high schools

Carl Brown, an assistant football coach at St. Paul Central, typically works with freshmen on Mondays, sophomores on Tuesdays, juniors on Wednesdays and seniors on Thursdays. Their work together, however, has nothing to do with football -- or, depending on your perspective, it has everything to do with football.

Brown doubles as Central's academic coach -- a position that occupies him for a minimum of 20 hours a week throughout the school year. He is paid a $15,000 stipend through the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame's "Play It Smart" program to check in on football players' academic progress, help them prepare for standardized tests and coordinate community service excursions, among other things.

"There are a lot of mentoring programs where a big-name player goes into a school and talks to kids," said Steve Hatchell, the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame's president and CEO. "This is totally different. We have an academic coach in there every day of the year."

The foundation started Play It Smart in 1998 as an experiment in four high schools; the program has now expanded to 142 schools, including two in Minnesota -- Central and Park Center. (For a complete list and more information, see www.playitsmart.org.)

The foundation will spend about $3.7 million on the program this year, with a good chunk of money coming from the NFL and NFL Players' Association. The overall budget includes the academic coaches' stipends and other administrative costs, which typically add up to about $25,000 per school.

Central started with the program in 2004; Hatchell said ideally a school is able to find private funding from a corporate sponsor or some other entity to retain an academic coach after a couple of years of financial assistance from the foundation. That way, the foundation can move on to other schools in need.

"We ask schools to apply, and we ask for the most needy," Hatchell said. "We could be in 1,000 schools, based on need, but we just don't have the money."

Central applied after heeding the urging of alum Stacy Robinson, a former NFL wide receiver who knew of the program through the league.

"I think we're very fortunate to have this program," Brown said. "For me, it's great and rewarding. It shows kids they can be successes academically and athletically. That's what we try to do."

Said senior guard Antonio Nicholas, who said his GPA is in the mid-2s, "If you get in trouble with grades, [Brown] is the first one to let you know about it."

But more importantly, junior tackle Sam Hansen said, Brown puts out plenty of fires before they even get started.

"It means a lot to have Coach Brown there, taking the time," said Hansen, with a GPA nearing 3.0. "He's like a life coach. And if there's a problem, he helps us deal with it before it becomes an issue."

That type of preventative medicine, if you will, has led to some impressive across-the-board success for Play It Smart. According to the program's figures, participants have higher graduation rates (95 to 85 percent) and higher college enrollment levels (80 to 62 percent) than their peers. Nearly 200 student-athletes who went through the program are now playing Division I college football, including Gophers running back Amir Pinnix.

Program participants also, on average, complete a combined 67,000 hours of community service. Central players spent time recently bagging groceries at a local supermarket.

"We know from an untold number of principals that leaders in a school often come from the football team," Hatchell said. "This can set the tone for the whole year."

Michael Rand • mrand@startribune.com