The HURRICANE.

One of the problems football coaches encounter is that, all other things being completely equal, the more physical team generally wins the game. Whoever blocks, tackles, and just plain knocks the other down is most likely to have more points on the scoreboard at the end of the game.

That's an elegant restatement of the problem. Now, what do we do about a solution?

There are a lot of ways to build aggression in football players. In high school, the emphasis is on not hitting your teammates, due to the risk of injury. As a result, we tend to focus our impact time on sleds, bags, and other nonhuman equipment that doesn't incur medical expenses when broken.

The youth levels, however, are vastly different. Most youth programs don't have expensive sleds and other equipment, and so need to focus their hitting on one another, even though it is somewhat more dangerous. Before you shriek out that I'm advocating increased risk for your players, I want you to think about this:

Should your players hit and be hit in practice, where you and your staff can tailor the drills, control the matchups, and otherwise damp things down to reduce injury while still building confidence...

...Or should your players discover hitting in a game, where anywhere from two to five officials will be more interested in collecting a paycheck than in enforcing safety rules correctly, and the opposing team will care neither for the equality of matchups or for any conditions that adversely affect their ability to score?

I would rather my players gain confidence in hitting in a controlled environment where they can improve without worrying about the blindside block or decleater from out of nowhere, and where my quick whistle and the eyes of my assistants can stop a drill before someone is injured.

Enter, the Hurricane drill. I've discussed this drill before, most notably in the FORUM, but this is the first time I've placed it online in complete form.

Setup:

Take four cones, shields, or bags and set them up to mark an area approximately five yards on a side (25 square yards). Place three players in the square with one football.

Player A: Tackler. His responsibility is to securely bring down the ball carrier.
Player B: Blocker. His responsibility is to prevent the tackler from making any contact with the ball carrier. He can strike from almost any angle (although you can provide pressure on him to block only from the front-- I usually work the drill from the defensive side and allow the offense to "cheat" slightly.)
Player C: Ball Carrier. He must avoid being tackled as long as possible.

Execution:

All three players begin movement on the whistle. The designated tackler must attack the ball carrier immediately, not seeking to avoid the blocker, but disengaging from him as quickly as possible if contact is made. The blocker can attack, sit, angle, or use any other technique or method to move the tackler away from the ball carrier, who can juke, spin, and dodge as needed to avoid being tackled. As a natural occurrence within the drill, the blocker may hold. If you are working on offense, penalize him with pushups, up/downs, etc. If you are working on defense, your defender can use this as an opportunity to execute holdbreaking techniques (something you should work at least five minutes out of every defensive practice.)


Coaching Points:

The tackler should keep his eyes pinned to the ball carrier and use his peripheral vision to locate the blocker and avoid him as necessary. He should use any and all holdbreaking techniques necessary to separate from the blocker and regain an angle of approach to the ball carrier.

Ball carriers will generally be able to spin out of tackles unless the tackler makes a secure and tight wrap, grabbing cloth with both hands. The drill does not end until the tackler has managed to bring the ball carrier to the ground. All players involved in the drill must remain within the square.

As a conditioning exercise, I require my players to move from tackler, to blocker, to ball carrier. This has two affects on the drill. First, the ball carriers are generally tired, which gives the outnumbered tackler a better chance to bring them down in a timely manner. Second, it extends the period during which the athletes are strenuously active, which pushes them closer to their VO(2max). This is the maximum rate at which the body can absorb oxygen. Training to increase this threshold increases the burst ability of your players-- they will be able to function at peak explosive effort for longer periods. They will also recover more quickly between plays, and be better able to recuperate after games.

Some players will focus too extensively on the blocker and forget the ball carrier. This has a way of weeding itself out of the drill-- the longer you fart around with the blocker, the more tired you are going to get. Your best option to get out of the drill in a hurry is to act like the blocker doesn't exist and simply attack the ball carrier. This translates on game day to defenders that shed tacklers faster and penetrate to the offensive backfield in a hurry.

I try to run this drill for fifteen to twenty minutes (four segments) once a week or so in the preseason, and for five to ten minutes (two segments) in the regular season.

Hope this helps!

~D.

Stop Screwing With Football! (Part One)

Probably the number one question I get asked goes something like this:

My league requires six defensive players on the line of scrimmage. No one can be head up on the center, and the linebackers can't be moving towards the line at the snap. I coach 9-year-olds and would like to run the Gap-8. Do you have any advice for modifying the defense for these rules?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but no, I really don't. I do, on the other hand, have some excellent advice on another topic: get your ass out of that league.

Rules like this are absurd and unnecessary. Worse, they are actively interfering with the players' ability to learn and enjoy football. These rules are usually put in place by well-meaning parents and board members seeking to "ease" their kids into the game.

Well, I say "usually." On occasion these idiot rules are put in place specifically to stifle an innovative coach who tried something that is completely legal and within the regular high school rules of football but that his opposing coaches were not competent to coach against.

Rather than encourage the maroons to get out there and get better at coaching this great sport, the board and rules committee decided instead to hamper the innovating and hard working coach. This is repulsive to me on a number of levels.

1) Youth sports are supposed to be about the kids. This is what always prefaces these asinine rules. Here's the problem with that thinking, though: the kids are learning less about football.

Take a linebacker on that defense up there. Because he cannot be moving forward at the snap, he will go the entire season without learning how to blitz through a gap and secure it properly! Is that fair to him? Is it okay to tell him, "Billy, kids your age in other programs are learning to play football, but we just don't think you're smart enough for it."?

