Teachers are state employees, but they are not the state’s robots. When they clearly speak on their own, the First Amendment should apply. Whether they kneel in prayer or protest, it’s not just acceptable for students and parents to see teachers as people and citizens; it’s imperative. The best way to teach pluralism is to model pluralism. Let Coach Kennedy pray, for all our sakes.
I respect French as a thoughtful, serious conservative, but in this he's blinded by his team affiliation, so to say.
The real issue is to what degree is Coach Kennedy's praying coercive. It's one thing to pray, it's another thing to gather the team around him as he does so. I haven't made a deep study of it, but from the reporting I've read, apparently he did both, and his doing the first led to to the second:
Kennedy spent much of his coaching career behaving like a preacher, holding public prayer sessions for students — many of whom Kennedy wielded authority over. And, while there’s no evidence that he ever ordered a student to kneel with him when he performed a religious ceremony on the 50-yard line, he did not discourage students from joining him, either, and a majority of the students on his team eventually did so. (Source)
The problem is that in a complex pluralistic society it's more likely that some students are going to feel that they are being pressured to do something they don't want to do. You can say that they are free to abstain, but what does that do for team unity? Isn't that the coach's primary responsibility--to build team cohesiveness and morale? If he thinks the assertive public display of his religious commitments are more important than the requirements of his job description, he should be fired on those grounds alone if they lead to feelings of favoritism, resentment, and exclusion, which apparently they did.
The school administrators tried to work with him and set some limits--
Initially, the coach complied. But he soon unleashed a coordinated legal and PR campaign against the school district. About a month after the superintendent ordered Kennedy to stop preaching religion to his students, Kennedy’s lawyer informed the school district that the coach would resume praying at the 50-yard line immediately after games.
What followed was a circus. Kennedy went on a media tour presenting himself as a devout coach who “made a commitment with God” to performatively pray after each game. Good Morning America did a segment on him. Conservative media ran with headlines like “High School Coach Bullied Into Dropping Prayer at Football Games.” By the end of the month, 47 members of Congress — all Republicans — wrote to Leavell in support of Kennedy.
At the conclusion of the next game, coaches, players, and members of the general public mobbed the field when Kennedy knelt to pray. A federal appeals court described the rush of people onto the field as a “stampede,” and the school principal complained that he “saw people fall” and that, due to the crush of people, the district was unable “to keep kids safe.” Members of the school’s marching band were knocked over by the crowds. (Source)
It's one thing to let everybody know that you are a sincere, committed Christian. I think most people would respect that, especially if you behave like one. It's another thing when you assert your beliefs in such a way as to make a public space like a school a battle field in the culture war. I don't know the man, but from the reporting Kennedy comes of as more of a fanatic than a love-centered Christian. And If he is so fanatical about this that he is making a Supreme Court case of it, he's not someone I'd want coaching any child of mine. He should just get a job coaching at a conservative Christian School where his zeal will be appreciated.
While I am myself someone who prays, I am not someone who believes that God has or should have a rooting interest in my team winning, and it goes against everything that I believe that I should pray to him that he may help me to defeat my opponent. I'm not saying that this is what [Coach] Kennedy prayed about because I don't know, but a court precedent would open the door to coaches who would pray in this way, and if I were a religious student athlete, I would feel that I was being coerced to pray to a God I don't believe in because my God doesn't take sides in such matters. Such a coach is not praying to the transcendent God revealed in the gospels but to a sublunary, local deity like Mars, the Roman god of war.
And to take it a step further, once you set the precedent, what is to prevent a coach from praying to Moloch or Satan--or some Wiccan deity? Is [David] French willing to stand by some other coach if such entities are the object of his worship and parents and school administrators object? Do you really want to open that can of worms? Where do you draw the line? Once again, the fundamental problem here is trying to litigate a metaphysical matter in the political sphere. It just doesn't work.
If the coach prays for each student to do his best and may the better team win, let him do that quietly and by himself, and then publicly tell his students that he knows that each has his best game in him on that day. That would be laudable. And it would be the more Christian way to pray. Coach Kennedy and David French might well be reminded of Jesus's advice on the matter:
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt 6:5ff)