Central selects Payne as new football coach

Mike Cowan and the rest of the Central High School football coach nominating committee tabbed Rich Payne to help find the right candidate for the open position.

Eventually the committee realized one of the men asked to help locate the right coach was the perfect fit.

"We had been conferring with Rich throughout the process because Rich is prominent in the athletic community throughout Southeast Missouri," said Cowan, the principal at Central. "We had used him as a resource. And from those conversations as a resource began to involve an interest on his part. It suddenly became, 'Would you consider the possibility?'"

The Cape Girardeau School Board made it official Wednesday, and it was announced Thursday that Payne will replace Lawrence Brookins as the football coach at Central. Brookins led the Tigers to a 44-54 record from 1999 through 2007, winning five district championships and three sectional championships.

"He was the choice we could come up with now," board president Kyle McDonald said of Payne. "We'll see what happens. We'll let him do his job, and at the end of the season we will evaluate him and the program and see how things stand at the end of the year."

Payne said he's excited to get started. He begins immediately.

"I love football," Payne said. "I spent a lot of time at Central High School coaching. I felt the need to be a part of that again, so I stepped up and am ready to take on the challenge."

Payne said that it was a mix of Central officials approaching him about the job and him approaching officials. McDonald said that the initial applicants for the position weren't impressive.

"After the committee reviewed all the applications that had come in, they really weren't happy with any of the applicants," McDonald said. "There were issues with each of them, either not qualified to teach or not enough experience. They really didn't just want to put anyone in that position because they really feel the football program needs to be back on track to get our school a winning team."

Cowan said the school received about 25 applications for the position.

Payne, 46, serves as the director of the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center. He is no stranger to Southeast Missouri and the athletic community. The Olney, Ill., native played football at Southeast Missouri State in 1981 and '82. After a year as a graduate assistant football coach at Western Illinois University, he returned to Cape Girardeau.

Since his return, Payne served as an assistant under three coaches at Southeast, worked under three coaches at Central, then stepped away when he got into administrative work at Central. He estimates he's spent 23 to 24 years as an assistant football coach.

"Most of my coaching has been on the defensive side," Payne said. "My original emphasis and positioning that I played has been on the offensive side. Even on the collegiate level, I coached defensive line and linebackers. Then for my last couple years there, I coached the offensive line.

"I will coach the offensive and defensive lines come next year because I feel those positions, that's where everything starts and ends, with the lines up front."

Payne said there are characteristics that will be present in every one of his players.

"One of the things I will emphasize, not that it has not been emphasized before, is the effort, speed and tenacity that you play the game of football," he said. "Those will be the things. No matter what kind of offense you run or what kind of defense you run, they need to have those three things in mind or it's not going to work."

Payne understands he's entering a challenging situation because the school year is almost over, which gives him limited time to recruit players before summer break. He said the assistant coaches already met with potential players, and that he will meet with students Tuesday.

"We're behind," Cowan said. "The search process has been long and thorough, and it's going to take someone who can really step in immediately and get us back on schedule and start making plans for summer camps and get our kids excited. We wanted to make sure that could happen before school finishes next week when we have all the kids still here in the building."

Even though Payne hasn't been coaching for the last few years, he's been involved with football. He made the move from pacing the sideline as a coach to working the sideline as an official. He said his experience as an official provides an advantage.

"Most football coaches don't know the rules of football," he said. "But when I became an official, I learned the intricacies of the rules of the game of football. When you're a football coach, you only know enough about the rules to gain a strategic advantage. When you become an official, you've got to understand all the minute parts of the rules in order to enforce them and do a good job as an official."

Payne didn't make any promises about wins and losses, but did make a guarantee as he takes the reins of the Tigers program.

"The only thing I will guarantee the public is that I will coach the kids and they will play hard," he said. "We will work hard to be as good as we can possibly be for not only Central High School and the community, but more importantly, the kids."

McDonald said it's up to Payne as to how long he serves as the Tigers' coach.

"It's completely up to Mr. Payne, depending on how long he wants to undertake the program and after evaluating the program and seeing what progress we've made if he's the right fit," McDonald said. "If it's something he wants to undertake, then it most certainly could be a long-term thing. But if after a year he decides that being the director of the CTC, plus the head football coach is too much of an undertaking or the program hasn't progressed the way we feel, then the process will start all over again."