Handling Tough Coaching Situations

In this insightful coaching podcast, hosts Daniel Chamberlain and Kenny Simpson share their expertise on the diverse challenges and responsibilities of coaching, from fostering team unity and personal growth to handling non-cooperative team members and administrative obstacles. They discuss the importance of Easter and uncommercialized holidays in promoting family bonding and personal reflection, and the journey from assistant to head coach, facing the complexities of adult management, decision-making, and diversity. The conversation covers the effective strategies for ensuring coaching staff alignment with team goals, the significance of removing discordant elements, and the necessity of adhering to personal coaching principles despite external pressures. Additionally, the hosts talk about navigating the difficulties presented by uncooperative athletes and the intricacies of interacting with administrative bodies to ensure program compatibility and preemptive problem-solving. The podcast concludes by inviting guest appearances and mentions of sponsors, making it a comprehensive guide for coaches navigating their careers.

00:00 Welcome to the Coaching One on One Podcast: Easter Reflections and Unashamed Faith
01:31 Navigating the Challenges of Coaching: From Sticky Situations to Career Defining Moments
03:42 Unlocking the Secrets to Simplifying Football for Your Team
06:39 The Journey from Assistant to Head Coach: Skills, Decisions, and Diversity
21:47 Tackling Talent Deficiencies and Maximizing Player Effort
42:24 Addressing Parental Issues in Coaching
42:38 Understanding the Unique Backgrounds of Young Athletes
43:38 Navigating the Complex World of Parental Involvement in Sports
44:38 Strategies for Building Positive Relationships with Parents
47:11 Dealing with Different Types of Parents: From Supportive to Neglectful
49:23 The Impact of Family Situations on Athletes' Success
52:39 Creating a Supportive Environment for Athletes Without Parental Support
53:45 Managing Team Dynamics and Making Tough Decisions
56:36 Navigating the Challenges of Coaching: From Scheme to Administration
01:06:14 Building a Successful Coaching Career: Lessons and Strategies
01:16:45 Final Thoughts: Staying True to Your Coaching Philosophy

Transcript

0:05

This is the coaching one on one podcast. I'm Daniel Chamberlain here with Kenny Simpson. Happy Easter. It's been a, been a good one. You know, any, these holidays are fun and, and it's a, that's a pretty cool deal to kind of research focus a little bit. You know, we, um, we are unashamed Christians. And so it was a big holiday, you know, for that. And, uh, I think even those who are not can recognize it's a, it's a pretty important impact. For sure. Yeah, I, I've, uh, I've struggled in my religion since I joined the military and, and went to college. And, um, I've recently just kind of been refinding it. So this is, this was a perfectly placed holiday for me because, um, my wife lost a grandmother last Christmas and she vowed to take the kids to church roadblock. Uh, you know, so, so it was a really good holiday for us. We needed a good family, good, good religious holidays. it's one of the few, it's starting to get that way. It was one of the few uncommercialized holiday, you know, Christmas is buy gifts and crazy and. All the other ones at Easter kind of seems to still be somewhat with your family and, you know, with your church, if that's where you go and, and kind of a more relaxed type holiday. Yeah. a week late. So they all go in and it ain't, it ain't Easter Sunday. We know, but we record on Sundays. So, um, happy Easter one week ago, I suppose. But, uh, you know, we have had a bunch of requests, you know, you were telling me about some, and honestly, I've been getting requests for all kinds of stuff. It's, it's pretty fun to see what other guys want to hear for the episodes, but, um, you know, some coaching situations. So what we're going to talk about this afternoon is just, you know, exactly that. What are some, some sticky situations that. You may even call them career defining, right? Because you get fired from a certain, you know, some jobs for the wrong reasons. And that, that could be your career, at least as a head coach, you know? Um, and if you do it as an assistant, you may never get a head coaching job. So got to be careful about some situations. Some are a little stickier than others. A caveat on this, you know, we're no, no, we're not the experts here. I'm going, I'm going to be very candid, you know, and kind of tell you maybe both sides what you need to think about, but what you decide a lot of times in these is It was defined by what your belief system is. And so to me, I think you've got to define that on the front end. And we'll talk about it a little bit more in the episode, but don't feel like, you know, coach Simpson said, did this, so I'm going to do this. You know, you need to do what you think is right, but we're going to try to go through the situations no one tells you about when you become a head coach. And then, man, you're in it. And I'll try to give, with keeping as many innocent people out, some real life kind of applications, and then I'm sure Daniel will too, you know, we want to make sure we're giving you. Actual stuff you can use. yes. Yep. Um, yeah, everything coach said, none of this is a, uh, end all be all, but you, you do have to take into account that coach Simpson is a guy that's how many years is this 20 Yeah, I've been coaching football for 20 years. I've been a head coach for 15 of that, so it's been a, been a bit, You know, what's the old saying? If you find a, uh, an old man and a young man's game, like you better listen to them because they figured out how to stick around So or they screwed up and a lot of these you're going to hear tonight are screw ups and then hopefully fix it as that first book. I wrote the one up behind me. If you're watching the screen up there where it's, it goes through a lot of these, I had to learn the hard way, you know, hopefully tonight we can kind of. Maybe give some advice, steer you out of some of that. absolutely. Uh, before we get started real quick, coach, uh, won't you tell us a way we can simplify football for our staff and our players? You want to do the hat here too? You good with Sure. We might as well. And I've got that O line Academy coming out by the end of this month. So