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By John Ingoldsby

Eastham, Mass. – When you coach football for 34 years, the game helps shape your character and creates core values that you pass along to your young players.

So much so that Mike Sherman credits his football career for making him the man he is today, which is the head coach of a high school team for the first time ever.

“When you are the head of a football team, you have to run that team with core values, and football forces you to look at what those core values are and how they apply to not only you and your life, but to your football team as well, so you live your life by those core values, and I think that has helped me,” said the former Green Bay Packers coach and general manager.

“Football challenges you to be able to handle the ups and downs and peaks and values of a football season, that parallels in many ways our lives,” said Sherman. “It creates in you a mental toughness that helps you handle the adversity that you face on a regular basis, and it has definitely affected me and helped me develop as a man.”

An impressive man who was the head coach of Texas A&M University and served as an assistant coach with NFL, college, and high school teams before landing back in his home state of Massachusetts at the helm of Nauset High School on Cape Cod.

“My three core values are truth, passion and giving back more than you take,” said Sherman, who helped instill those ideals in the likes of quarterbacks Brett Favre and Ryan Tannehill, and also when successfully recruiting Johnny Manziel to the Aggies.

“Truthfulness and honesty are at the top of list. Demand the truth, tell the truth and seek the truth in all situations,” explained the native of Norwood, Massachusetts. “As a coach, you have to know what’s real and what’s not real. Deal with the real, and don’t worry so much about the not real. Truth is very, very important.”

But his other two mantras carry equal weight as well.

“My second core value is passion, as in love your life, career, family, God, team, and job, and just have passion about things that are in your life,” he added. “The third one is to give back, and since we get a lot in this life, I find the more you give the more you get, so give back to your teammates, don’t just take from your teammates.”

Today, Sherman is the one giving back, and after all he has done, his current position presents yet another new challenge.

“It’s tough being a high school coach, where you have to not only be a technician, but a dad, a mom, a brother, and a counselor,” he observed. “So, I am beginning by building this from the bottom up and meeting with Pop Warner coaches and such to ensure the future.”