Not Your Ordinary "Coach"

Sometimes in life, you’re lucky to meet people in the spotlight, or, celebrities, so to speak.

Most of the time, it’s just a handshake and a polite hello… and then they’re gone.

This past Saturday night when the Northwestern State Demons opened their home football season against Delaware State, I got to meet one of those celebrities and was quite surprised by how down-to-earth he was.

The game was televised nationally on CSTV and doing the play-by-play was none other than Jonathan Coachman, or, better known as “Coach”.

Many people have never heard of Coach, but if you’re an avid World Wrestling Entertainment fan like myself and fellow co-workers Ronnette Pellegrin and Stacy Morgan, you’d know Coach very well.

Coach’s current role on the sports entertainment program is the Executive Assistant to WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. He's the "brown-noser" who kisses up to the boss and loves to make all the fans hate him.

To be able to talk to Coach outside of his character was very enjoyable and such the opposite as his on-air persona.

During the 15 minute conversation prior to the kickoff of the football game, Coach was more than willing to talk about, not only his “acting” gig, but also is aspirations of becoming a full-time sportscaster.

He told me he just signed a new 2-year contract with the WWE, but after that, would like to go into television broadcasting as his career. He said that he’s engaged to be married and would like to start a family sometime soon, but is not able to take that step in life since he’s on the road 51 weeks out of the year.

He talked about the personality of the billionaire mogul McMahon and stated that he’s a tough guy to work for, but really takes care of all his employees. Coach noted that all the wrestlers are great to work with and did take notice that the chair bashing, table breaking, chest-slapping moves are real and they do hurt. He pointed out two inch-and-a-half scars on his head as proof.

After Saturday’s game, Coach headed back up to Shreveport where he was to catch a red-eye flight to Atlanta and then on to Toronto, Canada where he took part in Sunday night’s WWE Unforgiven pay-per-view.

You’ll be able to catch him live on the USA Network for WWE Raw tonight at 8 p.m.