Cool. Yep. Well, here we go. Awesome coach. Appreciate that. Um, you guys as always reach out to those, those cats, you know, Zach and Mark, um, Ryan Hughes, I'm going to screw up his last name. He's the Oklahoma area rep for the ACE sports. So if you're somebody that's local to me, um, you know, you want to reach out to Ryan, but Mark can get you there. So hit those guys up. You know, we don't, Coach uses all these things, right? Everything that's, that's an advertisement on this podcast so far, uh, coach Simpson has used and I have befriended those guys and love their products. So, um, I'm preaching the gospel all the time too. Um, Coaches cap still, still out there still doing the thing. it is, you know, it's getting that point. If you get spring football coming up and again, I want to give the, the, here, if you want to buy my hat, that's great. Cause I like to, you know, I like to sell products, but if you don't want to buy mine, go get something that's going to protect you from the sun. So, uh, with the Coaches Cap, it's coachescap. com. It's got the. UV protected bucket hat, as well as the Fox 40 whistle attached to it. Uh, and you're going to get a better price there than you're going to get anywhere else. And so I think we've got a couple hundred left. You know, we started off with a lot. We're down to about the last hundred or so before I got to make another order. So if you want to get in, it's coachescap. com. Then we also have Offensive Line Academy be coming out at the end of this month. So we're finishing up some recordings in that. If you're an offensive line coach or a guy that wants to learn that part of the game, I think that's probably. The hardest part of the game for a lot of coaches that look like me and Daniel that maybe didn't play a lot of O line to learn, you know, you really have to learn from those guys. So we're putting out a really good academy. That'll be out the end of this month. And Awesome. Um, and any of those products, man, those products are always great. You know, I, I love seeing them every time I come to the clinics, just seeing all the new stuff you've put out. So you guys, they really are kind of like all inclusive product. You get everything you could possibly need and maybe more. So, so jump in here's a free one. Cause this is, we're talking about some of you guys spend money on behind me. If you're watching headsets has just come out at this point, I hope, cause Jamie's putting it together today and this comes out in a week. So headsets, uh, this all free, just go to fbcoachjimson. com slash headsets. We have four years worth of free material. Daniel's doing a great kind of series for us this time. We've got three years worth of stuff. And so. Anything you can think of in football, you can find over there, and it's 100 percent free. Awesome. And I've had a blast doing it too. Talk about just getting to put what you think on paper and put it out there to the world and let other people kind of critique it if they want to, or, you Or take it and use it. It's, it's pretty neat deal. So, well, coach, we'll jump into the questions here. Um, so just first and foremost, what does it take to be a head coach? So what are those things you've had to deal with? Um, Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest difference in jumping from being a coordinator or an assistant coach to being a head coach, uh, is a couple really different things. One, is you go from working from kids to adults. And so a lot of people Are really good with kids, uh, but adults are, you know, are different. They're a little more complicated at times. Um, and so you go from where your sole focus for the most part is motivating kids and disciplining kids and working with kids, and that's the funnest part of the job, that's why we all signed up to be a coach, that's what we wanted to do. When you become the head coach, you are now dealing with adults as far as their parents. And you're dealing with adults as far as your assistant coaches. And a lot of us didn't really sign up for that part of the job. Like we didn't really sign up to have to tell other adults what to do or have to deal with other adults issues. And so that's a huge change. And a lot of the questions Dan was going to kind of go through tonight. Relate back to that. They go back to dealing with parents. Very few are dealing with kids because of the assumption I have is if you've made the jump from assistant to head coach, you're probably already pretty good with kids. Like that's probably how you had that opportunity to come up. But when you go from kids to adults, the game really changes. Uh, and a lot of times it's not in a fun way, so you got to kind of be careful on that. We'll walk through a couple of those. And the second one really in line with that is the ability to make difficult decisions. You know, if you are not a guy who, and I'm not saying you have to enjoy making hard decisions, you don't have to enjoy conflict. Like, I think it's kind of weird to people that do enjoy conflicts. Like, I think most people inherently would prefer to avoid it. You know, I think that's just an inherent deal. How we deal with that is different, but if you're a head coach, it's coming. So you're going to have to make some hard decisions where you're going to make somebody you care about mad at you. And so kind of get ready because if that's an area of your life you don't really enjoy and you avoid at all costs, being a head coach may not be the career path for you because you're going to have those almost daily. Almost daily. Like when you walk in a room, it's going to get quiet. And if you're uncomfortable with that, that can be tough because when you have to make some hard choices, you just, there's going to be consequences that come from that. And so that's issue number two. I think you work with third one is you've got to be able to handle different diversity. And diversity comes in many shapes. It could come in ethnic groups, which is what we mostly think of. It can come in poverty lines, you know, dealing with kids that are driving a vehicle that's nicer than you'll ever be able to afford to deal with the kid on food stamps. You've got to be able to motivate both of those kids. You've got to be able to motivate the kid whose parents are both doctors and as a 4. 