Coach Felton: A rising star
While everyone is focusing on the coaching happening on Saturdays, there has been another coach at Notre Dame who has quietly taken to the gridiron. Without any fanfare, press conferences, or fat contracts, Danny Felton, Steds freshman, has assumed the coaching of PW's flag football team. After a recent practice with the Purple Weasels of PW, I was able to catch up with Coach Felton, and here's what he had to say...
St. Ed: There’s a lot buzzing around the Hall as to why you are the head coach of the PW’s women football team. It's mostly saying you have absolutely no coaching talent at all and are simply a “head hunter” who's looking for a Yacht Dance date- really early I might add. Do you have any coaching experience, and if so, how did you become “Coach Danny”?
Felton: While I can’t deny being somewhat of a head hunter (the early bird gets the worm), I am pouring my blood, sweat and tears into developing these girls into NFL-caliber talent. It is a tradition for boys from my high school, St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati, to coach the weasels of PW in Flag Football every year. My sophomore friend Patrick Judd and I are the co-offensive coordinators, and my years of experience in Madden have helped me greatly with my coordinator skills. I am working on running a speed option with our dual-threat quarterback, and after two weeks she still has no idea what I am talking about. I think the other Stedsmen are a little upset that my superior coaching skills have led me to such a favorable position.
St. Ed: As coach, I know that you have to be about fundamentals- passing, running, and scoring- but do you have a coaching philosophy?
Felton: My number one coaching philosophy is “pain is relative.” They say flag football is “no contact”, but our girls are not scared to hit the ground once or twice, and they learned that from Coach Dan. In addition, I am all about aggression. We are yet to punt on the year, and we love deep passes and quarterback scrambles. 4th and 25? Slant routes all around.
St. Ed: Coaching today is not for the faint of heart. From player disrespect to fan heckling, fickle owners to expectations of a “W", coaches are under a mountain of pressure and stress. What pressures and stress have you experienced as the PW coach?
Felton: As you well know, the flag football coaching market is in an extremely unstable time. Other flag football teams have coaches such as Malik Zaire or Equanimious St. Brown, and I don’t want the weasels feeling as if they got the short end of the stick. They want wins, and the PW Athletic Director wants wins, plain and simple. However, what I lack in actual football experience, I make up for with passion. In addition, I am not off to the best relationship with certain referees. I don’t think they appreciated my visor slam and choice words for them after they called back-to-back fall start penalties on my O-Line.
St. Ed: If I had money to place a wager on the Women’s Flag Football Championship, should I place it on the Purple Weasels of PW?
Felton: You should absolutely place it on the Purple Weasels. All those South Quad princesses are scared to get a little bit of dirt on their brand new lululemon athletic shorts and complain about how the football fields don’t have A/C, so we can rule them out indefinitely. Everyone knows PW is the beast of North Quad. We have several returning sophomores showing excellent leadership on both sides of the ball, a hungry young freshman class, and an exceptionally handsome coaching staff. All those ingredients are leading towards a big fat championship trophy and possible berth into the real college football playoffs for PW.
Good luck to the PW Purple Weasels and Coach Felton!
