OPINION: With Owens gone, where do we go from here?

Owens steps down after eight seasons that saw the Raiders post a 36-46 record and make appearances in the playoffs in 2005 and 2006 during that time. After starting his Raider career with a record of 26-16 in his first four seasons, his teams managed only 10 wins in his next four seasons and had the Raider faithful voicing concerns for a changing of the guard. Owens, who will temporarily remain the athletic director at Madison County, leaves the sidelines prior to the Raiders moving into a new classification system that will have them listed as one of the largest 4A schools compared to being one of the smallest. The change of classifications should favor Madison County in the upcoming seasons but the changes will have to take place under a new head coach.

I am not one nor will I ever be one to write anything bad about any coach in our school system. I have always tried to respect our coaches and I know their jobs are tough. That does not mean that I always agree with what they do or how they do it. I am right there with most when it comes to second guessing a coach at times. But admitting that point, I do know that there isn’t a coach around who is perfect or makes the right choices all the time. If that were true, there wouldn’t be so many coaching changes around us today. I can imagine that a coach’s job is very tough. The job can be difficult and the demands are not easy for any coach to fulfill. It could be simple on the other hand; win all your games or at least over half for a few years, get into the playoffs or win a state title and your job is safe. On the other hand, post a 10-30 record in four years, which included a 3-17 record in the past two years and you become one of the latest casualties of football coaching. In such a demanding sport as football is to us in the South and the need to be a winner, there is little room for error. We demand perfection and we demand wins. So now where do we go from here? What will our demands be for the person that fills the vacancy of Owens who becomes Madison County’s fifth coach to exit since the departure of Brady Sigler in 1989.

There are many questions to be answered in the next few weeks or months. What will our expectations be of the new football coach? How much support to the MCYA, a program which many feel Owens failed at supporting, will the next coach be willing to give? Will this next coach install the right personnel on the field? Will he produce wins, make the right play calls? The list goes on and on.

To date (according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association) Madison County has no region titles or state championship trophies to put in the trophy case. Other coaches prior to Owens, dating back to Ralph “Red” Simmons in 1961, have all made attempts to bring home the hardware. During those years Madison County has posted an overall record of 152-167 that includes just nine winning seasons and seasons finishing at .500. So needless to say, we’re well overdue.

Dallas Bordon is the former sports editor for The Danielsville Monitor/Comer News and a regular columnist for The Madison County Journal.