0 and motivate the kid who you're just trying to drag through school and get him to graduate. You have to be able to reach both of those types of kids, potentially different ethnic type groups of kids. Also potentially kids that might not even like each other. You have to have the ability to reach all of them. So being able to handle those, Can be difficult and be able to reach all of them can be really difficult. And the last thing I'd say on here, just kind of our first intro part here is, I think coaches that are great, are able to see talent in other people, and they're able to use that talent to help the program, you know, like that can be an assistant coach, you recognize as assistant coach. Maybe he has a great ability to do whatever that might be. And you're going to teach that guy, here's kind of our framework of what we believe in. And now you're going to give him this area of your program. That could be the weight room. That could be fundraising. That could be helping you work with certain groups of kids. That could be grades that could be helping kids get recruited. And there's so many different parts of being a head coach, especially today in football. Uh, that you need guys that are talented. And so you have to be able to see a coach's potential and do that. And then you got to do with your players. See the potential leaders on your team and figure out ways to harness them. I think a lot of times what coaches do is we get there and we, we, you know, we want to pick our captains and we pick the 4. 0 kid that we love because he shows up to everything. And then we wonder why nobody wants to follow that kid because there's different leaders and you as a coach have got to be able to recognize which kids have that ability, which kids are going to be your leaders one way or another. And then you as a coach have to reach that kid. That's it. Because if you can't reach your leader, he's going to lead in the wrong direction. And so you've got to make a net. And then it goes back to those hard decisions. If you get to the point where you can't reach him and he's a leader, now you've got a really tough decision of how you're going to handle that stuff. So I think those are the biggest parts of being a coach is one, dealing with adults. You know, two, making hard decisions. Recognizing the talent of those around you and then being able to kind of hit all areas of people, because you can't just coach the kids you like. It doesn't work that way. So those are, those are to me, when you're thinking about making the jump from assistant to head coach, you need to seriously evaluate yourself on all of those things. And if you feel like, okay, I've. You're never going to be perfect, but if you feel like, okay, I'm willing to at least do these things, now you're at least at part one, now you're ready to start the journey and it's a long journey. Yeah. Uh, on the job training is, uh, is real because you're going to run into the, we won't even talk about all the situations you could possibly face tonight. Right? Like, it's, there's just too many things out there. Um, you know, I, I was on a call with, with someone last night and they said, you know, they, uh, we were a DC and they're, I'm sorry, an OC and they're starting quarterback decided on like, after one week or something, or after the first scrimmage, he was going to be the getaway driver in a, in a robbery. What? Like, so, I mean, there's a thousand things that you're never gonna think of. It's just gonna happen to you, so. Um, what I hope to add to tonight's I've never been a head coach. Um, I thought this was the year I missed out a little bit, but it took, I mean, it was best for me, you know, I landed in a good place, I believe. So, um, I just want to kind of add where I've seen this stuff from assistant coach and, and once again, a lot of times the answer should be referred to the head coach, right? You start dealing with something that has the word situation before it. Um, let them, they get paid the big bucks for that. But I do think there's places that you can be ready to provide answers, um, to assist that guy. I'm a big take things off the head coaches plate guy. So, um, you know, if I've legitimately asked my coach that, what can I take off your plate? I see you're busy, overwhelmed, what can I do? And I mean it. Um, and so I think some of these things, you know, you can, you can help out as much as possible, but. Understand you're speaking for the whole program when that happens. And so you have to be really squared away because you could get your head coach fired, um, which is not the place you want to be. So, um, we'll just jump right into your coach. Um, number one, let's just go with, you talked about making hard decisions. So how do we make hard decisions? Oh man, this is, I think everybody's different. You know, I think everybody kind of has to go through whatever their process is. I can't tell you, here's what you need to do, but I can give you some general tips. One. Is take more time than you think you probably need to, uh, especially if you're a guy like me, like I, I, you don't want to make a decision that's a big hard decision in the emotion of the moment. Like here's an example. Some kid at practice just goes nuts and you are, I mean, you can feel the vein coming in your neck. That is not the time to deal with what that kid's consequence is. You need to remove him from the situation. You know, get them off the field, send them home, do whatever. That's probably not the time to decide on what your decision is going to be, because you're probably going to come down way too hard, and then you're either going to have to back off of that and look weak, or uphold maybe an unfair punishment that you delivered because you were angry. So first thing I would say is you want to make sure that you try to take emotion out of those decisions. Second thing is you need to see things from everybody's side. You know, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you should only do what the admin wants you to do, but you need to recognize the consequences of what that's going to happen. You need to see how they see things. So let me give you how most admin think, and I'm not trying to insult admin. I've got, I've known a lot of them. I work with a lot of them, some great ones. They think what's going to get us sued. That's the first and only thing they think in any situation. So when you're in the situations, you need to think like they're going to think. So, something happened. Their first thought