Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

There’s a few people that it’s good not to be this week. Take former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, who put his whole world on display (literally and figuratively). He lost his job, but he brought it upon himself.

Then there’s people who have misfortune cast upon them. Some of them are wearing red Eagle-logoed athletic gear. Their parents, left to try to explain the ways of the world to those kids, also are in the mix.

The Poinciana High football players learned this week that their coach, Michael Timpson, is out after one season.

His successor will be the Eagles’ seventh coach in 11 seasons. Needless to say, the past 10 haven’t been rosy red like the school’s color.

A couple of those previous coaches left for personal reasons, choosing to move on after some soul-searching and perhaps discouragement. The others? If the stories we’ve heard were true, it’s been administration-related.

Here’s a quick Poinciana football history lesson:

2006 — Greg Myers, after a winless season, watches Osceola County School District staff gut the PHS administration, including the folks who brought him in and were his allies. He left in support of them.

2007 — David Aubrey, a longtime assistant and someone happy to get his fingernails dirty at PHS, suffers a similar fate to Timpson as you’ll read in a moment. The new school officials take a hard line and dismisses him.

2009 — Gene Smith, who actually got a second year and seemed to get things going in a good direction (first multi-win season for PHS in nine years), was removed along with other sports coaches by another new administrative regime.

Last week — Timpson, like Aubrey, did not pass the math portion of the teacher certification exam and his contract was not renewed. He said that he proposed alternatives, like taking a paraprofessional position on campus at lower pay until he could take the math exam again, but according to Timpson, Principal Belynda Pinkston was not receptive. Pinkston referred inquiries about the matter to the Osceola School District.

At Poinciana’s 2010 spring game, Pinkston enthusiastically praised Timpson, then a brand-new hire.

“He’s here because of the man that he is,” she said that day.

Timpson, a former college and NFL football player, probably filled a male authority figure role that some of his players may have lacked. In many cases, that trumps success on the field.

Now, I don’t know a thing about Timpson’s classroom qualifications. Pinkston, in that brief exchange last year, stressed she’s working like mad to “Get that ‘A’” (FCAT score) from the state. If he didn’t help support the mission statement, then I’m down with that.

Maybe the principal thinks he’s not the coach who can get the program turned around, although Timpson said that Pinkston did not express dissatisfaction about the football program despite an 0-10 record last season.

But, when you’re rebuilding Rome, and you have to start by pouring the foundation, you’ve got to let the concrete man finish, and let the stuff dry so walls can go up.

If you keep hiring new sub-contractors, you’ll never get so much as a tiki hut built.

Pinkston has her plan to improve Poinciana High, it’s going to take work, and keeping a football coach is not Priority No. 1. And that’s all well and the way it should be. Such a reclamation project, like Joe Clark in “Lean On Me”, often takes a get-along-or-move-along attitude — but teenagers who will suit up with their third football coach in three years this summer many not get it.

The school isn’t in the shape of Eastside High in the Morgan Freeman flick, but the graffiti on the walls is the Poinciana football record since 2001 — a dismal seven wins in 10 seasons since Mike Cullison led the Eagles to a 6-5 season and the only playoff berth in the program’s 18 years.

That was six coaches and five principals ago.