By Mike Pound
Globe columnist
When Jon Lantz coached football at Missouri Southern State University, I always worried that he cared too much.
Not about winning, although Jon did care about winning. He was, after all, a football coach, and winning was a part of his job. No, it wasn’t winning that I worried that Jon cared too much about. It was his players.
Jon, who was the head football coach at Missouri Southern from 1989 until 1996, died Saturday night. He was 54. At the time of his death, Jon was the vice president of student affairs at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M; College in Miami.
As a football coach, Jon could always put wins and losses into perspective. He learned long before he came to Missouri Southern in 1989 that he wasn’t going to win every game he coached. Although he didn’t like them, Jon learned to handle losses and to accept them as a part of his profession.
Jon had a harder time losing a player. He hated when he couldn’t reach a young man who needed to be reached, when he couldn’t make a difference in a player’s life, when he couldn’t turn a young man around. Jon learned to accept losing a football game; I don’t think he ever learned to accept losing a young man.
The thing is, if you didn’t know Jon, if you didn’t spend time with him, you might not have been able to tell just how much he cared about his players. See, Jon wasn’t the type of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve. He had an easy-going manner. When he talked, he did so with that slow, understated western Oklahoma drawl of his. He had a self-deprecating sense of humor — unusual, really, for a football coach. But when he talked about his players, it was evident how much they meant to him.
During his time at Missouri Southern, Jon coached three athletes — Rod Smith, Richard Jordan and James Thrash — who went on to play professional football. Think about that for a second. In eight years, three players from a Division II school would go on to play professional football. It’s remarkable, really.
Jon used to joke about having coached three NFL players. He used to say that he was either a really good coach because he produced three professional football players or a really bad coach because he had three future NFL players and didn’t win more games than he did. The answer, of course, is pretty clear. You don’t get many NFL-type players at a Division II school, and when Jon recruited Rod, Richard and James, they were not NFL-type players. They became NFL-type players because of Jon.
But whenever I heard Jon talk about Rod, Richard and James, it was obvious that he was prouder of the men they became than he was of the players they became. The first time Jon ever mentioned Rod Smith to me was when I was working at a local TV station. I asked Jon if he had any players I could use in a public-service announcement. He suggested Rod — not because Rod was a standout wide receiver, but because he was set to graduate with three undergraduate degrees.
The first time I heard Jon mention Richard Jordan was during his freshman year. Jon said Richard was “a coach’s son.” He was a solid player, even as a freshman, but more important to Jon was the fact that Richard was a solid person. And while I know Jon was proud of James Thrash’s NFL career, built more on hard work than God-given ability, I know he was even prouder when James finished his college degree at Southern.
Most of Jon’s players went on to lead successful lives. Most of them grew into fine people. But not all of them did. It happens. Some young men just never find the way. But Jon had trouble accepting that. I think those young men who Jon couldn’t reach bothered him more than anything else.
To be truthful, it was those young men who Jon couldn’t reach that eventually forced him out of football. But even after he left coaching, he never stopped trying to reach young people. After leaving Southern, Jon became the director of student development at Ozark Christian College and later moved on to NEO. I talked to Jon several times after he went to NEO. He seemed relaxed. He seemed happy. Mainly, I think, because he was making a difference in the lives of the students there.
Yes, as a football coach, Jon probably cared too much about his players. But because he cared too much, he was more than a great coach — he was a great man.
I’m proud to say that I knew him.
