- Before becoming a politician, VP hopeful Tim Walz was a teacher and a football coach.
- BI spoke to four former students and an ex-colleague about their time with "Coach Walz."
Seth Meyer can remember the first time he met Tim Walz.
"I was just your average adolescent, angry punk rock vegan kid who hated the system, and thought: 'Oh, my God, this guy's the football coach. Screw him' — because nothing says 'the system' like the football coach."
More than 20 years ago, Meyer was a teenager at Minnesota's Mankato West High School, where Walz — now the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president — was both a teacher and a football coach.
During Walz's tenure, the team went from an abysmal record to the state championship. It's a feat that's gotten renewed attention as Walz hits the national stage.
Business Insider spoke to three former players, a student, and the head coach to better understand a time when few imagined the political direction Walz's life would take.
A formative moment with 'The Simpsons'
Meyer's angst didn't last long. In Walz's 11th-grade geography class, he quickly responded to what he described as the teacher's no-nonsense yet open-minded approach to teaching.
One particularly striking moment was when Walz played an episode of "The Simpsons" in class.
Meyer, who now teaches philosophy and German, had never imagined that you could use something like a syndicated TV show to critically analyze modern life.
In the 1998 episode, "Trash of the Titans," Homer — disastrously — becomes Springfield's sanitation commissioner, having campaigned with the slogan: "Can't someone else do it?"
"As a class, we despaired of politics being reduced to Homer's cynical election slogan," Meyer said. "Instead of politics being about what we value as a society, and how we can together come to a consensus and realistic, meaningful policy."
Meyer is 38 and still doesn't fully agree with all of Walz's policies. Like everyone else BI spoke to, it's unclear whether Walz will get his vote.
All of them, however, were eager to talk about who he is — and what he is not.
The strange power of a Midwestern dad
Walz is now famed for bringing quintessential Midwestern dad energy to the national stage.
Videos of him trying a terrifying ride at the Minnesota State Fair or earnestly explaining how to replace a headlight cable have gone viral. His habit of dressing down in caps and flannel shirts is now seen as a political advantage.
That ordinariness is at the core of one of the most effective attacks from Kamala Harris' campaign: Walz's line that former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are "weird."
It may also go some way toward blunting Vance's own characterization of Walz as a "San Francisco-style liberal."
But is all of this supposed normality just a schtick? Resoundingly "no," according to the former students BI spoke to. That image is "absolutely legitimate," Meyer said.
"His charisma and his character that you see out there in the public, I truly believe that that's who he is," said Bob Becker, 43. Walz coached Becker at Mankato West football team in the late 1990s.
Seth Greenwald, who was a linebacker under Walz, said, "Some of the one liners, and him being able to be charismatic in front of crowds — that's something that we saw back in the day as well."
A football turnaround
In the late 1990s, Mankato West football struggled.
"Before he came on board, as far as I could remember, the football team was probably an afterthought at that school," said Becker, who played as an outside linebacker and far receiver.
"We did not win a lot of games," he said. But "the tide started to turn" with the addition of new coaches, including Walz, he said.
Walz was a "dad-like figure" to the team, said David Schoettler, 42, who played offensive and defensive tackle.
"He wasn't a screamer, he wasn't a yeller," he said. "If you screwed up, he's going to coach you on it, and then it's kind of like that 'I'm not mad, but I'm disappointed' type thing."
The "hooting and hollering" came when the team was getting ready to go on the field, Becker said.
Walz "had energy coming out of every end that he had," he said.
Rick Sutton, who is now 62 and still coaching, said that when Walz came on board the team, he had already started working on raising expectations for the team.
"The expectations were so low that it was easy to say, 'Oh, we're just not very good," Sutton said.
"Tim came along and helped us continue that path that we were on," he said. He said Walz was analytical, as well as honest with players about how to improve.
"He's extremely genuine," Sutton said. "You can tell."
Walz, who started out coaching linebackers and then moved to defense, found his own ways to keep the team competitive, Schoettler said.
He recalled a set of black T-shirts that Walz had made, emblazoned with the phrase, "11 to the ball."
Anyone with a starting spot got to wear one — and if you lost that spot, you'd have to give up the shirt for the week.
"You basically had to give it to somebody else and then try to earn your spot back," he said.
Greenwald said Walz brought intense passion to the game "even when you're having a bad day."
"Sometimes the last thing you wanted to see was him bringing all that energy to the table," he said, laughing. "He wasn't really going to allow you to have a low-energy day."
Slowly, over three years, the team gained confidence — and wins. Then, in 1999, the stars seemed to align. They took home eight straight wins and landed in the state championship.
Sutton recalled that the game.
"It was a very close game," he said. Mankato West was up by one, and the other team was getting close to scoring with about a minute left.
"We intercepted a pass, and we knew that was the clincher that we were going to win," he said. Soon, everybody was hugging. It "was just an unbelievable feeling."
The national stage
Since the announcement, Sutton's phone has been ringing constantly, and he's called the whole situation "surreal."
That surreal moment when someone you used to work very closely with gets selected as the VP candidate. pic.twitter.com/q70HV0H8F1
— Rick Sutton (@RickSutton7) August 6, 2024
Of course, Walz is now a seasoned political operator. He was elected to Congress in 2006 and became Minnesota's governor in 2019.
But his national profile was relatively low, and his name was barely in public contention for the VP pick until just a couple of days before he was announced.
"I didn't necessarily see this coming," said Greenwald, who is an assistant football coach himself.
Sutton knows firsthand what it is like to have Walz as his subordinate and told BI that "you can definitely draw some parallels between the idea of being an assistant coach and being a vice president."
"Tim is genuine," he said. "Tim is who he is."
He added: "He's a teacher, he's a coach, he's an educator, and that's kind of how he looks at everything he does, I think it's fair to say."
For Schoettler, most politicians are the same: focused on making money and "little agendas." But Walz is "not your normal politician."
Meyer also spoke about an "overwhelming feeling" in society that everyone is a phony.
"And out of the four people who are running for executive office this time, no one thinks that Mr. Walz is a phony," he said. "And if there's no other quality that he has, that's the one that he has."