is what's going to get us sued or in trouble. Liability. That's the big word you're going to hear from all admin. So you need to understand what that's going to look like from their end. Then you need to think from the parent's end. The parent's end on 99 percent of the cases, my child is never wrong. So go ahead and kind of put that in there and understand that's what you're going to be walking into. Finally, you got to see the situation from the athlete's side. I would hate to be judged by the decisions I made when I was 16, 17, and 18 years old for the rest of my life. Like I made some really poor choices. So we got to kind of remember some of the really dumb things we did when we were that age. And so you've got all of that going on and you've got to kind of make a decision based off of. What's best for our program. And so the second thing I would say is you need to lay down what is your golden rule as far as coaching. For me, it's always athletes first, like the athlete's interest is number one in every decision that we make. That doesn't mean we're going to just let them do whatever, like you're not helping kids by enabling them. I'm not suggesting to do that. But our number one concern is our team, our collective group of athletes. Our number two concern is the individual athlete. So when you get into really hard decisions, you look at, okay, for our team, for me with these other 60, 70, however many kids you have on the roster, what's the best decision for all of them? Then you look at the individual athlete, what's the best decision for this athlete who did whatever it is that got you into this situation, probably. Then we think about our coaches. I think about my coach's third. And then I think about my administration fourth. The parents are near the bottom. You've got to be smart on that. But you've got to think about the kid. Because if you're doing what's best for the kid, you're going to hope that you can show the parent what you're trying to accomplish. It doesn't mean you're never going to make them all happy. But at least if you can say, here's why we did what we did, the decision we made and kind of how we move. So take your time, have kind of a golden rule of how you want to do things. And then the final thing I would say, and there's more you could have here, but would be to have some kind of sounding board. And that needs to be somebody you trust. Uh, that could possibly, you could be careful in this world. It could possibly be a coach on your staff, but you better be extremely, extremely careful if that's the route you take, because that guy, you need to have full trust in them. And I would be very careful in that world to have full trust in anybody, unless you've been with them for 10, 15, 20 years, you know what you know, what they're made of. Because a lot of times what you put out there, you don't need to get down to everybody that could be your spouse. That could be your spouse. You know, it could be something you go home to, and you can, you have the ability to share that with your spouse. Some, my mind is great in that world. Uh, that could be a parent that could be another former coach that could be whoever that is, but you need some kind of sounding board there because you need to, sometimes you need help seeing through what you can't see. A lot of times decisions that need to be made, you're looking at it from different perspectives, but really you can't, like, I can't see things from a different perspective. So I need somebody who I can talk to who's going to be willing to at least challenge my decision. You know, who's going to be at least willing to say, well, have you considered X, Y, or Z? You know? And so those are the three things I would say, take time, you know, have your golden rule of how you want to order things, And then finally have a sounding board. And even with all of that, it's still going to be a tough decision. And some of the ones we're going to talk about tonight are really tough decisions. Right. Um, so, you know, we'll just jump right into the next question. I don't really have anything to add to how to make hard decisions. I, I'm big on pros and cons and make a list, right. And, and. And you need, you said it best knowing, seeing things from everyone's side. Sometimes I get caught up in that almost too much. Like you can get stalled, right? You can get bogged down trying, like you said, trying to make everyone happy. Um, I, I agree that that golden rule or athletes first, whatever it is that you want to put in place there, as long as I can back up whatever it is I chose, and I'm proud of that decision, then I'm good with it. What circumstances come is what comes, right? Like you're, it just, You're going to make mistakes. Um, no one's going to be perfect. Just do what you believe is the best possible route and then live with the consequences. If you're out for yourself and just trying to worry about yourself, then you're going to pay those consequences by a team that doesn't want to play for you. If, um, you're out there for the kids, then there might be some parents from admin mad with you, but it's hard for anyone to be mad at you when you can come through and say, I did what was best for the kids Right. You know, I think that whatever that rule is for you, you lay that out in your parent meeting, you lay that during your interview, you lay that out during a lot of things, and, and I would caution you if that's not the school you're going to's motto, they don't match. Like, if yours doesn't match theirs, I'm not telling you what it needs to be. Mine's always been the kids first. But that, yours might be something different. Yours might be whatever it is. You're not wrong or right with whatever you think. But mine's always been kids are first. And if the school doesn't match that, the interview's over. Like, at this point, I don't really, it's not going to end well. I mean, I could take that job, but I'm not going to change. Their culture, like you're not going to go into the football coach and change the culture of the admin. It doesn't happen that way. He'll get fired or you'll get fired. That's how that goes. So you need to be real careful with that. And then you need to make sure you lay it out with your parents. And then here's the harder one. You got to lay that out with your coaches. Cause you're going to say there's times where you're going to do things you don't want to do because