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Being a high school football coach is not an easy job. Looking after the well being of other people’s kids is a huge responsibility and it’s not just about x’s and o’s, it’s about developing boys to men. And being a coach continues to get harder and harder with challenges popping up each year. Here are the top challenges facing high school football coaches in today’s climate.
- DEMISEOF THE EIGHT QUARTER RULE: A lot of people don’t think this was a big deal but trust me, it is. Not being able to have kids eight quarter has a few negative impacts on the program. One, it kills development of younger players. When a coach is forced to dress a sophomore quarterback on Friday nights because he has no back up for his senior, that sophomore will likely not get any playing time. So instead of playing and developing on Thursday night and then dressing as a reserve on Friday night, he is forced into a position of not playing at all if the games are tight. It is unfair to the kid and to the program’s future. The trickle down impact of that is that those sophomore players at every position who are forced to endure that situation are likely to quit playing. We have seen participation numbers drop tremendously and a lot of it is from these players deciding if they aren’t going to play, they will find something else to do. I warned people of this the year the SCHSL decided to end the eight quarter participation.
- RECRUITING: Let’s not pretend that it doesn’t go on. It does. Everywhere. High School Coaches across the state have told me of instances of a player being recruited to another school by another coach or maybe people helping out the coach. One player’s dad sat in the office of one coach and told him they were transferring to another school (so he could win a state championship) and took the kid and stayed in a hotel with him, after legally filing for separation to make it “legal.” He went to a tremendous expense to do it. He even told the coach they were coming back to graduate after footballs season. When the season was over, the dad and mom had the “separation” nullified and he attempted to bring the player back to graduate from original school. Fortunately, the principal had the fortitude to not allow that to happen. This is ONE instance of it. I’ve got enough recruiting stories to write a book on it. But make no mistake, it is a problem and really sad for the coaching business. The lack of loyalty and team in today’s players is astounding. When I played at Lexington in the 70s, our rival was Irmo. There wasn’t a player, starter or back up, that would have ever considered transferring to our rival schools. There wasn’t a player on their team that would have considered it. We bled the colors of our program. When a player shows up in your office and he doesn’t have a legitimate registration and schedule for your school, he should be shown the door with no conversation. Integrity is a beautiful thing for those who can display it.
- CULTURE OF THE KIDS: This is definitely something that is becoming an issue. Some kids just don’t want to work as hard as they need to so they just quit. But there are also the kids who have the entitlement syndrome and think they are owed. The culture of “team” is rapidly fading and we have witnessed it become a climate of “me”. The NIL is going to only strengthen that. I had a coach tell me he had a starting defensive end sit in his office and quit, telling him “coach, it’s hot out there and we are working our asses off. It’s air conditioned in the gym; I can go shoot hoops all day long.” Had another who told me one of his best players, an offensive lineman, just told him he didn’t want to play any longer. This was a kid who was in my Top Twenty rankings. He decided it was too much work and he moved on to hanging out with friends and riding skateboards. This is definitely not the culture of kids that were around when I was playing ball in the late 70s.
- TRAVEL/ALL-STAR 7 on 7: You may not think this is a problem but I can tell you now that areas of the country have players being offered based on their participation in 7 on 7 tournaments. If you think this is an impossibility, google Myron Piggie and read up on how this same thing happened in basketball back in the 90’s. I’m certain at the time the high school coaches and parents didn’t think a big deal about travel ball and it wasn’t a threat. Trust me, this thing could get nasty and cost coaches their players to transfers or even just quitting “real football” all together at the high school level.
These are just four extra challenges that add to the already difficult job of coaching high school players. The biggest thing is to concentrate on the relationships. Caring about the players as people and not just as players can go a along way to help out in some of these situations. But at the end of the day, the struggle of a high school football coach is real.
