As the team captains make their way to the center of the field Saturday at the Kibbie Dome for the coin toss they will be taking part in a centennial celebration of Ronald Reagan.
The Vandals are one of many teams across the country taking part in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation National Football Coin Toss this weekend. Idaho football coach Robb Akey said this is a great opportunity to celebrate a true American.
“We are using this coin this weekend to honor a great American,” Akey said. “I don’t care what your political beliefs are or how you felt about him as a politician, Regan was a great leader of this country and a great American, and for that reason I am very excited to be commemorating him in this fashion.”
High schools, colleges and all 32 NFL teams will participate in the coin toss this weekend to celebrate former President Reagan’s 100th birthday.
Stewart McLaurin, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation’s Centennial Celebration, said this is an opportunity for communities across the United States to join the celebration.
“This is an opportunity we have through this coin toss to reach out to communities all across the nation, we actually have 4,500 high schools who have committed to participate, and those are high schools from North Pole High School in Alaska to Key West High School in Florida,” McLaurin said.
McLaurin said more than 190 colleges and universities have also agreed to flip the commemorative coin before their games this weekend.
The idea for the coin toss arose in February when President Reagan’s birthday was celebrated at the Super Bowl in Arlington, Texas. McLaurin said the committee behind the Reagan Foundation decided to hold another event for the president’s celebration.
McLaurin said football is a great opportunity for the celebration because of how special the game is and was to President Reagan.
“Football is a wonderful and uniquely American, Friday night and Saturday activity across our country, so what a great vehicle to celebrate his birthday and give communities across America the opportunity to do what they were doing at the Super Bowl and what were doing here at the Reagan library to have a brief celebration or acknowledgement of awareness of the president’s 100th birthday,” McLaurin said.
The first of these coin tosses was held Sept. 17 at USC, and McLaurin said there was a lot of excitement about the event. One of the event’s co-chairs, Lynn Swann, was there to help celebrate.
Swann is joined as co-chair of the event by Lou Holtz, Doug Flutie and J.C. Watts a former Oklahoma quarterback. McLaurin said the four men selected were chosen because of their relevance to football, their familiarity to football fans and Watts’ political background, he thought was a nice tribute.
McLaurin said having a football event for President Reagan made a lot of sense when you consider certain facets of his life. Ronald Reagan played high school and college football, announced collegiate games, flipped the coin via satellite at Super Bowl XIX and even his acting career saw him playing football characters. One particular movie was “Knute Rockne, All American” in which Reagan famously spoke the line, “Lets win one for the gipper.”
Packages were sent out to all of the schools interested in participating in the coin toss. High schools received a letter explaining the toss, a blue box with the coin, a script of how to announce the game, recommendations to turn coin into a leadership award and a curriculum set up by the University of Virgina to teach their students more about President Reagan. The college package contains a letter, the coin, a tribute DVD to play before the game and a media release. The NFL package is similar in content.
McLaurin said he worked for Reagan’s administration right out of college and he is grateful for what he learned from the 40th president. He hopes that the same message he received can be sent to younger people about the President.
“To me what is important about the centennial is the opportunity to introduce Ronald Reagan, to the next generation of young Americans who I believe, and were seeing, will recognize in him a great leader, and one that they can learn from,” McLaurin said.