Meet Coach Gibson . . . I think

The last of the "Before They Were Daria Stars" flipbook characters on MTV's Daria site is somehow misidentified as Burnout Chick, which she . . . er, he definitely isn't. He is obviously a high-school sports coach who bears a resemblance to the heavy-set faculty member seen on rare occasions in the original series. We get a good glimpse of this latter fellow (short light brown hair, no mustache, blue sweatshirt, whistle on chain, gray sweatpants, sneakers) marching with the striking teachers in "Lucky Strike" (at far left in picture), and we have a distant view of the same figure in "Fizz Ed," standing on the edge of the football field during scrimmage practice. A coach he must be. Maybe he got tired of the mustache.

In The Daria Diaries, Mack makes reference to a coach named Mr. Gibson who is "almost done paying his debt to society" and had assured Mack that when the recruiter used the word "kickback," he thought the man had said "kickoff." It isn't clear who was running the football team while the coach was "paying his debt," but the two MTV books reflect material from the first two seasons of Daria, and the coach appears in the last, fifth season. (CORRECTION: I just spotted him in the Assembly scene of "Esteemsters," on the stage with Ms. Li. Oh, well.) We can hypothesize that the coach seen in the show is Gibson, and between the time he appeared in Esteemsters and the fifth season he got a brief government-funded vacation in the Big House. The character seen in the flipbook could be him as well, before he went to the hoosegow and shaved off his mustache. He remained a background character throughout.

On a related topic, note the presence of two black teachers among the marchers in "Lucky Strike": one short and heavy with glasses and one tall and thin. One of them must be the mathematics teacher, since we never see one in the series, and the other must teach . . . computers? Humanities? Mass media? Band? French? Where the heck are all of the Lawndale High teachers?