Now consider that offensive lineman across from Billy. Because Billy is not allowed to blitz, he will go the entire season without learning how to react and respond to a blitzing linebacker! Again, is that fair to him?

You mean to seriously tell me that a 9-year-old can figure out the button combinations on Madden and can't figure out how to play real football, even when patiently coached by a competent adult? This kid can turn 720s on a skateboard and bunny hop from one end of town to another on a bike, and you think he can't play football!

2) These rules ruin the chess match by forcing you to leave a section of the field undefended. Why should the offense run anywhere else?

Football defenses generally clog the middle of the field by design because they are arranged to defense the area of greatest threat, and the likelihood of a particular zone being the point of immediate attack goes up the closer the ball is to that zone. This, the middle of the field where the ball starts is usually the most highly defended zone in football.

As a result of this natural defensive stacking, most youth coaches figure out early that the sweep can be effective if you have decent speed. The reasons why are deceptive. It's not because you're some kind of super-coach. It's because the whole defense is stuffed into a 10X12yard section of field and tripping over one another. You give the ball to the fastest kid you have and let him do what comes naturally.

He runs away from the clogged defense-- and simultaneously away from the offensive line you really don't have any need to have on the field other than as a series of slightly mobile obstacles. The fact that six out of eleven defensive players are forced by rule into the middle of the field just makes it easier to clog them up.

3) These rules obliterate motivation.

Not only are good coaches forced to be lazy because they literally can't find new ways to play to their team strengths, but the players are screwed over as well. Imagine being an offensive lineman in that sweep-only system. Down after down, play after play, you do the same thing: coach says you're supposed to block the guy in front of you and "knock him on his ass," but the guy with the ball always runs away from you. How many plays do you think it would take before you started to crash into the guy across from you and then immediately turn and watch the ball carrier? Three? Six? Would you ever sustain a block? If so, why on earth would you?

4) These rules force the defense into an unsound alignment, and that cheapens every success the offense has.

Look, it sucks when a youth team goes an entire season without scoring a touchdown. It's rough to stay motivated and keep the players happy. I've been there as a coach and as a player, both. In fact, I was in my second season as a player before a team I was on scored a touchdown, and in my first three years as a player, we scored precisely twelve points!

And I wouldn't trade those points for a free Super Bowl ring. We earned those points, thank you. The first touchdown came in my 8th grade season, and we drove from our own 18 to score against Edgemont Junior High in the last twelve seconds of the game. We still lost, and I still remember that magical drive. 

I can also tell you about the interception return that set up our second score, my freshman year, when I got the best hit of my playing career on the Ballou Junior High quarterback. I hope he still has "Riddell" imprinted on his chest.

Here's the point: we earned those points. They have meaning. They weren't handed to us and cheapened by a set of rules that hampered the defense. If we scored against a team's third string, fine-- they practiced as hard as we did and we played as well as we could.

We were all trying our best. Isn't that what we're trying to coach players to do, anyway? Try their best and leave it all on the field? Well, looking back now I can tell you that my coaches rarely tried their best. I'm not talking about Pat Kelly, the wrestling/football coach that talked me into playing football, I mean the inexperienced and out of their depth coaches who didn't understand the game and thought it was all about yelling "Hit somebody!"

Why in God's name would you try to turn a coach into that? Why on earth would you lower the bar for the offense by forcing the defense to play an alignment that literally cannot properly defense the field? Do you think scoring a cheap touchdown has more value than never scoring at all? Do you think the players will never notice? Do you think the coaches won't?

Instead of superior coaching and teamwork prevailing, the players are forced into a situation where coaching means nothing; the team with the fastest kid will simply run him wide until he scores.

So, if you're stuck in one of those leagues, I wish you the best of luck, but frankly, you'd be better off if you quit and coached elsewhere. Paradoxically, so would the league. Here's why: the only reason they can have these dumbass rules is because coaches tolerate them. If every coach that was given a mandated offense or defense politely handed it back and took themselves and their kids elsewhere, these damnfool leagues would have neither coaches, nor players, and would have to fix their houses!

The problem is, too many incompetent coaches are willing to settle for half a loaf-- lousy coaching-- just so they can carry a whistle and clipboard. They'll happily take the title, but never bother to earn it. The worst part? They're teaching their players that cheap success is still success.

I prefer to do it the hard way. That way it means something.

~D.

The High School Coach is Interfering With Your Son's Education!

Originally posted April 27, 2009

You read that right, but if you'd like to make sure, go ahead and read that title a couple more times.

I just had a discussion with a high school football coach of a local program who has completely failed to understand the reason and purpose for middle school and junior high football. Seriously, he's lost his damn mind.

His premise, which is one I've never endorsed, by the way, is that he "needs" (His word, and one that indicates how effective a coach he must be.) the middle schools to run his system so that he can stay competitive.

Go back and read that again, too.

I'm going to shred that argument piece by piece. I encourage you to print this blog out and take it to the next meeting you have with your coaching organization where they try to tell you that you must run what the high school runs.

The following is a word-for-word depiction of his side of our conversation and my accompanying replies, to the best of my memory. I don't think he is going to put me on his Christmas card list.

Point one: "I need the middle school to run the same things I run..."

