Style question: coach or Coach

Forgive me if this has been posted somewhere before but which is correct style:

"blah blah blah," Podunk coach John Smith said.

OR "blah blah blah," Podunk Coach John Smith said.

We can't agree on it in our shop ... thanks ...

 

definitely lower case.

geez, it ain't the freakin' president.....

nothing upper-case worthy about it. 8) :

 

ditto

 

yeah, go lower case.

 

According to AP Style Book, it's "coach" if preceded by a qualifying term like "Podunk coach John Smith." If there's no qualifying term, you capitalize it like "Coach John Smith said."

 

AP style is generally lowercase, but I worked at one where it was uppercased in all instances. Just depends on your paper's style.

 

eff AP style. it's just wrong. as wrong as any reporter addressing a coach in a presser as "Coach..." he/she ain't your coach. he/she has a name. use it.

 

How 'bout in quotes? When a player says "I spent all summer working on my pass-rush moves with Coach Williams," is that capitalized?

 

its coach with a 'c'

You could be like the Daily Podunk Times here in this area. The sports EDITOR there will quote a coach like this:

"We just couldnt play worth a shit tonight. I saw more energy out of the two dogs fucking that I saw on my way to school today," said Coach Smith. "We just have to have more energy, or we'll get the hell beat out of us every week," Coach Smith said.

 

TV geekette here uses that term for one person around here so much that it might as well be Nick Saban's first name -- no one else, just Saban...

 

I find that pretty ridiculous, Shockey. I think most coaches are actually pretty comfortable being addressed as "Coach".

Do people who don't live in the US not address President Bush as "President Bush"? I mean, he's not their president.

 

The way I interpret AP style is that the above instance is the only one in which you should capitalize "coach" -- when it's clearly used as a title (like Chief, Sgt., King) rather than a job description. That's why you never should capitalize "general manager," because no one has ever said, "Negotiations with General Manager Cashman are going well."