Ghosts in the coach Reid story

November 13, 2007 By

Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy ReidThe troubles in the family of Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid is a difficult story for reporters to cover. In many ways, one would wish for the story to just go away. Coach Reid’s family life is in public disarray. A judge has publicly castigated him about his abilities as a parent and his two oldest sons are in prison because of their long-standing drug addictions.

A headline from The New York Times is particularly appropriate: “There Are No Easy Answers for Reid and His Family.”

Much of this story appropriately has to do with drug addiction and whether it should be considered a disease. But there is another aspect of this highly personal story that has not received much attention, particularly by the Times. The Philadelphia Inquirer, perhaps because it is closer to the story than anyone else, touched on it on Sunday:

The boys were expected to become Eagle Scouts — and Garrett and Britt did so, Tammy Reid said. Piano lessons were required through age 18. Other rules were bent to accommodate the crazy hours of a coach. If her husband “got home at 9 o’clock, you’ll bet the kids are up to see him,” she said.

And when that wasn’t enough, she let him know. “We’ve got our roles down pat,” she said in that earlier interview. “I’m the one who tells him when he really needs to be home. There’s just times you can read the kids’ coverage – that’s what I call it. You just know one of your kids needs their dad. I say, ‘You really need to get to this.’”

As Mormons, the Reids did not allow even alcohol in their home. And Tammy Reid has described her husband’s determined efforts to carve out time with Garrett, Britt, and the three younger children — to be present at their sporting events, to take them to movies, to cut down a tree and sing together on Christmas.

There’s obviously only so much that a reporter can do when reporting on a person’s personal faith. If a public person doesn’t acknowledge that faith publicly, then it is probably out of bounds in stories like this.

But it would be difficult to say that Reid’s Mormon faith is not part of his public character. Check out this story from earlier this year by the sports director at Philadelphia television station NBC 10:

For all of us, there are times when the lines that separate our personal and professional lives are sometimes blurred. This is one of those times for me.

You see, I’ve known Garrett and Britt Reid since they were in their early teens. Their parents, Andy and Tammy, were classmates at BYU in the early ’80s and Andy and I were college teammates. More importantly, we share a common faith, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re Mormons — which is still a relatively small community here in the East. …

Most Mormon young men apply for and serve a two-year church mission following their freshman year of college. Neither Garrett or Britt did that. A church mission in the Mormon faith is almost a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood — almost like being bar mitzvahed if you’re a Jewish boy. …

The Reids are very private and, as reported in newspaper accounts, very religious.

It’s moments like this that their faith really matters.

To be perfectly clear, the Mormon angle to the Coach Reid story should not be raised to castigate or criticize Reid or Mormonism. Reporters should treat this highly difficult subject with care and resist any urge to cast stones. But ignoring the Mormon angle of the story gives readers an incomplete picture.

Variations of this situation can happen in any family. Faith will often play an important, if not key, role in a family’s efforts to adjust and cope. To the extent that figures in the family are public and the situation becomes public, the faith aspect should not be tucked away or ignored.

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Filed Under: Journalism, Religion, Sports
  • Dmann

    So what are you actually saying? Are you calling him out because he is Mormon? This article is not even an article at all. It is obviously designed to call into question a faith. Would this be news worthy, as you obviously deem it to be, if he was Baptist or Catholic? Would you be saying, “let’s not forget that Andy Reid is Baptist, certainly we should not sweep that fact under the carpet.” Come on. Don’t insult your readers intelligence.

  • http://www.getreligion.org/?p=2677 dpulliam

    No Dmann, I think you you miss my point. Any public figure’s religious beliefs, if they are public, are part of a personal story like this.

  • Joe

    This article is not worthy to be published. i think Pulliam you need to rethink what articles should be included and what not to include. i read this article and was trying to figure out what you point is.
    I m sure Andy and his wife like all of us are good parents and are trying to raise their kids in what they think is best, sometimes kids don’t make the choices that parents what them to make.
    Anyways, I m not impressed with this article and i will agree with what Dmann said.

  • Dale

    I agree that Reid’s Mormonism is a relevant part of the story, not because his faith caused his sons’ drug use and other difficulties (intoxication is contrary to LDS ethics), but because of the central importance put upon family in Mormon theology. Any parent would suffer through an ordeal like this, but I’m sure it’s even more difficult when you believe family has eternal significance.

    It’s not so much aiming criticism at the LDS or Reid, but understanding Reid’s individual pain and resiliency.