Counterpoint: Why does a coaching professional paid a $3,000 stipend to coach at a Class AAA school in Washington State 'need' a middle school coach to prepare players for his program? Why is said coaching 'professional' unable to adequately prepare those players himself with his eight man coaching staff, $1.4 million field, $35,000 weight room, $6,000 film study equipment, and approximately nine weeks of off-season summer and spring training time?

Why does it a fall to a middle school program with a two-man staff making $900 between them, broken sled, antiquated equipment, prohibition against scouting (because it leads to 'overcompetitiveness,' whatever the hell that is), eight week season, and almost zero support from the district to teach a system you were hired to bring to us? Aren't you supposed to be the expert on this system? Isn't that why you were hired? If not, then why were you hired?

Point Two: "...so that when they get to me they already know the system."

Counterpoint: In your previous coaching history you have never remained in any position longer than four years. Your average is three seasons. Does this not indicate that it is useless to train a group of seventh graders to run your system when odds are high that you will have moved on to a greener pasture somewhere by the time they make it to the varsity level? Furthermore, I refer you to my previous counterpoint. If you're such a damn expert on the system, why the hell do you need someone else to teach it for you?

Additionally, this middle school feeds three high schools, one of which is in another district. What makes you think you're even going to get enough athletes from this program to your high school to make this a worthwhile pursuit? According to the research at JACK REED'S WEBSITE as well as the NYSCA statistics, fewer than 24% of youth football players go on to play high school football. What do you get by dividing 24% by three, and is it worth damaging the success of the middle school program?

Point Three: "At this level that's the only way I can stay competitive."

Counterpoint: No, as a matter of fact it's not. Tomales High School in Northern California has no feeder program and remains competitive-- and more so-- every year. Puyallup High in Washington has six feeder schools, only one of which runs the same system they run (and not because it is required). They consistently finish in the top 25 in Washington AAAA rankings. For every school you point to that is successful with this method, I can point to one that is just as successful without it, and probably two that are not successful with it.

Furthermore, at what point did anyone start to care about your ability to remain competitive? You are not the one on the field, and this game doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the players.

Point Four: "Middle school football doesn't really count, anyway."

Counterpoint: It counts to the middle school players who sweat and bleed to be successful. It counts to the parents who pay the bills so their sons can compete safely and successfully. It counts to the teachers who come to me looking for ways to use my sports programs to motivate students who are struggling academically. It counts to the administration that tries every year to justify keeping a program with sliding numbers due to lack of success.

In short, the only person that really thinks it doesn't count is you, and the only reason you feel that way is that you're not associated with the middle school in any capacity other than demanding that they do your job for you.

Point Five: "It's only there to develop players for high school game."

Counterpoint: That's an interesting and totally false point that indicates a complete lack of understanding of the role of athletics in the scholastic environment. Athletics has a clearly-defined purpose in school. It helps to teach life-lessons that can't be worked into the curriculum any other way. At the middle school level it also serves as a hook to assist struggling or de-motivated students who need something to cling to in order to keep the grades and learn the behaviors and social interactions that will allow them to be successful in life.

Preparing players to play football at the high school level is only an insignificant by-product of a successful middle school program. Ideally a middle school program should prepare student-athletes for life at the high school level.

Point Six: "Besides, you should run my stuff because it works!"


Counterpoint: You'll pardon me if I disagree. You've run two different systems at each of your last four schools. In the last six years you have had two winning seasons (2006 and 2008) and won one playoff game (2008). And you are supposed to be the expert with your system. Why are you making so many significant and program-altering changes to the system if it's so perfect, and why have you yourself not established a track record of significant success if this program is so great?

Furthermore, your program was developed for the high school level. Your varsity is comprised of student athletes who are considered by our state to be responsible enough to drive a motorized vehicle. Some of the student-athletes I coach are not legally allowed to be left home alone by their parents yet.

Your athletes are physically in the early adulthood stage of development. They have more finely-developed motor control, more testosterone, greater muscle development, stronger bones, and greater cognitive processing facility.

By contrast, the athletes you are demanding to run the same program are in the middle stage of childhood or early adolescence at best. Some of them have not even entered their secondary growth spurt yet. An adolescent may grow between three and six inches per year. Rapid growth of this nature generally results in a corresponding lack of coordination, while at the same time their muscle tissues are just beginning to thicken to adulthood. Fine motor control in the wrists doesn't complete development until age sixteen or later. There's a lot more to running a competent system at the youth level than simply handing your playbook to the middle school coach and pretending that you've given them a successful system.

Point Seven: "A successful high school program will help those kids go to college by providing scholarships and motivation in school."

Counterpoint: In the first place, colleges generally don't care what the won/loss percentage is for the athlete's high school. They are looking at basic skill development and raw athleticism. In the second place, you are actually harming the middle school athletes with your misguided philosophy.

If--and only if-- the middle school students stay in sports then sports can be used as a motivator. However, if they quit participating in athletics then sports will provide no motivation or encouragement for them. Coaches won't be involved in their lives, and the life lessons we got into coaching to teach will not be learned. The number one thing that drives youth players out of athletics, according to the NYSCA, is "not having fun." In most cases, "not having fun" can also be translated as, "getting the ass beat out of me every week because my coach doesn't know what the hell he's doing." (In fact, among my coaching colleagues I can point to at least twenty excellent coaches who left playing or got into coaching for precisely that reason.) More kids are going to quit middle school programs this year due to incompetent coaching than for any other reason. Every kid that quits football in middle school is one less athlete on your team, and one less successful athlete in the school in general. You should be doing everything you possibly can to promote and develop the middle school program. 

