Last September, Syracuse head coach Fran Brown kept his team on the field after a 27-20 overtime win over UConn and made them run sprints in full pads in front of the home crowd. "Guys not running to get lined up, guys not running to the ball," Brown said afterward. "I just want to celebrate the win with the people, but I'm so pissed."
Greg Olsen said afterwards that "it does feel performative" and that accountability belongs "behind the scenes." Jon Gruden said, "I don't think this is a real good thing for Syracuse football. If I was one of those players, I would be a little bit embarrassed today."
Brown's response to that criticism was they had a short week coming up before a Friday game, and that meant he had to address it right then. "You either coach it or allow it, so I feel that I'm allowing it," he said.
Friday night in southwest Alabama, Leroy head coach Chan Lowe took the same idea and attached it to a promise he made at halftime.
Leroy led winless Millry (AL) 42-6 at the break. According to a video posted by Small Town Sports, Lowe wasn't happy with how his team came back out of the locker room, so he followed through on a warning attaching it to something you see high school coaches struggle with every Friday night - a player heading out late for a special teams unit.
"I told them at half if anyone was late going on the field for the kickoff, I'd call a timeout and we will do up downs for the duration of it," Lowe said.
The clip shows the Bears down on the turf doing up-downs during the timeout while the game sits on hold. It has been shared nearly 200 times and drawn more than 1,000 reactions.
Leroy went on to win 42-12, improving to 5-2.
Brown's sprints came after the final whistle, with no warning to his players and a stadium full of fans watching. Lowe set the rule at halftime, his players knew exactly what would trigger it, and he enforced it on the spot, during the game, with a timeout that cost his team nothing but 60 seconds and some air in their lungs.
Players can argue with a punishment that comes out of nowhere. It's a lot harder to argue with one you were told about 20 minutes earlier.
Lowe has been at Leroy for 13 years and spent more than a decade as an assistant under longtime head coach Jason Massey, including time as defensive coordinator. When Massey was deployed with the National Guard during the 2023 season, Lowe took over as interim head coach and led the Bears to a 14-0 season and a 28-21 win over Coosa Christian in the Class 1A state championship game, Leroy's second straight title.
Massey left to become the head coach at Clarke County in May 2025, and Leroy named Lowe its permanent head coach and athletic director the following month. In his first full season with the title, Leroy went 13-1 and reached the 1A semifinals before falling to Maplesville.
This year's group is young, with just five seniors, and Lowe told FOX10 this summer that the program was replacing three starting offensive linemen and several defensive leaders.
Small-school programs like Leroy don't win state titles by letting the little things slide, and Lowe made sure his players knew that even on a night when the scoreboard didn't demand it.
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