  • JLF

    I spent 20 years as a case manager dealing with substance abusing people. 20% were LDS. I can assure you active, inactive, religious, non-religious or pagan, mind altering chemicals ruin lives. Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it. I saw defeated people whose siblings and parents were the pinnacle of success but somehow they got lost in the cracks. What ever it was, they didn’t have it. It had nothing to do with parents or money or social status. Chemicals cut a broad swath across everyone. To me, those that survived and conquered their addictions were real heroes. They made more personal growth on a bad day than guys like me made on our best. These have a new opportunity to try it again once they get their lockup time completed. Forced sobriety works. But, in my experience, mom and dad and other loved ones have to learn some new stuff. That is the hard part.

  • JLF

    dpulliam
    I disagree with Joe. This article is important. It is important because it can be a wake up call to young people and parents who think that as long as they have an active life with their kids they will be OK. Involvement certainly decreases the chance of loosing kids. But, more importantly, parents need to learn other stuff too. Like who their friends are and where they go. They need to learn where the boundaries are. They need to learn to serve others and do things without the expectation of getting credit. They need to learn how to forgive others and learn to forgive themselves. They need to face the people they offend and ask for forgiveness and ask what they can do to make it up for an offense. They need to love someone and have someone love them. They need to see these behaviors exhibited in their family by their parents. They need to learn to be responsible for another living being even if for just a little while. There is more too, but the Reid boys will have a chance to learn what they need. I just hope mom and dad and the others learn too.

  • SadDad

    The only importance of the Reid’s religion in this story is how it informs their efforts to deal with the family destroying effects of drug addiction. As one who’s family was destroyed by drugs and alcohol, I sympathize with the pain they experience and my prayers are with them. No matter how well children are taught and how good an example is set for them, they still are free to make their own choices. Those choices can have eternal consequences.

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  • Mike

    I think the article does a good job of presenting informatin for us to digest and do with as we deem necessary. From the varying opinions you get the kool-aid drinkers from each side who are offended or who have seen it all. The point of the article, in my opinion, is that these addictions have happened to children whose parents have been fully involved in ther lives. I think that if they are Mormon, whose code of health is very strict, and it happens to these kids it can happen to anyone.

  • http://www.reenchantment.net Ken

    From a writer’s perspective, the Reid story is interesting because of the contrasts: teetotaling parents v drug captured boys; high achiever dad guiding two sons toward a career rather than preparing them for their life; And for the voyeurs the Mormon piece allows a “well they think they’re so goody-goody” swipe.

    The point of getreligion.org is to look at the manner in which religion is handled in the media but one of the aspects of this original story that disturbs me is that it is gossip. Christians are warned away from gossip and I can’t imagine any other religion promoting it. Years ago Carol Burnett sued a gossip magazine and lost because she was a public figure and courts determined she could be defamed without recourse. I’m pretty sure that’s the way it developed.

    Nowadays almost anyone — think YouTube — can be in the public domain and subject to the ridicule of the hour. Just another case to be made for modesty. And that’s certainly nothing they teach on the football field. The athletes used to exhibit a code of honor. Now they just exhibit the result of successive parental indulgence, whether by a mom or dad who sees their play as a ticket to the promised land, or the coach that’s supposed to be mentoring them.

    This is a story of corruption.

  • Nate

    The problem with all posts on topics like this comes from the fact that words can denote one meaning to one reader, and another meaning to another.

    As a Mormon, I was not offended by the article or any of the posts and did not pick up any attempt to slam the Reid family or the Mormon religion. The article is referring to universal truths that cut across all ethnic, social and religious lines.

    However, I also believe that that the Reids are damned if they do have high expectations (a religion that teachers no alcohol or abuse of drugs, including prescription drugs – as another poster said, chemicals destroy lives in all parts of society) or none at all. If I was them, I’d like all public comment to go away, because for the boys, it feels like the world is against them and this could get in the way of recovery.

    Several years ago, I had a valued employee whose wife asked me to participate in an intervention with her husband, both devout Catholic. He was a beer drinker to excess, and kept the excess hidden – except from his family. It was ruining their marriage, and she wanted help.

    Kicking and screaming, he went into a 28 day Hazeldon rehab. He was surprised when I came to visit him every Sunday, to see how he was doing and express support.