In short, coach, your plan actually interferes with the education of a middle school student by driving them away from one of the aspects of school that could encourage them, motivate them, and embolden them to keep their grades up and keep themselves out of trouble. By sabotaging the middle school program in an attempt to develop your high school system with some mythical, magical idea that doing so enhances your own team is nothing more than active stupidity disguised as altruism. Before you make demands on the middle schools, try doing some research and study of football at the middle school level.

You'll be surprised what you'll learn.

~D.

NOTE: Child development information taken from:

Bee, H., & Boyd, D. (2002). Lifespan development. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

It's All YOUR Fault.

(Originally posted March 13, 2009)


It's been a while since I've had time to write here. Student teaching and finishing up the last of my schoolwork for my teaching certification has gotten in the way of everything I've tried to do lately (Sorry, Senator McCain. I was busy.)

But I've had some thoughts about a blog for a long time. I believe that time is linear, and that a chain of events is set in motion by a single choice.

In my case, that choice wasn't made by me. In 1985 I was a sixth grade wrestler for a local youth wrestling program that was run by a man named Pat Kelly. Coach Kelly was the wrestling coach for Sumner Junior High, and he developed his feeder programs by running off-season clinics where meatheads like myself could come and blow off some steam and get interested in the sport.

The next year I entered Sumner Junior High as a seventh grader. I can clearly remember walking into the school and seeing the mascot, a stuffed bobcat named "Scipio" after Scipio Africanus, the Roman who finally kicked Hannibal's ass. I can remember the confusion of trying to find my classes; how dark the gym was during first period PE because the sodium arc lights hadn't warmed up yet.

I can also remember that Coach Kelly's classroom was across from the gym's main entrance. As I headed to the hall juggling my notebooks and the papers that were handed out that day, he was standing in his classroom door. He beckoned to me and when I walked over to him he didn't waste any time with a preamble. "You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I'd wrestled for this man. He'd chewed my ADD ass several times. I'd probably done more punishment pushups for screwing off at practice than anyone else in the history of his program, and yet he sought me out to tell me I should play football.

I don't have a clue what my next class was. I went straight to the office and called my mom at work. (This was in the days before every fourth grader was chained to a cellular tether.) I told her the words most moms don't want to hear, "I'm staying after school for football practice."

I won't lie to you. We sucked. Coach Kelly was a varsity coach and I was on the JV. We lost every game that year, and the year after, and the year after that. I was a sophomore before we ever won a game.

But football started to take on a sort of mythical significance in my mind. A sport I'd never understood (I learned to actually throw a football that year-- at age eleven.) slowly moved into the realm of the sport I'd ride a bike for fourteen miles to practice.

In 1992 I coached youth football for the first time. In 1993 I was busy flipping burgers because I'd dropped out of college and couldn't coach. In 1999 I returned to coaching in Kodiak, Alaska, where I tried not to interfere too much as my Lions obliterated everyone on the way to an undefeated season. I realized, in October of that year, as the Gatorade dried in the crack of my ass after the championship shower, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life coaching kids.

I went back to school. I got my first degree in 2004 and my second in 2007. At the moment I'm working on a teaching certificate, but I've been able to return to my home town and coach wrestling and football both while teaching at a middle school that was, ironically, our biggest rival when I was in junior high.

If life is a chain of events then my life was changed one day, by one man, who took the time from his day to coach me and make me better than I am, and then took more time to say just two simple sentences.

"You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I am here now, because of that conversation.

It's the off-season right now, so while you're studying football and getting ready for next year, or maybe working on the other sports you might happen to coach, I want you to think about this: one man, ten seconds, changed my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the last ten years happened because of the things I learned in football and wrestling. I made it through grueling boot camp-- because wrestling taught me not to quit or give up. I made it through college on the second try-- because football taught me that when you're knocked down you get back on your feet.

Pat Kelly is now the principal of Orting Middle School, down the road from where I live. He still has the same smile and the same blue eyes. Whenever we play Orting I like to seek him out and remind him, "Hey Coach, this is all your fault!"

Some of you might be thinking about giving it up. Your kids have moved on, or you just want more time with the family in the fall. After all, Dancing with the Stars is a damn fine show, and missing it every week because of football practice gets frustrating.

Before you head to eBay to offload your coaching library and take your cleats to Goodwill, consider this:

It's all your fault.

~D.

Cuts and How to Deal With Them

(Originally posted January 23, 2009)

I was on the phone with a good friend of mine from North Carolina yesterday named Bill Bollman. We were tossing ideas back and forth about coaching, and he came up with a real doozy.

I've never liked cuts in football. The lessons this sport has to teach are simply too important to restrict them to a magic few players. Not to mention that I'd be second-guessing my choices constantly. "We cut Billy, but did you see him today? He grew three inches and gained twenty pounds. Is he living in the weight room?" I'd be further terrified that I'd cut some young man who would have eventually filled that critical position we always seem to get every year. You know the one; at least once a season we all look to our assistant coaches and say, "You know, we have no one else that can play Center/Tight End/Free safety/Etc. If Bobby sprains an ankle we are in serious trouble."