we're doing things to help our kids, which means you may be giving up your weekends to do retreats and different things that you'd prefer not to do. Because who's first in our program? Our kids are. And so there's times when that can cause conflict within your staff, but it needs to be laid out and you hire guys based off of the same thing. awesome. Um, next question here. How do you, and we're going to get right into the kids. This one less hard of a decision, but it's just kind of a bad situation to be in. How do you deal with years that you're a talent deficiency? So you just don't have. You don't have the jimmies and joes, right? yeah. And this is, I mean, half the guys that are listening to podcasts are in this, you know, if you coach football, half the teams win and half lose and generally not all the time, generally talent is probably 80 percent of who wins and who loses. I mean, there's some scheme. Cultural stuff, but really, if he's got a bunch of D1s and you don't, it's going to be hard to win that game. So just understand that like, you know, we're just going to talk about you're going into a season knowing that maybe 8 of the 10 games or more, you're going to have a hard time winning. It doesn't mean you can't win, it just means you know you're going to have a hard time. So I think a few things you've got to do on that to set realistic expectations. I think that's with you, your staff, and your kids. I'm not a big fan of like limiting their potential. You don't ever, we don't ever talk about how many wins. We don't say that kind of stuff. We say things along the lines of how are we going to beat teams that are faster, stronger, and quicker than us. Because that's facts. Like I can go there and say this team has five kids that run a 4. 5 and we have two. Well, they're faster than we are. This kid outweighs, these kids outweighs by 100 pounds across the line. They're bigger than we are. You know, these kids have won a state championship. They have more talent than we do. Those are facts. You're not telling your kids you can't win, you're telling them the reality of the situation. So I think that you need to understand, if that's the case, your kids need to know what we're walking into. Like, don't hide them from it. Don't lie to them. I think you still need to lay out a plan of action of how you can be victorious in those games. But I think the kids need to know, you know, hey, we played this team, this team, You know, you've heard that famous line, and is it a miracle? We've played them 10 times, we might, we might win one. You know what, but let's make tonight the one. Like, let's figure out a way to make that happen. So first thing is you gotta have realistic expectations. Because of that, if you can do that first, Then you need to set your scheme to match that. Like, well, your scheme needs to match that. Like, what are you going to do to be unorthodox? Because I'll tell you this, if your talent is deficient, and you are a very ordinary running, and I just mean like you run a generic ordinary type offense or defense, you didn't give them any advantage in the scheme world. So what is your scheme doing to maximize the talent that you do have? Are you doing something unorthodox to give your kids an opportunity? You know, like teams that run flex bomb, they don't do it because they think it looks sexy. They do it because they think it gives their kids a chance to win games. You know, are you going to be a rush the passer kind of defense? And we're just trying to create turnovers and that's how we're going to overcome our deficiency. Or, are we going to sit back in a soft shell and try to hope that these teams are going to hurt themselves? You've got to kind of make those decisions within your scheme, but you owe it to your kids to organize a scheme that matches. Here's an example of that. Like, I think if you're running flex phone offense and draining the clock, and then you're sitting back in a soft shell on defense, you're going to shorten the game and give your kids a chance to win. Okay. Or if you're, hey, we're going to do it by throwing the ball a bunch. Like that's how we're going to win the game. So we're going to make our defense built to get quick stops and kind of speed the game up. Well, we think that gives us an opportunity. So there's lots of ways you can slice the pie there, but what is your scheme doing to kind of help in that world? And then the third thing is how are you developing your kids for the future? You know, those are the years where a lot of times, you know, you're not going to be great this year. So let me explain how this is going to work. You can do all this stuff and go 0 in 10. You can do everything I just told you and go 0 in 10. And you still have to justify why you need to keep your job. So you need to figure out what program in your, which age group in your program that you're responsible for. You can kind of pour some investment into the year we went, uh, we went, I went in one year and a bunch of sophomores. So we poured all of our, uh, effort into our JV group, like our JV group, which was the same sophomores that were getting their butt kick on Friday. They were playing on Mondays and we went like six and one, and then our junior high went like seven and two. So we, as coaches, we're not going to neglect our varsity kids. We're going to give them all we have. But we're definitely going to pour more time into those other ones to kind of highlight, Hey, look where our program is going. Here's our future. Here's our hope. Because you've got to be able to justify what happened. Unfortunately, winning and losing to a board or to an administration or to a community or to your coaches or to your players, you know, your players, your O and 10, and you have no success down below. It's hard to sell that. So you need to figure out kind of where you're going to be. Okay. Put some effort into there and make sure that people know what's coming. Because you can look ahead. Most coaches, if you're at a program long enough, you can kind of look down and go, this is going to be a great year. This will be an okay year. This could be a really down here. This could be a great, you know, you kind of can look down and see that. And so you want to make sure that you're, uh, that you're putting time into the areas where you can be good. And then you're trying to figure out ways with those rough years, which we're talking