Lessons for all in Reid saga

The way he explained it, you would have thought he was working on the Apollo program, racing the Soviets 20 hours a day and pacing the hallways the other four.

Being an NFL head coach, Jimmy Johnson once said, is far worse than the impression the public has of middle-aged men sleeping in their offices.

If the public only understood how truly all-consuming it is, we'd think anyone would be nuts to take the job.

But it was something else Johnson said that stuck with me about the idea of trying to raise a family while in that position, and -- in essence -- he said the only family you have in that job is your assistant coaches.

Dinner with a loved one a single night per week, Johnson chuckled, was no better than a 50-50 proposition.

One night a week.

So when you read about Eagles coach Andy Reid and what has happened to his family, it's more heart-tugging than it is surprising.

And this is no indictment of Reid. Far from it.

Drug addiction can happen in any family, even one in which two parents are around all the time, and if it hasn't happened in yours, consider yourself lucky because it probably has happened to your next-door neighbor or the person sharing your cubicle or sitting next to you in class.

No one is immune. It cuts across every racial, financial and demographic line.

No parent, no matter how involved, is guaranteed to escape the horrors of seeing a child go through what the Reids have gone through.

Reid's two sons were sent to prison Thursday, and the judge compared the family home to a "drug emporium."

People are wondering if Reid will resign. He says he won't, and even old friends like Seattle coach Mike Holmgren -- noting that Reid took five weeks off earlier this year to try to get a handle on his kids' problems -- wondered if Reid wouldn't be better off getting away from the game right now and taking care to make sure the other Reid children don't suffer the same fate.

It all reminds me of Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, who has been turning down NFL head-coaching interviews for the past five years, stating repeatedly that coaching the Hawkeyes in Iowa City provides a life for his wife and five children that they're not sure they'd receive in an NFL community.

"It goes back to the life process. You're faced with opportunities and choices and you're tempted. It's part of growing older, and it can be gut-wrenching,'' Ferentz told me a couple of years ago. "But deep down you know what's right for you and you have to avoid the trap of doing what others think is right for you. It's not easy.

"You're continually shaping your beliefs, but one thing I learned a long time ago is that the things that make me happy are having my family in a good situation and having a good professional situation.''

When Ferentz took the head-coaching job in 1998, his oldest son was 16, and his youngest was 5.

Now, their ages range from 24 to 15, and they've been able to live crucial portions of their lives in one city, in the same schools, with two parents at home living relatively normal lives.

And though he admitted he might someday change his mind, Ferentz said that was a sacrifice he did not wish to make for life in the NFL.

"To walk in the door at home and tell my kids they have to go to a new school and make new friends and live in a new house in a new city 1,000 miles away,'' he said, "I'd need a pretty compelling reason for that.''

To date, he hasn't found one.

Reid's troubled sons are 24 and 22. Since the oldest was born, Reid has coached at Brigham Young, San Francisco State, Northern Arizona, Texas-El Paso, Missouri, Green Bay and Philadelphia.

Seven different cities in his first 16 years of life.

None of this is an excuse, and no part of this is meant to blame Andy Reid for what has happened, but the added pressure of moving from city to city, entering new schools, making new friends, exploring new vices, and having a rich and famous father who's never around, certainly multiplies the risk factors.

The Reids' case has been highly publicized, but you wonder -- after listening to Johnson and Ferentz -- how many NFL families go through the hard times and you just don't hear about it.

These men are hounded and criticized every Sunday, forcing them into even deeper bunkers and longer hours, and their lives are hardly the stuff of dreams.

To say the fame and fortune that accompanies such jobs compensates them for any of life's misery is simplistic at best and cruel at worst.

To say it's the path they've chosen and with the spoils go the oils is probably fair. But it doesn't make the tragedies any less so.

So, no, the Reid family saga comes as really no surprise at all.

But it is sad.

And one very unfortunate and powerful reminder for the rest of us.