Worse yet, when do you cut? After conditioning week, usually. Conditioning week is usually performed without pads. That means you might cut a player who looks like Jane, but would play like Tarzan in pads, in favor of one who looks like Tarzan but plays like crap! Until you've seen a player in a few tackling drills, you really can't consider whether or not he should be cut-- but you can't see him in tackling drills unless he has equipment.

I'm paranoid about that sort of thing, which is why I'm glad I talked to Bill. He came up with an idea that is stunning in its simplicity, and yet so powerful that it bears a lengthy look.

Bill gets some 72 players out each season. He's only got about 38 sets of gear. That leaves, unfortunately, 34 players who spend football season watching from the stands.

But what if we could take those players and create a special team for them? What if we could keep them involved, keep them learning football, keep them working? What if we could use a method that professional and NCAA teams use all the time: the practice squad.

The way it works is like this. Each player gets two sets of cuts. The first cut drops him to the practice squad. That's where he will play out his season unless he quits or you pull him up to the game squad. A second cut drops him from the team entirely. These I would use primarily for "attitude." Any player that wants to stick with the team is welcome to do so.

Practice squad players would be issued team tee-shirts. They come to every practice and they work on similar drills to the game squad. They practice tackling, blocking, and other crucial skills of football using non-contact or low-contact drills such as the ones popularized by HUGH WYATT. Only the Game Squad actually receives helmets, pads, and uniforms for game day.

They hold bags for scout team, allowing you to get more reps for your game team players. They are a legitimate part of the football team; entitled to all awards and praise-- or punishment-- thereof. They are held to the same behavior and academic standards, and considered nearly as elite as the game squad.

They are also available if you suddenly lose a player and need to pull someone up from the practice squad. In one week I had three offensive linemen go down, two from injury and one from a behavioral incident. A practice squad to draw from would have been awfully nice when we were reshuffling our entire team. (Not that we cut anyone. We've never had the numbers.)

You'd have to approach this in a certain manner. Where a young man's pride is involved things are never easy. I think that Bill is right, though. If you put enough focus on it, start in the preseason long before you hold a tryout or a camp, and start talking about how the practice squad is going to make the team better, how the practice squad gets privileges and entitlements just like the game squad, how the practice squad is composed of football players who need more work and practice, not wannabes who can't make it, there's a good chance you could turn this into a valuable resource for developing talent.

I have always thought it's a crying shame that there are young football players out there that won't get to play football this season because there aren't resources available to let them become a part of the team. I believe that it should be a major goal of any program that cuts because of equipment issues to gradually increase the amount of available equipment until every young man (or woman) that wants to play is able to do so.

Some programs cut because they can't get the coaches. If there are players, there are coaches. Every player has at least one parent or guardian. Every parent or guardian is a potential assistant coach, if approached the right way and carefully trained by a competent head coach.

Some programs cut because they can't get the equipment. Football gear costs money. We all know that, but there are ways to get more equipment. Seek out grants and gifts from local businesses. Create and sell a program at your home games and sell advertising in it. Hold lift-a-thons and get the players to work on getting sponsors for each ten pounds they lift. Hold a charity basketball game. Sell concessions at your games. Talk to the local schools about gifts of their old equipment as "handme downs."

If all else fails, just try to buy one or two more helmets and pad sets per season until you can suit up any player that wants to play.

As coaches, we have to remember that we can't coach the players that aren't on the field. We need to get them, and keep them, on grass. Bill's practice squad idea is the start of that process, but after that we need to get our players equipped and make them a part of the team.

~D.

Taking Over a New Program

(Originally posted on January 30, 2009)

Most youth coaches coach their sons for a couple of seasons and are done with it. They move on into other things; take the promotion at work, change to a different job, whatever.

A rare few, however, can't find an antidote for the coaching bug. There are meetings where you can confess alcoholism, but so far I've yet to find a gathering of people in sweats and ball caps where you can stand up and say, "My name is Derek and I love teaching young people to tackle each other."

For those coaches, taking over a program is inevitable at some point in their careers. They'll either move from youth to a school program, (possibly vice versa), start a new organization from scratch, or otherwise find a way to bring decades of experience and study to a program that desperately needs it.

Sadly, a large number of those programs will be bad ones at the start. They'll have seemingly intractable problems. Remember, unless he's moving to a better job somewhere, most coaches don't leave willingly. If he's enjoying even modest success, the average coach would rather hang out where he is than go on a job search and move his family around.

Which means you're going to be walking into a difficult situation, and there's no easy way to untangle the Gordian Knot you're facing. The previous coach might have been beloved, especially if he left behind a good program, and you have to fill some large shoes. You can expect to hear someone use the phrase, "That's not how we did it last year," at least once per week for the first season.

This blog is specifically written with an eye towards taking over a school program that has not been more than moderately successful in recent years. You already know that you need to win the trust and respect of your players. Remember that anything you tell them they are accountable for, you have to hold them accountable for, or you'll lose their trust. There's a saying from the Armed Forces: "The enlisted man will forgive his officers any indiscretion save two: cowardice and inconsistency." It applies to football, too.

To begin with, I would look up the students that played football last season as sophomores and juniors, and I would also put some focus on the junior highs that feed into your program (or on the youth programs that feed into your junior high program).

