Video: J.J. Watt high school football highlightsWe hear it often from highly successful high school football coaches.
Coaching at the higher ranks — college and pros — offers more money and prestige, but a greater impact can be made at the lower levels, specifically high school.
J.J. Watt at Gatorade Awards ceremony.
Screenshot from Scott Hargrove
Such sounds like the sentiments of one of the NFL's biggest stars J.J. Watt who told a Houston radio station Friday that if he wasn't chewing up quarterbacks for a living, "I think I would be coaching high school football."
Watt told Houston station
SportsRadio 610: "That is what I want to do when I'm done (playing in the NFL). I want to coach high school football and that's always what I've wanted to do. … I just want to have that impact.
"Maybe my life takes me a different path with movies and things like that, but as of right now, at some point in my life I will definitely coach high school football."
He told us last summer at the
Gatorade Athlete of the Year Awards ceremony: "What I remember most about high school football were the memories I made with my friends. What I remember most was not just the games, but before the games after the games, the day after the games, the practices, the breaks, it's so much fun with your friends. Those are the moments you cherish and why I'm still best friends with my high school buddies."
The high school game obviously had a great impact on Watt, who was a four-year player at
Pewaukee (Pewaukee, Wis.), where he also lettered in basketball, baseball and track and field.
Watt played defense and tight end and had 26 catches for 399 yards and five scores as a senior. He was considered only a two-star recruit and started at Central Michigan before transferring to Wisconsin.