    I’ll never forget two comments that he made about halfway through his treatment:

    (1) he expected me to be the most judgmental of anyone of his weaknesses because he knew I was a Mormon and did not drink. I told him that my uncle was a devout Mormon who died of cirhosis (sp?) of the liver, because once he broke the strict moral guidelines of his youth, his guilt propelled his feelings of worthlessness even deeper.

    Thus, he was never able to quit. The high ideals helped many stay away from the chemical abuse, but when those ideals were “slightly” set aside, any genetic predisposition to get hooked was unleashed. I told him that Mormon belief also teaches me to be his brother, not his judge, because we believe “there but for the grace of God go I.” My view is that I may be a bigger addict waiting to happen than my friend, I simply haven’t opened the door to find out. With this background, how could I judge him?

    2. He wondered if I would judge him, because of the 30 patients going through rehab with him, the guy who was having the most trouble with guilt and believing in himself was a Mormon. I told him that this didn’t surprise me, because of my uncle’s experience and others. Mormons are no better or worse than anyone else, and our families get destroyed by alcohol or car accidents or cancer or heart attacks like anyone else – although our rates of death are lower for some of these, when it hits, it hits.

    The Reid family, like my friend, need to begin where they find themselves. The same high values that will give them hope may or may not work inside their sons to increase feelings of guilt and worthlessness, and that mucks things up. My favorite part of “Shawshank Redemption” is where Andy explains to Redd that hope is a good thing, the only thing.

    Each person is different, as to whether he can see a glimmer of hope or not.

    One reason it’s not a good idea to talk behind someone’s back is that it could be viewed as animosity, and be harmful to an addict who is in the battle of his life.

    If one of the Reid family were to read this thread, I would simply say, “We’re pulling for you. Many people you’ve never met have been through this particular hell. Godspeed. We’re pulling for you and your sons. At some point, the heavy lifting will be done by them or not at all – and their choice is not a reflection on you.”

    Chemical addiction of any kind is like the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. It can spring up out of nowhere, and the sheer momentum of your travels may cause you to ALMOST miss it but not miss it, ripping out a lethal gash under the water line.

    All of us are, or could be, in the water and need to climb into a few lifeboats, to get warm by each others’ support until help can arrive. If it arrives. We need each other.

    The judge who nailed Andy Reid was part of the problem, not the solution. He was not part of the Reid family and does not have any evidence whatever that Andy was defective as a father. That’s just bull.

    What the Judge saw was two wayward sons, and then he ASSUMED that Andy must be to blame. That makes the judge naive or a cheap shot artist.

    No outsider can judge what goes on inside a home, when addiction strikes. It’s mean spirited to ASSUME that parents are automatically at fault.

    Blame and recrimination don’t fix anything, but pour cold water on the fire of hope. I hope Andy totally ignored him.

  • Stu

    It’s difficult to resist the tendency to figure out “what it all means”. We constantly look for the lesson behind the events in others’ and our own lives. IMHO, if there’s a cautionary tale to be told in Coach Reid’s case it’s this: you can DO all the right things and still have them go wrong. And this could be a lesson for him both on and off the field.

    The article paints the picture of a loving, involved family… and still problems like addiction can occur. They can and do occur to anyone. We all have clay feet. It seems Andy Reid tried his best as a father. The rest is on his sons. They made their poor choices as twenty-somethings. (That’s part of the parents having to let go…)

  • Julia

    Nate & Stu:

    What wisdom.

    Somebody said: Be kind to everybody you meet because everyone is involved in a struggle of some kind that you may or not may not know about.

  • Roby

    I guess I missed the point. I am very skeptical when a writer of a story brings up religion without stating the purpose bringing it up. Is it because we are supposed to wonder if the Reid family’s Mormonism must have brought this on, or that it could have happened to any family of faith? Dpulium doesn’t tell us. Just because someone else brings up the fact he is a faithful Latter Day Saint in some news story, doesn’t make his religious beliefs fair game as to whether or not he is a good father or a good coach. When others in the public eye have had trouble with their children, I have never wondered if because of their being a Catholic, Baptist or Jew. Coach Reid is the not chaplain of the Eagles, he is the Head Coach. This came across to me as an unfair intrusion to someone’s faith, just like what CNN and others are doing to Mitt Romney.

  • Sheldon De Friez

    Frankly, I was surprised that on one of the Eagles nationally televised games the commentators talked about Coach Reid and his sons problems but never once stated the families religion. Usually that is when someone with an agenda loves to bring up religion particularly a religion that is largely misunderstood. Maybe a producer actually respected the Coach and the difficult situation for what it was.