One situation that drives me insane is youth programs and junior highs competing for the same players. I don't think that many football players have the physical ability to play for two teams at once, and most school coaches seem to have it in for the youth programs. I've been told twice by high school programs that they aren't interested in letting me coach any of their freshmen. Personally, I think this is a little dumb. At large high schools, some of those freshmen that could start for the youth program (or at least be guaranteed a certain number of plays because of the Minimum Play Rules) spend entire seasons sitting on the bench. Many of them quit after that one year, and never really get better at football. (It may or may not be relevant, but both school programs had losing traditions.)

If you're the school coach, consider what is best for the player, not your program. More often than not, if you encourage a younger player to play for his youth program, he's going to have more success, stay in football longer, and may even turn into a good player for you down the stretch. If you've taken the time to respectfully work with the local youth programs as I mentioned in a previous blog, you should have no problem with the idea of letting another coach develop your younger talent.

When it comes to the lower levels, junior highs if you're a high school coach and youth programs if you're a middle school coach, I would be campaigning harder than Hillary to make sure that every player who even walks past a football at Wal-Mart comes out for the new team. (In fact, that's a good recruiting tool, especially for youth football. Ask the manager of the local sporting goods and department stores if you can hang a flier on their rack of footballs advertising your program. Also put up fliers in the local gyms, on bulletin boards at grocery stores and coffee shops, and the like. You can also make sandwich boards like real estate agents use for open houses quite cheaply. Get permission to put them up in front of community events, like town meetings, high school plays, farmer's markets, and things like that. Be creative. Radio stations and cable access channels are required to offer Public Service Announcement time-- go to the stations and ask if you can put together a thirty second commercial for your program. Make sure there is a sign for your program on each of the main roads into your town. Stuff post office boxes with mailers. There are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do, most quite cheaply or even free with a little work.)

Your goal should be to increase your roster size by a minimum of 5%. Losing programs tend to hemmorrhage players. You need to get them back, or better yet, don't lose them in the first place.

The very instant you are given the handshake promise that you have the position, you need to schedule a meeting with the upper-classmen that played this season and will be playing for you next year. For a middle school, this means seeking out the 6th and 7th graders and getting them into a classroom with you for a few minutes. At the high school level, this means finding the sophomores and juniors that will make up your varsity team. (Do not neglect your junior varsity program! It is very tempting to rape the JV of players during a difficult season. Resist that temptation at all costs. The longer you let those JV players work together, the more success they have as a team at the JV level, the more likely it is that they will grow accustomed to that success and bring it out at the varsity level next year.)

I have some very high expectations for my players in the off-season. My football players do not just succeed, they excel. (Note that there is a difference between a goal and an expectation. A goal is something you hope your players will reach. An expectation is something you require your players to reach.) My expectations start with this:

1. GPA of 2.8, minimum. No excuses. Season GPA requirement is 2.5 to play, 2.8 to start. All other things being equal, the higher GPA wins the slot.

If you're a school coach, you might consider asking for a few minutes at the staff meeting to discuss your academic goals. I've noticed a bit of a division between academicians and athletes in schools, and it's best to nip that in the bud by reminding your colleagues that athletics teaches as much as academics, and that you are in this thing together for the good of the students.

2. At the high school level I require 75 Weight room log ins from December before you get your helmet for practice. (There are about 38 weeks from December to August, so that's less than two per week.) At the junior high/middle school level I would require about 35 log ins, or one per week.

3. You must play at least one sport other than football unless you a) Work a job more than 15 hours per week, or b) have a GPA of 3.5. (For middle schoolers this stays the same. I especially encourage wrestling, basketball, and track as sports that condition and teach toughness, footwork, and running form.)

4. High School players are required to perform ten hours of community volunteering to be done from December to opening weekend. (Talk with the local Boy Scout Troop, they have lists of stuff that needs volunteers.) Middle Schoolers are required to perform just as much, however this might involve some creativity since most of them don't drive. You might have to do more organization to get your team out as a group doing stuff like building picnic tables for the local parks, picking up trash along the roads, helping out at the senior center, and the like. (High school players have it easy-- they can always volunteer to help coach the local youth sports teams!)

5. Match up the varsity players with an incoming JV player from the local junior highs. Varsity players are required to call them a minimum of one time per week from January to the start of practice. Middle school/junior high players are required to call members of the local youth feeder program once per week. This is just a simple, five minute phone call, "Hi. How are you doing? Are your grades keeping up? Looking forward to football? How's your basketball team doing right now? Did you see that game on TV last night? I know! We better not do a sack dance like that or Coach Wade will run us until he's tired! Okay, I've got some homework to do, but I just wanted to see how you were doing. Get studying for that history test!"

6. No hazing. No bullshit. We are ALL Braves/Lions/Spartans, etc. We do not abuse the underclassmen, we lead them. If they do not respect you, that is YOUR fault, not theirs. I absolutely do not bend on this one, and my policy goes beyond zero-tolerance. My players are the elite, to be looked up to by the entire school. They are not thugs or abusers. Given the choice by school administration, I do not remove players from the team for hazing. Removing a player means that they no longer get to learn the lessons that our sport can teach. (I'm not a big fan of kicking a student out of my classes, either.) I do, however, make damn sure that they don't continue the hazing. We start with a thousand yards of bellies and a thousand yards of bear crawls at each practice for the next two weeks and a demotion to the bench.

