‘Coach Walz’ Leads a Democratic Pep Rally

The United Center arena in Chicago is the home of basketball’s Bulls and hockey’s Blackhawks. But you would be forgiven, Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, for thinking it was a football stadium — or rather, a locker room.

“I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this,” said Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate. “But I have given a lot of pep talks.”

This was what Mr. Walz, a former high school football coach, gave, delivering a cheerfully combative speech in front of a sea of “COACH WALZ” signs. But his style, his biography and the production that the convention built around him also gave the Democrats something more.

To a campaign headed by a woman and backed prominently by female validaters — Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and on Wednesday, Oprah Winfrey — Mr. Walz contributed an idea of masculinity that contrasted with Donald Trump’s performative, pro-wrestling-influenced machismo. He answered Mr. Trump’s coarse bluster with his own version of locker-room talk. He counterprogrammed Mr. Trump’s endless production of “The Apprentice” with a reboot of “Friday Night Lights.”

Mr. Walz was introduced by Benjamin C. Ingman, a former student whom he coached in seventh-grade track, and preceded onstage by grown members of the football team he helped coach, stuffed into their high school jerseys.

There was enough dad energy onstage to power a nuclear submarine.

Not all coaches are men, but there are few pop-culture archetypes more male-coded. There’s the coach as paternalistic strongman — the my-way-or-the-highway leader whom you obey or you’re off the team. There’s the coach as icon — the Vince Lombardis and Tom Landrys whom fans hold equal to political leaders, or greater.