Arena Football's Ironman: Mark Stoute's Versatility Helps Pirates Fuel and Reload
January 10, 2025 - Indoor Football League (IFL)
Massachusetts Pirates News Release
Lowell, MA - As the clock wound down during the Massachusetts Pirates' 51-28 Eastern Conference Championship victory over Green Bay, the reality of a trip to a second national championship game was settling in for Pirates Nation. On the field, closing out the top-seeded Blizzard still needed to be fully secured-ideally without injury, conflict-igniting penalties or suspensions as the fourth quarter faded. During these final minutes, the Pirates' Assistant Director of Football Operations, Associate Head Coach and DL/LB coach could be seen interacting with players on the field, perhaps helping ensure they took nothing for granted. Impressively, those three aforementioned roles on the Pirates' staff belong to one coach: Mark Stoute.
Pirates Assistant Offensive Line Coach Mike Custer spoke of just how well players respond to Stoute's track record of telling them like it is so that the players can truly improve. "[The players] respect him, 100%. You have guys coming in who are 6'9, 6'8, 330 pounds, and Stoute is a disciplinary coach. No nonsense. When he talks, you listen. And he's like a father figure."
Custer and Stoute have forged a familial friendship that's generated a 40-17 record as coaches together at Cedar Rapids, two semi-professional championships playing together with the Connecticut Giants, and even a high school football championship captured while coaching together in Connecticut. Both are former college football players as well, hailing from the University of Buffalo and Kentucky State, respectively.
Agent Eric Echols of Xtreme Sports Management, who has worked extensively with Stoute, highlighted the combination of Stoute's knack for reaching players alongside the Pirates' track record of creating opportunities for players to move up to the NFL or CFL.
"Thank God for a league like the IFL to give these young men an opportunity where they may have just been a diamond in the rough, or they may have been overlooked, because sometimes, it's not just about talent, it's about an opportunity," Echols pointed out.
Stoute himself perhaps relates to the journeys many IFL players find themselves on. After serving as a dual-sport walk-on, scholarship athlete at Kentucky State, Stoute himself once had a shot with the Dallas Cowboys and the USFL's New Jersey Generals. After those opportunities fizzled and by the mid-nineties, Stoute was working in a combined equipment manager and assistant coach role with a budding arena league franchise in Connecticut. Impressively, Stoute proactively generated that opportunity for himself by having the humility and courage to show up and strike up a conversation with the very coach who had previously cut him at a professional tryout.
"You know, throughout my career, I got into coaching by accident," Stoute recalls. "I live right outside of Hartford, Connecticut, and an arena team came to Hartford. I had tried out for the New Jersey Generals way back when they were owned by Donald Trump in the very beginning of the USFL. The guy that cut us that day-the kickers that got cut-was a guy by the name of Rick Buffington, and he became the head coach of that team in Hartford. And I remembered him from the tryout, went in and talked to him and you know, I was going to help him with some off-the-field stuff."
Before the season, an opportunity arose for an assistant coaching job with the team, then known as the Connecticut Coyotes. "They had an opening as an assistant coach," Stoute said. "So I thought about it, and decided I would take the summer off from working. I was a general salesman at a car dealership at the time. I took the summer off and never went back to working in the car business."
Stoute remembered just how satisfying coaching felt. "Once I started coaching, it was like playing all over again."
The veteran coach and football operations executive met Coach Custer in Connecticut as well. By now, the two refer to each other as brothers. As with any healthy family, pranks may happen from time-to-time. Or in this case, at least once per season.
"[Stoute] can be a jokester, too," Custer said. "Matter of fact, sometimes he goes overboard, he gets you so good."
Custer describes a prank Stoute has been pulling on him for so long, the players carrying out the prank today were likely not even yet born when it began in the 1990's. Toward the end of a practice, Stoute may call a play to be run toward the side where Custer is standing on the field at that time.
"Unbeknownst to me, he has the guys attack me," Custer says. "Full speed, with full gear on, and they tackle me to the ground. And then they take my shoes. They take my shoes off my feet." Asked if he ever tries to get Stoute back for the prank, Custer replied, "I try, but the guys are too afraid."
California native Eric Banford, a defensive lineman who played for Stoute at Cedar Rapids, remembers him as truly caring for players.
"Sometimes that tough love, that tough love grows on you," Banford recalled. About to have a daughter himself, Banford remembers how Stoute showed support as Banford's father was battling health issues. "He knows the game, he knows the players and he knows his players," Banford said.
Echols agrees. "You could cut him from the same cloth as a Parcells or a Belichick, because his demeanor is very, very thorough. Very, very tough, but he loves his players and he will do anything for them."
