[CBFF] Spotlight on Ex-Bear Mickey Pruitt

[Kenny Claxton]

Sun-Times spotlight: Mickey Pruitt
MICKEY PRUITT FOOTBALL COORDINATOR | CHICAGO PUBLIC LEAGUE

October 25, 2007
BY TAYLOR BELL
What is your background? I'm a 1983 graduate of Robeson. I played on
the 1982 state runner-up. I graduated from Colorado in 1988 and played
with the Bears (1988-90) and Cowboys (1991-92) in the NFL. I joined
the Chicago Board of Education in 1999 as assistant coordinator in
football. Now I'm the head coordinator.

What is your job description? To schedule all Chicago Public School
football programs, to assign officials and run the day-to-day
operations of the football program.

What is your biggest challenge? Winning. I want to make all coaches
understand that winning the state championship is what we are out to
do. That is our main goal. We've never won a state title in football.
It's about time the CPS got one.

What is your mission? To help train coaches to be better, to put
productive programs on the field, to organize clinics in the
offseason, to organize football camps in the summer, to talk about how
to win football games.

What problems do you face? Back when I played, we didn't have enough
coaches like other [suburban and private] schools did. It is almost
the same way now. We still don't have enough coaches. But we're
getting more players coming out. We used to get only 25; now we have
35-40. There is more interest being generated in football. More kids
want to play the game. I don't think kids are afraid of playing
football as they once were.

How do you propose to solve those problems? We must train coaches to
be good coaches. We're in the process of doing that so they can teach
fundamentals and techniques and X's and O's to their kids. We're doing
more clinics in the offseason. A big criticism in the past was our
coaches didn't attend clinics. Now they do. We have good coaches, but
we don't have enough of them.

What are your goals? Our biggest goal is to compete with the best
teams and close the gap between our teams and private and suburban
schools. We have done a good job but not a total job. There are only
8-10 programs in the city right now that can really compete against
the best private and suburban programs.

What changes need to be made? We just have to get better. We still
must change the attitude that basketball is the only sport that city
kids like to play. Sure, basketball is big. Football, track and field,
soccer and baseball suffered from so many kids playing basketball. But
there are more Division I scholarships available in other sports, and
I hope they will realize they can play a sport other than basketball.

Is Morgan Park the best CPS team you have seen since Robeson in 1982?
No. Their 2004 team was better. It had more offense, and the defense
was better. They went to the state semifinals. They were bigger and
fast, too. But this year's Morgan Park team is good enough to win the
state title.