Gerald Broussard On Life As A Coach [AUDIO]

Coaches are kind of crazy, or at least they have to be if they want to be successful. Gerald Broussard lived that life for over a quarter-century.

We like to call him simply "G," but for the majority of his life people called him "coach." The job doesn't simply require football intelligence and devotion to the game, it takes hours of your day and saps massive amounts of physical and emotional energy. With so much at stake with your football family, sometimes it's hard to balance the life at home on the opposite side of the scale.

In a special edition of "The Cheap Seats," Gerald helped shed some light on the difficult paths coaches, and their families, must walk if they want a life in sports.

Constant moves, late nights, high stress loads...it all can add up into an overwhelming lifestyle. A loving wife always helps, as G  stresses, but even then your kids have to understand as well. There are many moments in this interview that were eye-opening, but one stood out and almost brought some tears to my eyes.

His son, John, played for the Cajuns, just like his father. When Gerald coached, John was always around. His players mingled with his son, but sometimes it was hard for John to get some alone time.

His first Father's Day after hanging up the whistle, he received a card from his son with a very simple but powerful message: "It's finally nice to have my Dad instead of everybody else's coach."

There are countless moments like that in a coach's life, and often fan bases grow callous to their coach's humanity. They don't care about what's going on behind the scenes, they just want wins. It's part of the gig, and coaches don't complain because they understand the job they signed up for. It doesn't mean they aren't human like us, and experience pain and loss and disappointments of their own.

Take some time to walk in the shoes of a coach. You might be surprised how they fit and where they take you.