In his youth, Stoute represented his native Barbados in international competition as a hurdler. At Kentucky State, he'd study Business Management, Computer Science, and compete in track. In terms of his football origin story, he describes his journey to the sport as an encounter generated by his enrollment in a physical education class at Kentucky State that turned out to be football-oriented.
Stoute notes that he had never played football growing up in Barbados, where football is, of course, soccer. He started experimenting with punting one day after class. Eventually, Stoute was asked if he'd tried kicking from a tee.
"One thing led to another and by the end of that PE class, the coach had come to me and said, "Where are you from? What do you do in school?" Stoute told the coach he was there on a track scholarship. The coach in turn invited him to come try and be the football kicker. Stoute not only made the team. The track and football teams actually ended up splitting the payment of his scholarship.
"[Track] was what my scholarship was, and I didn't know if [the track coach] would want me playing football," Stoute recalls. "So the track coach and [the football coach] worked it out where track paid for my scholarship for half the year, and then football paid for it for half the year, so I was able to play both sports."
Stoute's deep institutional knowledge within arena football appears driven by an enthusiasm that sparks right up when talking shop. When asked about his first head-coaching and general managing experience in Toronto, for example, the ever-humble Stoute gave a nod to the expertise of others who taught him key details.
"I also had always gravitated toward-with a bit of a business background-dealing with some of the stuff on the business side: transportation, picking up players, organization, flights-all that stuff," Stoute mentions. "So, I was lucky that the coaching staffs I worked with, I was able to pick up on some of those things and get some knowledge."
Asked whether the franchise existing within the "Titletown" history impacts player recruiting, Stoute instead characterized the player destination element in terms of opportunities.
"Well, it helps us in the sense that the Pirates have done very well," he points out. "The Pirates are a proven entity. We're in the playoffs every year. We have the most players of any team in indoor football that have transitioned to the next level."
Indeed, the Pirates have created over 100 opportunities for players to move up to the highest levels of professional football, including the NFL. Stoute delved into another angle of how this reality can impact football operations. "We're on that cutting edge where most of our guys are being looked at by the other leagues," he explained. "It's a little bit tough because they can pluck 'em at any time. And sometimes, that's kinda tough. But the good thing about it is because our guys are moving, then we have quite a few guys in the system, and agents that are sitting there waiting, saying 'If you've got space, can you fill my guy in?'"
According to Echols, Stoute seems to have the even-keeled temperament necessary to handle any pressures around higher volumes of player attrition from players moving up.
"My nickname for Coach Stoute is Joe Cool," Echols notes."Like, nothing bothers him. And that's kinda how he is. Nothing really bothers him. He's very, very focused."
Echols also believes Stoute should be honored in the IFL Hall of Fame when the time comes.
"What I really love about [Stoute] is he has no ceiling," Echols observed. "There's just so many things that he's accomplished and so many more things that he can, and that's kind of how I feel about the Pirates. They just have no ceiling. They are a very, very good football team. And just think that in years to come, we're always going to know who they are."
Stoute both serves and benefits from the perspective of seeing entire life cycles of football players' careers. Indeed, when he's not coaching professionally, the arena football household name also serves as an assistant coach of Glastonbury High School's football team in Connecticut. With as much of a competitive advantage high school players may get from having him around, in a way the work arguably informs the coach's profession, too.
"The big thing about [coaching high school football] is you really are molding young kids." Stoute explains. "So you're really in at the grassroots level and you're seeing those kids mature, you're seeing those kids come away with a skillset that they'll have for the rest of their life but also that they're now going on to college to begin their college career in football. And then, again, like in this level, I'm seeing them after they're done with college. So, we're kind of getting to see the whole, the whole shebang, from when they start getting ready, trying to learn trying to play, trying to build a resume to get into a college, and then from a college trying to look into the pros, and then I'm seeing those guys back here, so it's kind of like I'm seeing the full circle."
If it seems like Coach Stoute never stops working, Coach Custer can confirm. "He's one of the hardest workers," Custer said. "He makes me work even harder."
Preparations for the Pirates' 2025 season are already well underway. 2025 Season-ticketholder packages begin at just $96 and can be purchased at https://masspiratesfootball.com/sports/2022/3/7/general-ticket-options.aspx
• Discuss this story on the Indoor Football League message board...
Indoor Football League Stories from January 10, 2025
- Pirates Re-Sign Jeblonski Green Jr. - Massachusetts Pirates
- Arena Football's Ironman: Mark Stoute's Versatility Helps Pirates Fuel and Reload - Massachusetts Pirates
- Barnstormers Add to O-Line - Iowa Barnstormers
The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