about right now, where you can mitigate that. Maybe instead of going 0 and 10, You go four and six, you know, and so there's different ways you got to do that. But I think you have to be honest with your kids up front on that. I think you had to set your scheme and talent match that. And I think you got to make sure that you are pouring your time into your lower grades on those years, you know, it's going to be rough. Um, you know, if you're an assistant coach and you're in the situation where maybe it's just your position group doesn't have the talent, uh, but you can't really poach anyone, you know, I just say have answers. This is where competency as a coach comes in. Um, you know, coach Simpson just talked about that, you know, having the ex's nose that is a little unorthodox. Get in and study your position. Figure out ways that you can give a kid an advantage. Maybe it's Tozer at four instead of five. You know, Maybe he's slow. Uh, maybe we know we need to blitz that kid a little more. Cause he's just scared to get in the hole. Um, you know, I talked to D line all, you know, all the time we talk about D line and just, you talk about being attacking, but you know, our only effort is, Oh, our guys are just going to get upfield and give up vertical seams. So, you know, have the competency to coach them through those tough situations. Yes. That kid is going to whip my butt. If I go head up with him every single time, what can I do? to get an advantage. And maybe that's part of your scheme. Maybe you're, you know, talking to your head coach, your coordinator about, you know, maybe need more twists and stunts and just get movement. Right? So that getting back in that scheme. Um, but also you need whatever talent and I talk about competency. You need to know what you're talking about, because whatever talent you do have, your kids are more likely to shine if their coach If they have confidence in their coach, right? And your competence will build their confidence in you. If you're kind of the goofball on staff that never has answers and you're constantly having to ask the next guy over, how do I do? They're just going to quit playing for you. And it whatever their talent level, you could even have great talent. But if you don't know what you're talking about, they're quickly going to be talking to the linebackers coach. Like, can I come over there? You know, they're going to want to get somewhere where they know the coach can help them get better. So have those answers. And the other thing is, just don't be afraid to make a mistake. Make, do some moves, change some things up. Um, you know, I'm a four to five guy. And so even talking D line again here, I'm a big proponent of putting little kids on the line, like use speed, change the speed of the game for those big boys up front who've been taught. You're going to go against 220 pounds to 320 pounds. They're going to hit you in the face and then you've got to have a block. Well, what if they're not doing that? What if they're shooting gaps and just, you know, I spent my entire college career, which was one year on the scout team, making, uh, D2 athletes, scholarship O linemen look stupid because I could just get around them being quick. So get, let your kids do the same thing, right? Um, so it's once again, go back to that word unorthodox. It's okay to go out and do things a little different. So if you're down on linebackers, you're down on linemen or whatever this year, don't be afraid to put another kid in there. Just let them change that pace of the game and do something a little bit different for you. Um, and see if that doesn't help you, um, with the talent. I'd say my very first year of coaching, um, we had a middle linebacker that would not fill gaps and we tried blitzing him. We tried everything we could. He's a pretty big boy. After about the first six games of the year, we just took our best two D linemen and put them at both at inside linebacker. And they didn't, no one ran the ball anymore on us. Um, we played backup D linemen who were usually linebacker types. They worked speed, got away from double teams and those two linebackers just filled gaps and there was, there was no more running the ball inside. Now we weren't as good running sideline to sideline, right. And we still had some, some disadvantages, but we did the best with what we had. And sometimes that's all it takes is just being a little unorthodox. When your defensive tackles are your best inside linebackers, Um, you're going to have to do things different no matter what. So, so we found it. Um, next question here and I know what order they're in. I'm going to jump ahead just to stay with the players part here. So we talked about talent being down, but what about when it's effort coach? So what do we do when we have players that just won't give us the efforts that needed? We're constantly building that culture. And now we have kids that don't fit almost cancerous. Um, so what are we doing there? Um, do I get my players to maximize their effort? You know, and that's in a good year. We all everybody can. The Twitter answer is your best players, your hardest workers. Man, that's not true. Like 99 percent of the time in my experience, usually your best players are our kids that Can have a tendency to be lazy because they've been really good and they're not, not really had to work a whole lot. And so most of the time, your most talented kids are not your hardest workers. So how do you figure that out? And then how do you figure out kind of the, like a. You know, you heard the rising tide carries all boats. You know, how do you kind of get the effort level for the team to come up? So there's a lot of different ways you can go about doing this. And guys, there's not a perfect answer because every kid's different. What we try to do is identify like the alphas in our group, you know, the guys that kind of lead the group and get them to buy into what we're doing. So instead of trying to get 70 kids to buy into. What we're trying to do now, I only got to get like four kids, four kids to buy into, here's what we're doing. Here's why we're doing it. And those kids have to be, you know, they can be approached differently. Some kids learn, uh, because they need to understand that you're trying to help them get better. I think Daniel hit the nail on the head there. If a kid feels like you can help them succeed, if you really can, they