable qualities of Texas-style masculinity in a show that was beloved by both liberal and conservative audiences. It was a miraculous melding of character and actor that transcended both.
To viewers, Chandler forever became Coach. If you watched him in movies such as Godzilla: King of Monsters or Super 8, you saw Coach Taylor if he’d become a scientist or a sheriff; if you watched him in Netflix’s Bloodline or the cult comedy Game Night, you saw him self-consciously play against type as anti-Coach. Chandler’s performance was so strong and definitive in Friday Night Lights that it all but erased the memory of Billy Bob Thornton’s turn as Coach Gary Gaines in the 2004 film adaptation of Buzz Bissinger’s nonfiction book of the same name, which told the story of small-town, big-hearted Texas high school football.
Last week, Variety reported that a third adaptation of Bissinger’s best-seller was in development at Universal Television. Details about the new series remain scarce—we know only that Jason Katims, the showrunner who introduced audiences to the fictional West Texas town of Dillon, is slated to return and that the new series is expected to be a full reboot. There shall be no Coach Taylor, no Tami Taylor, no Tim Riggins or Matt Saracen or Buddy Garrity. Michael B. Jordan will not return as Vince Howard. Jesse Plemons will not make an appearance as Landry Clarke.
Most of those roles are replaceable; indeed, many of them were replaced over the show’s five seasons because it was a series about high school, and as one quarterback graduates, another rises, and so on and so on. Even the characters who didn’t leave the show, like Connie Britton’s iconic Tami Taylor or Brad Leland’s passionate booster Buddy Garrity, don’t necessarily need to be replaced. There’s nothing in the source material of Friday Night Lights that requires the coach’s wife to be one of the most indelible screen characters in recent memory—the equivalent role in the 2004 film has almost nothing in common with Tami Taylor from the television series (although Britton played them both). There are also a million ways to write a booster.
But Coach is a special role, and any actor who chooses to pursue it in the reboot will do so knowing that he’ll be compared—immediately and unfavorably—to Chandler’s Coach Taylor. Are there plenty of excellent actors who could play a compelling high school football coach? Of course. Will that actor be immediately resented by some fans for his failure to be Kyle Chandler? Absolutely. Accordingly, the only actor likely to accept the role will be a desperate, grasping striver who will do anything to get a credit to his name. In short, he will be someone who embodies the exact opposite of the ideal vision of a steady, caring, impassioned leader of young men.
To rectify this intractable problem, I propose a bold solution: I’ll do it. You can cast me as Coach Whoever in the next Friday Night Lights and I will give the role my all. I’ll be flinty-eyed when flintiness is called for; I will scream at teenagers when they need to be screamed at; I will lend an avuncular ear when they require kindness and patience; I’ll offer firm guidance as they find their way through the greatest playing field there is—life; and I’ll also throw a clipboard in disgust when things go wrong on the gridiron. I will assume this burden so the other actors in the show can feel empowered to craft performances that are memorable in their own right.
You may be asking yourself, “Who the heck is this guy, and what makes him qualified to star in a high-profile television series?” To which I’ll simply say: I played the cricket in a high school production of James and the Giant Peach, and my performance was adequate enough that I was cast in the spring as the severed head in the musical Pippin. (It was a nonsinging role, but that’s fine—presumably, the incoming Coach won’t have to sing much, either.)
More to the point, I will accept this role with the complete understanding that I, like anyone who dares to attempt to wear Kyle Chandler’s headset, will be loathed by fans simply because I am not him and his performance was perfect. I will take on this role selflessly, my ego invested not in chasing glory but in making sure that I am helping those around me. The young men who wear the uniform of the West Texas Whatevers will shine on-screen while I do the dirty job of not being Kyle Chandler. Whoever is cast as the coach’s wife will win the Emmys that Connie Britton was inexplicably denied, while I serve as a heat shield for the ire of Friday Night Lights (2006) fans who will never accept this remake.
I volunteer for this thankless task because the role of Coach on Friday Night Lights—in any form—is simply too important to trust to the sort of goofball who thinks he can get out from under Chandler’s shadow. I know what the Friday Night Lights–loving masses want because I am one with them. They do not want a radically different interpretation of the Coach (maybe this time he’s a jerk?). They do not want to hear an actor pay lip service to the greatness of Chandler while secretly yearning for the day when fans will accept him as the one true Coach. Anyone who would do so would, by default, make for a crappy Coach.
What the audience wants for the reboot’s Coach is simple: someone to look around a locker room at halftime and say something like, “I know we all worked hard to be here today, and I know we gotta work a whole lot harder if we want to make it to state. That begins right now, with each and every one of you saying that you’re going to go out there and give everything you have—not for yourself, but for the man next to you. If you don’t think you can make a tackle, think about which of your teammates will have to do it, and get down the damn field and make the tackle. If you’re struggling to maintain a block, think about the man who’s counting on you to do it, and stay strong so that he can make the play. Because that’s the only way this works—if we’re all willing to do this for each other.”
That is the lesson that Coach Taylor taught me, and it is the reason I am willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and act as the universally loathed stand-in for one of the best television characters of our lives. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.
