If only Lynyrd Skynyrd had listened more closely to their strict old coach -- Leonard Skinner -- they might have been an even greater rock 'n' roll band.
And, more important, better human beings.
"It was among the duties of the coach to enforce the rules," Skinner once said.
Sometimes, though, a high school coach and a military veteran wearing an old-fashioned flat-top haircut is ignored or scoffed at by teenagers who think they know better.
That old high school coach died at 77 last week in a nursing home in Jacksonville, Fla., but his rules and his name will live on forever in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
For those unfamiliar with the story, Leonard Skinner was the former high school basketball coach, assistant football coach and gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High in Jacksonville. When he was coaching and teaching in the late 1960s, it was part of the school's dress code that boys couldn't wear long hair.
"My father was a very strict disciplinarian," remembers Skinner's daughter Susie Moore. "Rules were black and white. There was no gray area. He did things by the book. That's what he stood for."
One day in his gym class, Skinner noticed that Gary Rossington, a guitarist in a high school rock 'n' roll band, had hair that flowed well below his collar. Skinner sent Rossington to the principal's office, and Rossington was suspended from school. As a mocking tribute to the stern gym teacher, Rossington, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and the rest of the band members changed their name to Lynyrd Skynyrd.