One Watson coaches, another plays on scout squad
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
The man is a coach, an offensive coordinator at a big-time football program. A certain decorum must be maintained.
For instance, it probably wouldn’t have looked right if Shawn Watson ran across the practice field the other day and bearhugged a player for sniffing out a reverse.
He kind of wanted to, though.
Forgive him. It was a Dad moment. That player was his son.
Sometimes the Husker offensive coordinator will be halted on the practice field by a shout: “WATTS! WHAT HAPPENED WATTS?”
“I always turn around and look. And it’s him getting yelled at by Coach (Bill) Busch.”
Shawn Watson can’t hide his smile. Forgive him again. Another Dad moment.
His boy Adam is no five-star defensive back. He’s something better.
“He’s a good kid,” Shawn says. “I’ve been blessed with really good ones.”
Adam Watson is 19, a redshirt freshman on the Husker scout team, a coach’s kid since birth.
He was born in Oxford, Ohio. Then his family moved to Carbondale, Ill.; then Chicago; then Colorado; then Lincoln.
“It’s different,” Adam says. “But you got to understand what your dad’s doing, just knowing that with his job, moving’s part of it, taking all that adversity’s part of it. Yeah, you learn a lot.”
Yeah, somewhere along the way you learn that football seasons occasionally go bad, but family beats the importance of any score.
Win or lose, you still make it to the same dinner table Saturday night. Maybe you talk about the game. Maybe you don’t. As long as the right people are in the right chairs, life’s pretty good.
“My dad keeps telling everybody, ‘Stay positive. Everything’s going to be OK,’” Adam says. “You know, we play a game. Obviously, we’re passionate about it, but you got to remember, there’s always tomorrow.”
There is a heavy price to coaching big-time football. For whatever fame and dollars it brings, the hours and scrutiny are not for the meek.
Eighteen-hour workdays are not uncommon, and when things are going bad, the criticism comes not just to the coach, but also those people the coach loves most.
Adam quickly grew accustomed to it all. At some point, he decided to not read the newspapers, to not listen to sports-talk radio.
“I think he’s seen me handle the criticism, seen me handle the good times and low times with the same focus,” Shawn says. “And I would hope that he’s learned, and I think he has. Because I see the way he handles his business in tough times. He just keeps his eye on where he needs to go, what he needs to do to get there, and finds his way there.”
If the season has been tough as a coach, it’s been enjoyable as a father. It’s a pretty special thing having your son out there on that practice field every day.
Because of the job, Shawn hasn’t always had as much time with his wife, Anita, and kids — Amber, Aaron and Adam — as he’d prefer.
He rarely got to see his boys’ football games in junior high and high school.
The coach is still grateful to Gary Barnett. While Shawn was an assistant at Colorado, the head coach Barnett made certain Shawn could watch his boys play when they were seniors in high school.
“Every once in a while, I get to peek a father moment,” Shawn says. “It’s fun to watch his growth, as a person and as a football player.”
Off the field, Adam says sometimes the two talk about football, “but most of the time we talk about anything else.”
You’d think it might be tough being the coach’s kid in the locker room, but Adam says that’s not the case.
“As far as I’m concerned, everyone likes my dad. He’s a likeable guy.”
And Shawn doesn’t ask Adam for inside info about any of the guys.
“I’ve never done that with him because I wanted to keep his relationship with the team his relationship,” he says. “I wanted him to feel like that’s his world.”
Of course, sometimes their worlds collide.
Like the other day, for instance. While working his offense against the scout team, Shawn saw his son time it just right and knock down a pass.
Maybe he’s a tad biased, but it seemed to the coach that his boy just made one heckuva play.
The practice kept going. The offense tried a reverse. Adam played it perfectly.
The coach said nothing. The father thought, “Hey, that’s pretty cool.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
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