believe that you can, and you've shown them whether that's through your knowledge or whether that's through other things. Uh, that you're going to help them become better at what they're trying to be better at, uh, which you need to start off with football. And then hopefully you can build that into deeper and more important things. But start off with football. That's what they're there for. Uh, if you can get those four guys to buy in, then a lot of times what I would do is have those kids kind of police a lot of the other ones, so that's option one. Option one is to try to get your team leaders, the real leaders, not the ones you want to be the leader. The real leaders on board with here's our expectation on effort, and I need you to help me with everybody else. Second thing you can do, and this sounds kind of. Odd, uh, but as you can call in your kids that aren't giving great effort and instead of reaming them out, not giving great effort, ask them to help you with another kid who's not giving great effort. So a lot of times you can bring in a kid and he's not been really good at giving great effort. So, and maybe he's a junior, say, Hey, you know, I've got so and so who's a sophomore and we're trying to teach him how we do things here. So I'm going to need you to kind of help me teach him. What we expect from him and how we're going to do things. And so kind of a two birds, one stone thing there. Like maybe you can get that kid helped and this other kid, Oh, well, coach needs me to help him now. I might possibly raise my level of effort. And so you kind of have gone about a different way of approaching it where you're not just blistering a kid. So that's that's options one and two. We're going to try to live in those worlds. Like those are the worlds you want to live in. When you're dealing with really anything with kids, if you can live in those two worlds and stay away from the discipline, like I don't mean discipline, stay away from punishment, that's a better word there, stay away from punishment, then you're going to be pretty golden. Like if you can live in those two worlds, 90 percent of the time, Things will go relatively smooth in your program because the kids are kind of policing themselves. They recognize you see different things. You're giving them a chance to lead. Unfortunately, you know, most of the time when the issues happen, it's that next part. So the next part has to become discipline. So now what am I going to do to a kid who's not going to give effort? And I'll, and I'll tell you, if you really want to send the message, bench therapy is the only message I've ever seen that actually could work. You can yell, you can scream, you can holler, you can make a fool of yourself, or you can just remove them and sit them down. And that's really, that's your best tool as a coach. Is to put them on the bench. That might be for a couple plays. That might be for a game. That might be for whatever it is. And so, to me, that's the ultimate way you're going to try to correct behavior. That you really want to send a message and reach the kid. And the other kids that are watching this situation, because they see things. Is you put them on the bench. And so those are really your major options. There are other options you can go about. I'm sure there's other motivational tactics you can do. You know, but to me, those are really your only three options. You can, uh, basically try to get the captains or the leaders of the team to help, you can maybe convince that kid to help you, and then finally you can sit them on the bench. But other options you can do. I don't, I just don't see them being very effective. I've seen a lot of coaches who feel better about themselves because they've just berated a kid, you know, and then you've kind of created another issue. You've gone from now this kid's issue was effort. And now. I've made a huge deal about this and now I've made it a bigger deal than it probably needed to be. So you've kind of taken a deal that was already not a great deal. And you made it worse and you've kind of put the spotlight on that and how you're going to deal with that. I'm not a guy that says you avoid confrontation, but I am a guy that says sometimes it's best to handle things behind the scenes before it gets to that point. There will come a time as a coach, you'll be put on the spot and you have to do something right then, right there to keep the respect of your team, your coaches, everybody. You don't want that to be an everyday occurrence. Like, you want that to be maybe once or twice a year, and you handle other things pre em uh, what's it before? Pre emptive? Pre emptively. You handle things pre emptively. You get to them before they become a big issue is always the best way to go about that. And that's always the best way of effort. Final thing, I'll do a real quick plug here for, uh, Feed the cats guys, you know, since we have gone to that kind of model and we're not a hundred percent that way, but the idea of we're not going to require you to do a, you know, a three hour practice, we're not going to require you to do pointless conditioning. Uh, we've seen those specific issues drop dramatically because now when we are asking kids to go full speed, they understand there's a purpose and there's a point, so we're not perfect, but we've seen a lot of those issues kind of go away, I'm going to be, you know, being the extreme ownership guy. I need to meet Jocko Willink probably at some point. I would like to think I've sold a few of his books just by talking about it all the time. But, um, I want you to look at yourself. So if you're facing this situation and you're an assistant coach, make sure that you are giving the effort, right? Are you dragging your feet on anything? Is it statistical? Are you getting your job done on the weekends? Are you showing up to practice on time? Ready to go? I don't mean like I didn't forget my pen today or something stupid, but like you're in the building, right? You're not, you can't complain to a player who gets out of the locker room five minutes late, but you're doing the same thing. You're sitting there not ready to go. So in drills, do you know what you're talking about? Have you thought about today's practice? Are you making it up as you go? Because kids are going to see that, right? And when you're like, Oh, I've got, uh, five minutes here. I'm supposed to be doing a drill. I better create