The Tomato Man

In a time when UK coaches and ex coaches seem to be making the National news on a daily basis, there is one set of coaches we hardly hear about.  And trust me; making the National news is usually not a good thing.  We hear about the vacated final fours, the wild women, the fruity golf outings at 2 am, but we just don’t hear anything at all about the tomato man.

If you get Coach Brooks’ tweets, and I don’t but I have seen a few, you know that his off season was spent raising some tomatoes.  I have no clue what Joker, and the rest of the staff has been up to, and in this day and age, no news is great news.  Of all the coaches in modern day UK history, no coach has been hated from the start for no good reason any more than Brooks.  And the really sad part is he heard every word of it.  And the saddest part is he deserved none of it.  At this point I must confess that I was either close to the front of the pack or leading the way, which is a mistake I will not make again.

So what does a man do when he has the moral fiber of a Coach Brooks in this situation?  Something much bigger than me; this I know for sure.  He puts his head down and plows.  He plants his tomatoes as seeds and he brings them up as best as he can.  The ground isn’t the best, but he adds as much nutrients as he can and he protects his young plants.  He gets the help he needs from a solid group of assistants and finds a way to make them feel like his tomato field is their own.  Pretty soon, his tomato field is a family of stronger and stronger plants.  He doesn’t cut corners and he doesn’t cheat.  And if things do not go well, he doesn’t twist them or turn them into something they are not.  He takes a few plants that no one wanted and turns them into some of the best there is. And because of this, the new plants he brings in each year are better than the year before. Every year his little tomato field gets a little bigger and better. 

Pretty soon Coach Brooks will be able to work in his little home garden all he wants.  And when he does, he will be able to look back at an incredible job well done, all at a place that didn’t want him and frankly didn’t deserve him.

We will only have coach Brooks around for a very short time.  In that time, we should all make sure to pass along how much we love him and the job he has done.  After all, his garden is our garden.