One of the things that offends me the most about hazing is what it tells you about your team. They obviously are not pulling together and making a coherent unit. Even if the varsity is a tightly knit group, abusing the underclassmen means that a) those younger players aren't having fun playing football, and aren't as likely to play next year, b) those underclassmen are not going to "fit in" to the team when they move to varsity if they stay, and possibly worst of all, 3) those underclassmen will someday be upperclassmen who will think that hazing is normal, accepted, and enjoyable. That establishes a long-term precedent of cancer in your program. Kill it immediately before it spreads.

I would visit the junior highs at least once a month from about February until school ends to hold meetings with the incoming players. Just like the upperclassmen phone call, this is a quick little meeting for five or ten minutes to tell them about some exciting stuff they'll be doing, and to get involved in their lives. Players are more likely to want to play for a coach who takes an interest in them, remembers their names and the stuff they are involved in, and comes to see them. It's going to take time out of your day, but it's worth  it. Trust me. Come to the basketball games and wrestling meets for the junior highs and cheer until you can't talk. The players will know that you support them and will want to play for you. (I once tripped over a garbage can celebrating a home run at a player's baseball game. The audience got a good laugh-- and several freshmen who had not played football that year came out the next year as sophomores. One told me it was because he thought it was cool that I got right back up and started cheering again. Maybe it wasn't the whole reason, but it certainly didn't hurt!)

If you're a middle school or junior high coach this is going to be more difficult. Obviously you can, and should, drop by the local youth practice fields every so often to say high to the players and talk to them (with permission of their coaches, of course. I never set foot on a practice field without the consent of the coach in charge.) You want to avoid disrupting elementary school classrooms, but you can still approach the teachers about meeting with their students here and there throughout the school year. Failing all else, talk to the elementary P.E. teacher. Ask for five minutes a month to talk to their students about playing for you next season.

One thing I want to caution you about when you talk to coaches of programs younger than yours. Don't say a word about what you run unless they ask. Ask them how you can help them do what they do better. Ask them to consider teaching only your blocking and tackling progression, not your schemes or playbooks. You already know the contempt I have for high school coaches that try to shove their ill-advised systems down the throats of middle school and youth teams. Those teams belong to their coaches, and they have the right to coach them with systems they have developed, even if you think they could do better with the stuff you give them.

When it comes to working with lower levels, I take a line from Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! "She was a kind-hearted woman out for all she could give." You need to have the same approach. I continually talk up the feeder programs. I'll give them anything I can give them, time on my fields, extra equipment, any help I can possibly spare, and even players that are not necessarily going to spend much time on my fields. Remember that your future players are on those teams, and the more successful you can make them, the more success you are going to have, because those young men are going to stay in football, keep playing, and keep expecting to have success. (You had better, by the way, meet those expectations!)

One thing you should notice is that this entire, lengthy blog hasn't really covered anything about what weights to lift, when you should start practicing, putting together a summer contact camp (You should have two: one for your team, and one for the lower levels where your players actually coach the youth/middle school teams). The whole point of this blog is to remind you that a program isn't just a bunch of called plays on game day. It's not a jersey color or a clipboard or a cool mascot name like Raptors. A program starts at the earliest age you can get a young person involved in sports, and it lasts only as long as you can keep him interested in participation. Don't ask your players to specialize in football. It's not good for them physically, can cause repetitive stress injuries, and it leads to burnout. Yeah, you might lose a good athlete to an unscrupulous basketball coach who wants him to join a year-round traveling team, but that's not going to happen very often, and odds are the respect you show the other programs will come back to you when your season begins and they're encouraging their basketball players to put on some pads. (Respect, by the way ALWAYS goes out before it comes back.)

Don't forget the importance of grades, and remember that leadership is a difficult thing to master. It's something that takes practice and commitment. The only way your upperclassmen are ever going to get good at it is if you give them a chance to practice it. Put the onus on them; give them the responsibility for taking care of the younger players. They will grow to love it, your team will be better for it, and your players will be better for it.

It goes without saying that your program will, too.

~D.

The Most Important Part of Football... REALLY!

Okay, last week I intentionally misspoke myself when I called stance and start the most important part of football. When it comes to tactics and techniques, that's true, but there are things that are more important than winning.

Sportsmanship is one of them. In today's society there is a lot of emphasis placed on winning, and that's fine. American society has always been competitive, and the more we can teach our kids about coming out on top, the better they will do in life.

The problem is that some people tend to take things too far. Winning should never take precedence over the game itself, and it should definitely not take precedence over the respect we show our opponents.

In the first chapter of the excellent text, Let's Kill 'Em: Understanding and Controlling Violence in Sports, the author, Jon Leizman quotes a Sports Illustrated article, "Way Out of Control," in which the writer, Jack McCallum, comments on a friend of his taking his son to a ball game:

"Jeez, Dad,' the boy said, "I hope we see one today. I've never seen one."
"A homer?" The dad asked.
'No, a brawl." (P.1)

It's sad, but we can take that story even further and think of the number of kids today that have seen brawls-- and think they are acceptable.

Sportsmanship is something you need to work on every single day, just like stance and start, and tackling and blocking. Remember that your players go home and turn on the television, where they see things like Bill Romanowski putting a teammate in the hospital during a practice-field fight, Terrel Owens and his celebratory antics, and of course they can see the actions of Randy Moss, like his disgraceful stunt at Lambeau Field on January 9th, 2005. For those of my readers who missed it, Randy pantomimed dropping his pants and "mooning" the crowd, for which he was fined the princely sum of $5,000.

