Michigan high school football kicked off this week with games, and the highest-profile coach in the state took a minute at the podium with a message specially crafted for the kids playing under the Friday night lights.
Dan Campbell, wrapping up Detroit Lions training camp on Thursday, was asked about the start of the high school season and answered like a coach in the locker room instead of an NFL head coach reading off a cue card.
"Man, you can smell freshly cut grass. It's Thursday night, it's Friday night, it's Saturday," Campbell said.
"Wherever you're at, make the most of it because you're not guaranteed to be able to get another chance to play and be with those guys that you grew up with and enjoy the game at that level. The wins and the sacrifice, the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears, it's a special time."
Campbell has never hidden that the game got its hooks in him young. Before he was an NFL tight end for the Giants, Cowboys, Lions and Saints, before he coached tight ends under Sean Payton in New Orleans and took over the Lions in 2021, he was a kid in Clifton, Texas doing exactly what he was describing.
He pointed a message at the underclassmen, the freshmen and sophomores who figure they've got all the time in the world.
"If you're a young guy, a freshman or sophomore, you owe it to the seniors because this may be the last time that you get one more shot."
For most of those seniors, this fall is the finish line. A small sliver move on to play in college, a smaller slice than that ever walk into a locker room like the one Campbell stands in.
"Enjoy it. It doesn't last. You'll remember it for the rest of your life."
There's nothing revolutionary in any of it, and that's sort of the point. It's the same thing coaches tell their teams every August, delivered by a guy whose players are grown men chasing a Super Bowl. The message doesn't change much from youth ball to the pros, which is probably why it has struck a chord with so many..
Campbell built his reputation on this exact register. The "bite a kneecap off" introductory presser in 2021 got the laughs, but the throughline in how he talks to his team has always been about the guys next to you and the work nobody sees. Turning that toward a bunch of 16 and 17-year-olds pulling on shoulder pads for the first Friday of the year is par for the course for the man that has turned the Lions around.
The Lions open their season next week. The high school kids he was talking to are already under the lights.
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