There was something so simple about that night.  I’m not entirely certain, mostly because of all the ambient noise, but I think I heard Jeff Scurran’s son telling him that they should make a movie about this someday.  That moment occurred in the first few seconds after the Palo Verde versus Santa Rita high school football game went final last week.  Coach Scurran embraced his wife and son somewhere near midfield and showed us why that simple moment should be measured just as large as any stage or any moment in sports.  It went right to the DNA of what I love about sports, what I love about the story of the little known coach outside of Southern Arizona.

           There was something so simple about that night.  It was simple, but in it’s own way it was oh so powerful.  The embrace of Coach Scurran to wife Joan to his son Josh was, in that single moment for them, bigger than anything that could happen on Superbowl Sunday or in a game seven of the World Series.  It is to be acknowledged, yes, but it should be admired I think more than anything else.  That single moment for the Scurran family won’t ever headline ESPN or make the cover of Sporting News, but it was in their hearts bigger than anything else that was accomplished on that particular Friday night.

           What I respect about Jeff Scurran is simply this, that moment was good enough for him.  He wasn’t the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys or the USC Trojans, he was the man who made the Santa Rita Eagles larger than life for if anything one given night. Some of us, myself included, continuously attempt to the climb the career ladder of life without even a worry about being established in one place to long.  That’s what I completely respect about Coach Scurran in a business that, frankly, commands moving from A to B.  Living his coaching life in Southern Arizona is and will always be just fine with him, nothing more needed.  He’ll walk away from the game having never been a head coach at the D-One level, having never walked an NFL sideline as the man in charge, but he doesn’t need that and never needed that. 

           The fact of where he is and the thought of that being good enough speaks overwhelmingly to me.  Maybe it’s because I don’t see things that way and I have this ever growing hungry desire to get to the very top.  Nothing is wrong with either line of thinking, but it moves me that another one of Coach Scurran’s signature moments might not ever be important to anyone outside of Southern Arizona, and that thought would never bother him one bit!  Maybe I should try and learn something from who he is?

           The Santa Rita Eagles were undefeated last season, reversed. They were 0-10 at the end of the 2006 campaign and likely nothing positive to grow with.  The mastery of Jeff Scurran was then called upon to right the ship.  Were we to believe that he was going to take an 0-10 team from a season ago to Gila Region champions in 2007?  The answer was “no” living in reality in August.  But this is now November and it’s as if we were curious to wonder if the little giant of Southern Arizona football could once again work his magic.  I dare say in hindsight that we should have known better, of course Jeff Scurran was going to turn around the lifeless Santa Rita Eagle football fellas. 

           So might they have enough green magic left for a playoff run to culminate with a shot at the state championship?  Well I think sometimes mojo, whether or not you believe, just can’t be stopped.  Is Santa Rita supposing to being doing this?  Probably not, in fact Coach Scurran pointed out how physically overmatched his team was against Palo Verde last week, suggesting that his team had no business staying the game.  But they did and that’s what is hard to deny.  I don’t know what it is, and neither do you right?  We’re not supposed to know, we’re just supposed to marvel in something so special. 

           Odessa Permain got a call from Hollywood in a little something called “Friday Night Lights”, and the Hollywood sports world argured it was the greatest sports movie of all time.  Here’s the difference though, Permain was already good and already well established in west Texas high school football.  Doesn’t it seem as if the on going Santa Rita football script is one that could only be written in Hollywood?  Just maybe Coach Scrurran’s son Josh is onto something.  Just maybe the Southern Arizona stars are aligned just right to finally give Coach Scurran all the credit he deserves, even though without it he’ll stay just as humble and be just fine!