Q: Do high school football players have earphones in their helmets?

A: Coach, we are a small, regional high school in rural New England.

This isn't the NFL.

You're not coaching in the NFL anymore.

You're not coaching in the NFL anymore because you developed a gambling problem, lost everything you had, got in deep with the bookies, and had only one option: Throwing the Super Bowl.

You're not coaching in the NFL anymore because you threw the Super Bowl. You benched all your starters, citing fictional breaches of team rules. You repeatedly punted on second down. You let a 63-year old season ticket holder play quarterback. Your plan to throw the game was incredibly transparent. You became the first coach to be fired at halftime of the Super Bowl.

You remember all this, right? Of course you do.

When you got fired, when you got tossed out of the NFL in disgrace, and you couldn't get a job in the NFL, or the NCAA, or the WLAF, or the CFL, or the Arena Football League, or even the Lingerie Football League, who hired you? Your old high school.  We gave you a chance when no one else would.

Would you like to know why we gave you that chance?

We had one simple motive: revenge.

We lost a lot of money on that Super Bowl, coach. The whole town. Everyone took whatever the could out of the bank, whatever they had buried in the back yard, whatever they found in the sofa, and they all put in one big pile. We bet all of it on the Super Bowl. We bet it all on you, our favorite son, the man who would never let us down. We had big plans for that money. We were going to build a knew old folks home, for the old folks. One with heat and showers and walls.

You can imagine how upset we were when you threw the game.

We've never had a wireless communication system hooked up to the player's helmets. You can't talk to anyone on your headset. It's not even plugged in. None of the players run any of the plays you call. None of the coaches do anything you say. We figured you'd notice, get mad and storm off and we'd all have a good laugh at your expense. And maybe we'd feel a little better about all that money we lost. Maybe we'd feel a little better about not having a new old folks home.

We figured you'd notice no one can hear you by now. We figured you'd notice by now. We figured you'd notice by the 6th game of the season.

But you didn't. You kept barking commands into your headset and calling plays that don't exist. It never seemed to bother you that no one ever listened to you. It never seemed to bother you that nothing you ever asked for ever happened. You didn't even seem to notice that anything was wrong.

So, to answer your question, no, the players don't have earphones in their helmets. They never have and they never will.

Now, I have a question of my own. What, exactly, does an NFL head coach do?