No one, not his staunchest defenders nor the man himself, would call Larry Fetkenhier a saint. His critical eye and sometimes brutal brand of honesty extended to the man in the mirror.

Interviewing him in the summer of 2015 following successful surgery late in the 2014 to remove cancer confined to his kidney, he was genuinely touched by the similar outpouring of prayers, reflections and well wishes from the wide net "of people whose lives. In the next breath, he questioned whether he was deserving of it.

"It made me realize I haven’t always been the best person," Fetkenhier said at the time.

And no profile of the legend would be complete without a description of his crusty exterior. I later learned he was from near Flint, Michigan and arrived at Cactus after being laid off as a teacher and coach and having to work in fleet sales. That explains a lot.

Honestly, for the first year-and-a-half covering local prep sports, I loathed dealing with the man. And he likely thought of me as that pain in the ass reporter that never shows up on time for interviews — that later point hasn’t changed.

Sometime during the 2009 season I asked him a more introspective question than usual and he stopped the interview, looked at me and said, "you know, that’s a really good question."

Our professional relationship began to improve from there, and during the course of that 2009 state title drive and a subsequent 2010 preseason interview with the three pillars of Peoria Unified School District football, Fetkenhier, Peoria’s Doug Clapp and Centennial’s Richard Taylor, I learned more about the true depth of the man.

Fetkenhier loved to win — he called a 7-3 season in 2012 unacceptable — but he stayed at Cactus for bigger reasons. He wanted to mold — forge may be the better word — young men into successful adults that would be a credit to their community.

Players and coaches worked hard constantly, during the season and in preparation for the next one. In spring, it seemed like the core of Cactus football was always outside or in the weight room, working on their games or their strength and conditioning.

But you got the sense he could care less about the youth football scene or what players in it would come to Cactus. His relationships with players started when they stepped on campus and his program was not going to bend to the talent of a star or a kid who transferred in.

Yes it was old-school and sometimes uncompromising to a fault. But it was refreshing — a throwback to the football of the 80s and 90s where words like recruiting, transfer and open enrollment were the exception, not the rule. When parents didn’t use schools like chess pieces in effort to maximize their kid’s profile or brazenly shop for schools and scholarships.

Instead, he coached football and life lessons to those willing to receive them. While things changed to the point where I can honestly say Fetkenhier became my favorite interview for his candor, seeming absence of coach-speak and view of the big picture, one thing never changed.

I needed to interview those kids before or after practice, because practice was planned with precision and purpose. The Cactus practices I witnessed where the most intense I have seen, a blur of motion designed to simulate game tempo and decision making at that speed.

Mistakes would be pointed out, loudly, by the coach with the unsparing eye. The language would turn a darker shade of blue than the Cobras’ helmets.

Yet this was another way to prepare kids beyond football. In the adult world, people will let you know when you’ve screwed up, and they won’t be nice about it. If you learn from them and get better, however, things will improve.

Most of all, Fetkenhier preached that consistent hard work was the key to success on and off the field. That at some point, a boy has to accept the responsibility of becoming a man, and having that work ethic will see him through his troubles and lift up those around him.

Those lessons and that relentless work didn’t always resonate with high school kids, particularly in the 21st Century. Cactus rosters always seemed to shrink between August and October of recent years as a generation raised with a much softer ethos collided with the Cobra Tradition.

But former players, with the benefit of time spent in the real world, came to revere what Fetkenhier did for them.

Their joy was more in seeing their old coach win the big one than in their old school. By this point, he was the essence of Cobra football.

At the same time, I never saw a coach attract so many former players — from such a wide range of graduating classes — to big games. And I never witnessed a program celebrate alums that went on to blue-collar, professional, military and first responder careers every bit as much as those that played college ball.

The coach worked just as hard, serving as his own offensive coordinator all 34 years, and tweaking his scheme to best fit his personnel in nearly all of those seasons.

Fetkenhier also became a spokesman for his peers and a leading voice of the Arizona Football Coaches Association on several grievances with the AIA, including the bizarre setup for 2011 and 2012 without regions and with a schedule largely determined by computers.

Larry Fetkenhier was the first to let the greater Arizona high school football community know the severity of former Ironwood coach Chuck Esquivel’s cancer, spoke at his Ironwood sports hall of fame induction and was on hand for the Ironwood field dedication in Esquivel’s name just last month.

After a decade where Fetkenhier’s Cobras and Doug Clapp’s Peoria Panthers went at each other like the Hattfields and McCoys on and off the field, their relationship began to thaw. By the time Clapp had to resign amid allegations (and charges of) misusing football program funds in early 2012, Fetkenhier’s was one of his closest friends in the profession.

He developed an admiration — and friendship with Peoria coach Will Babb, the quarterback of those Peoria teams that bedeviled his early Cobras powerhouses. Partially, that was due to the more friendly nature of the grand rivalry after its revival in 2007. But he also saw a kindred spirit in a football landscape that had strayed far from its roots, and would speak of Babb’s decency whenever the rival coach came under fire.

I remember him talking to then-Paradise Valley (and now ASU assistant) Donnie Yantis asking if he wanted red pants donated by the Arizona Cardinals that the Cobras had no use for.

Perhaps that is why many of the loudest outraged voiced on social media since Fetkenhier was forced out belong to current and former coaches.

"I think the older I get, the more mortal I am. You learn to care about other people more. My coaching peers, you see people get beat up (by outside pressure from parents, fans and the media) and it really bothers me. You see stuff like that happen to people you know, and that hurts. Do you know how much we make a year? I may still be a grouchy old grump, but it bothers me. I guess I have more passion for my peers," Fetkenhier said in that 2010 interview.

A little more than seven years later something like that happened to him, only from within that school.

In more than three decades, Larry Fetkenhier built one or Arizona’s best football traditions at a working class Glendale school surrounded more by shops and restaurants than homes. He rarely had large numbers or big money behind his program and never took shortcuts.

He did a brief interview Dec. 29 with Richard Obert of AZCentral, stating he wanted to take the high road and was not done coaching. But for many of those whose lives he impacted, including me, the question remains.

Is there a need for a "different direction?" I would love to know why?

Hammer and Doyle and whomever else thought it was time do not answer a community newspaper writer.

But they’ll need to speak up soon, because the letters to them, acting PUSD Superintendent Steve Savoy and district HR director Carter Davidson.