(It's no wonder the NFL can't keep a handle on their players. I don't think any other cross-section of American society with a population of 1,600 members would have as many flat-out criminals. Randy Moss's behavior has always been contemptible, and the fines have been equally as pathetic: $10,000 for squirting water on an official. $25,000 for a vehicular assault charge that was dropped to a misdemeanor when Moss intentionally knocked down a meter maid with his SUV. Remember that Moss's last contract in Minnesota signed him for $3.8 million a year.)

Your players will probably see at least one example of poor class and sportsmanship in every single game they watch during the 2007 NFL season. If it's not wide receivers screeching at officials for not getting a pass interference penalty when blanketed by coverage (or defensive backs complaining about flags they drew while covering those wide receivers), then it will be an excessive touchdown celebration or chest-thumping demonstration after a routine tackle.

These displays have only one purpose, to humiliate the opponent. I'll be blunt: it really asses me off that I have to spend my practice time every season carefully UN-teaching the things my players see on television.

But it has to be done, and you need to do it, too.

We start during the first days of practice, with a discussion of proper behavior during the coaches' introduction. We go on with an actual full discussion of sportsmanship on day two at the end of practice. During this discussion we also specifically warn the players that we will be testing them, and to be ready for it.

Periodically we reinforce things with a drill I stole from John Torres (formerly of Manteca, California) and Rich Scott (Who is still in Manteca.) called the Walk-Away Drill. Briefly put, pull one of your players aside and give him instructions to pick a fight with another player at some point during the practice. It should be completely verbal, but have him get in someone's face and be loud about it. (It works best if he picks the fight with a friend. A pretend fight can escalate to a real one and screw up this whole drill-- plus maybe even get you sued!) During the chalk talk we actually demonstrate this by having a coach start screaming at another coach who has to walk away.

Here's what your players should see: during a normal tackling drill, Billy gets taken to the ground too hard by Bobby, and leaps to his feet, yelling offensively. (With older kids, it's all right to have a little profanity during this drill, but I'd bring it up to the parents in the preseason so they understand what you're trying to do as well as how it will be done.)

Stop the drill at this point, when all eyes are on on Billy's antics, and reinforce exactly what he is to do.

I'll spell it out in three steps.

1) Smile.
2) Turn around.
3) Walk back to the huddle.

It's that simple. Run this at least once in the preseason, and probably once a month after that. It's sad, but there are also some teams out there that you're going to play that like to talk trash. If you know one of them is on your schedule, then you should probably run this drill the week prior to that game. (For example, if you're going to play a team coached by "Snoop Dogg" you should probably run this drill about every ten minutes during the preceding week.)

But wait, there's more! Sportsmanship is more than just learning to walk away from a fight. Being a good coach involves actively promoting sportsmanship in your players.

Here's one idea I got from the outstanding coaches and players of King's Academy High School in Northern California. After each game the players of this Christian school gather with their opponents at midfield in a giant circle, alternating each King's Academy player with an opponent. The coaches meet in the middle, and, King's Academy being a Christian school, everyone prays.

Now, I'm not here to tell you that you need to suddenly find Jesus (I didn't even know he was missing.), but this is a great idea for reinforcing sportsmanship!

I have taken this remarkable idea and added my own spin on it: what if we were to do precisely the same thing, but instead of praying (which is by no means a bad thing) just thank our opponents for being there? Wouldn't that stick in our players' heads? Wouldn't they remember that for the rest of their lives?

There are other things you can do to reinforce sportsmanship that aren't quite the production. Little things are just as important. For example, when your players score a touchdown, instead of a funky dance, or excessive screaming, just have them turn and thank their offensive linemen. Not only does this reinforce the idea of not taunting our opponent, but it also helps support the importance of the offensive line.

The final thing I'd like to bring up is the idea of backing down on the number of individual awards given out. I've seen helmets so covered with stickers that I'm surprised the players can hold their heads up above their pads. While this is cool, and makes them feel like a "big-time" player, it also tends to reinforce an "I'm better than you," attitude. I don't take this dislike of individual awards to absolute extremes, though. A speaker at a recent coaching clinic I attended commented that youth coaches should never keep individual statistics. I completely disagree with this idea. The players love seeing their stats, and they are a very important troubleshooting and encouragement aid.

There are only two individual awards that I give out. The first is the BLACK LION. I encourage you to visit the link and sign your team up for this program. The second is the Hardest Working Lineman of the week, which is an award given to the laziest running back we have. (Okay, I said that just to see if you were paying attention.) We actually get together as a coaching staff once a week before the first game and vote on the hardest working lineman in the program.

In my experience, the the more players work as a team, the less individual taunting they exhibit, and the more sportsmanship they display. This is because sportsmanship, class, and character are part of a culture. Unfortunately, so are trash-talking, taunting, and showboating. Your job as a coach is to create, reinforce, and maintain the right culture.

Sportsmanship doesn't just happen. If you don't actively encourage your players to treat the game and their opponents with respect, the miserable examples they have on television will do it for them.

And that's exactly what we don't want to teach.

If you're looking for further information on developing character and sportsmanship in your players, here are some books to look for:

Positive Coaching by Jim Thomson (ISBN: 1-886346-00-3)
Coaching for Character by Craig Clifford and Randolph M. Feezell (ISBN: 0-88011-512-2)
Let's Kill 'Em by Jon Leizman (ISBN: 0-7618-1378-0)

~D.