After 200 Episodes, This Beloved Sports Sitcom Miserably Failed to Spark a Revival

August 31, 2025 | by ltcinsuranceshopper

Can a sitcom centered around a football coach be successful? Yes… and no. From 1989-1997, ABC’s Coach followed the antics of Hayden Fox (Craig T. Nelson), head coach of an NCAA college football team. Buoyed by Nelson’s talent with the comedic and sometimes dramatic elements the role involved, along with a successful mix of characters and storylines, the series proved successful for nine seasons. Coach worked so well that NBC commissioned a sequel series in 2015. 13 episodes were ordered, only one was filmed, and Coach‘s revival never saw the light of day, following up the original’s nine consecutive touchdowns with a fumble. And it’s not hard to understand why.

‘Coach’ Plays Safe In Its First Season

Promotional image for Coach features Craig T. Nelson holding a football out on the field with a goalpost in the background.

After a decade of playing supporting characters in films and numerous guest appearances on television series, Nelson first came to prominence in 1982’s Poltergeist, the classic horror film that chillingly brought “They’re here” to the vernacular. In portraying Steve, the patriarch of the Freeling family, Nelson brings relatability to the character, defined at any one time by his fear, his instinct to protect his children and his wife, his outrage, and his humor (wheeling the television out of the motel room at the end of the film is both understandable and downright funny). It’s that ability to deftly weave from one emotional state to another, in a believable manner, that Nelson would bring to Coach in 1989.

The first season of Coach sets up a simple premise, following coach Hayden Fox of the NCAA Minnesota State University Screaming Eagles football team as he deals with a girlfriend, Christine (Shelley Fabares), who doesn’t share his passion for football; a daughter, Kelly (Clare Carey), enrolled at the school, who is growing up too fast for his taste; her boyfriend, Stuart (Kris Kamm), a theater mime that he can’t stand; an assistant coach, Luther (Jerry Van Dyke), who lives in a perpetual state of perplexity, and another, Dauber (Bill Fagerbakke), who’s as thick as the goalpost; and Judy (Pam Stone), coach of the women’s basketball team who engages in prank wars with Hayden. The series didn’t distance itself much from its sitcom kin, sticking with the safe plays in that first season.

‘Coach’ Scores Touchdowns With a Winning Playbook

Promotional image for Coach with Bill Fagerbakke, Craig T. Nelson and Jerry Van Dyke in football pose.

But as the series progressed, it became more than a formulaic sitcom. The interactions between Nelson, Van Dyke, and Fagerbakke are legitimately funny and endearing, providing a core on which the series rests that grows stronger over the series’ run. Storylines, like Stuart ending his marriage with Kelly after meeting another woman, allow Nelson to flex his dramatic muscles alongside his innate comic talent. Coach also gave itself credibility with sports fans by including clever Easter eggs (in the final two seasons, Hayden became coach of a fictional NFL team, the Orlando Breakers, a salute to the USFL Boston/New Orleans/Portland Breakers) and appearances by football greats like Troy Aikman and Joe Theisman. But the best guest appearance on the series isn’t a football great, but rather a Hollywood icon, with Jerry Van Dyke’s brother, a little-known actor named Dick Van Dyke, making a cheeky cameo appearance by walking across the screen in an episode centered around Luther.

The series not only found success with viewers, but with critics as well, earning a number of award nominations and wins, including 14 nominations and 2 Emmy Award wins. Among those nominations are ones for Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Jerry Van Dyke and Shelley Fabares respectively. Acknowledging the work of the two supporting actors in Coach wasn’t only well-deserved, but vindication for both. Fabares started her career as a child actor, most notably in The Donna Reed Show and opposite Elvis Presley in 1967’s Clambake, but Coach brought her back into prominence. Van Dyke, on the other hand, never escaped the stigma of being attached to 1965’s My Mother the Car, widely — and rightfully — seen as one of television’s worst all-time shows, until Coach came along, redeeming his name as a comic talent in his own right.

The ‘Coach’ Sequel Series Fumbles the Ball

Coach was cancelled after nine seasons, but with the advent of a golden age of the reboot in the 2000s, it was inevitable that someone would want to revisit Coach. Only it wasn’t ABC, but rather NBC that commissioned a sequel series in 2015. Announced the same week as Fox’s commitment to a six-episode return of The X-Files, Coach would be a 13-episode renewal, bringing back Nelson as Hayden Fox and Fagerbakke as Dauber. Only they would be assistant coaches to Fox’s son, played by Andrew Ridings, the head coach of a Pennsylvania Ivy League school football team, the school’s first ever. Barry Kemp, the creator/producer/writer of the original, was returning to write as well, so Coach II (not its real handle, just for funsies) had everything it needed to carry on Coach‘s winning legacy.

If we continue with the football metaphor, the new Coach had the ball, first and goal, and simply had to run in for the touchdown to win. Instead, they fumbled the ball, ending the game without even an attempt to reach the end zone, with NBC pulling the plug before even airing the pilot, the only episode that was ever filmed. Reception to the pilot was good, Nelson was game to get back to comedy (NBC had even ended Parenthood to free Nelson for the series), and both Kemp and Nelson were adamant that they didn’t want to ruin Coach‘s legacy.

And that was a problem for NBC. Per the previously cited TV Insider, network insiders claimed that executives felt Kemp did, indeed, make the show he wanted to make, but were frustrated that he didn’t make the show they wanted to make, disregarding their notes about the series. As a result, the show “wasn’t the right fit for NBC” and it ended there. However, the series had two strikes going against it that would likely have spelled disaster even if it had made it to air. Van Dyke was too old to commit to the series (he passed away in 2018), and would only have appeared in a guest shot for a proposed Christmas episode, effectively altering the winning dynamic between the three characters that was so successful initially. Then Kemp made a questionable creative decision to give Hayden a reason for returning to coaching by killing off Christine a year prior to the events of the series, which would have been difficult for long-time fans to embrace. Regardless of the circumstances, the failure of Coach‘s revival, ultimately, is for the best, allowing fans to remember Coach Hayden Fox and his cohorts at the top of their game.