it real quick. They're going to sniff that out so fast. And so when you aren't giving the full effort for practice, which is a lot of the times behind closed doors, before practice ever starts, they sniff that out, why would they give you full effort? Right. You kind of get what you earn there. Um, going on back to, you know, we talked about, you know, players want to know if you can help them or not. I think everybody has heard, like, they don't care what you know until they know that you care, right. And that's, that's been like the motto of the decade or so since I've been in coaching. I think it's Joe that probably said it first that I've heard and I'm doubt he made it up But there's kind of a new motto and it's not and you'll find to be more realistic and it's it's not they don't know what you Know until they know what you care. It's they don't care that you care and so they Know what you know, right? Does that make sense? Until they know you can help them. It doesn't matter if you're the most lubby dubby Patting them on the back all the time. I got you, bro No one cares unless you're gonna get them somewhere or you're going to teach them something if you're just guys It's just the relationship dude, and you're really good at it, but you don't have any football sense It's great to have you on the team Maybe you should be the guy that's leading prayer before the game or like motivational speeches before the game. But being someone's position coach, they might not be so excited about that. So they need to make sure that you can help them. Yeah, in my And you talked about, my mind is using football as a tool. So like what you're saying on there, Dan, you're like, I think it's important that we do teach these kids all these other important values. Like I, I know when I go speak people, I think people kind of are shocked that I talked about being great at football like you just did right there. But like, no kid is going to want to hear how I can help him with other areas of his life unless I prove I can help him in the area I've been hired to help him. If I can do a good job as his football coach, he may listen to me when it comes to advice about drugs, or it comes to advice about, College or whatever he's going to do after school, you know, we, sometimes as coaches, we, we want to put the cart before the horse. Like that's what we want to do. We all want to help kids. We all want to have those conversations to help them, but we got to be good at our job first and then we can have those conversations. It's important. But like you said, just because you are a good person doesn't mean you're a good coach. It doesn't work that way. Um, last little bit here, you know, you talked about therapy, bench therapy. Um, that also doesn't work for everybody, right? Because it might be a freshman that's not starting. He may not even play a single rep, but he's a turd. Uh, the best thing I ever heard was starters don't start, players don't play, suitors don't suit. So whatever level they're at in your team, they're just a role player, they come in every once in a while, well that's, that's taken away from them. All they do is suit and stand on the sidelines. Now they're in the, in the stands with mama and, and they have to, number one, they got to tell mama why they're not suiting. Uh, and so that's going to get home. Uh, but it takes whatever little thing they get from you on game night. And you take that away from them. And when I took the job at, uh, Searcy, and that's kind of going on your point here, you know, we had 70 some odd kids on our rosters right in during COVID. So you had a lot of craziness going on and struggled with discipline before I took the job. So you had kids that just, I thought it was optional. So when 25 kids didn't dress for our first three games, they learned really quickly, it was not optional. You needed to be there. And so that's what you mentioned. Suitors don't suit. Players don't play, whatever that is, the message needs to be sent. we'll jump into the next question here. Um, let's talk parental issues. Cause I think it ties so much to the players and then we'll kind of jump back into the other order. But, um, so how do you deal with parental issues of all kinds? The Like a lot of times we deal with a kid. We have no idea. So your kid walks in and does something crazy and you kind of go, my goodness, what in the world is going on here? So you've got to do some digging. You know, you need to, you need to know, or an assistant needs to know, I know sometimes you might be dealing with a hundred kids, but you need to know, or an assistant needs to know, or somebody needs to know what's the background on this kid, like what's going on here. You know, everybody's had those stories of. You know, kids got no parents. We've got kids that are homeless that we're coaching. Like they're, they live on their own, you know, and that's crazy. You know, so that kid, his standard and his conversations with me, that's, he's gotta be different. Now it doesn't have to be, we don't have to, we don't have to just let them do it every once. But you gotta know where that kid's coming from. Like I've got a kid on my team as a father. You know, there's, those are different conversations and there are different expectations and there are different, everything is different. And so I think as a coach, you have to know the background of what you're dealing with right there. Then there are really about three types of parents. There's the good parents, the ones that show up. And in my mind, if you show up, you're a good parent because unfortunately, that's where we are in society now. Like, are you trying to help your kid? Then you're a good parent. Even inside of that, those parents tend to be sometimes the hardest ones to deal with. Because they want what's best for their kid. They're, you know, we're, we're, I'm saying what's best for the team. What's best for the kid. They're flipping those two, like what's best for their kids specifically in their mind, and it might not even be right, but in their mind, then what's best for the team, then whatever else, you know, and so you got to understand where they're coming from a lot of times, because generally, uh, they're coming from a place of love, like they are trying to come from a good place to help their kid. Yeah. Unfortunately, sometimes their view of what love is and yours can be different. So those types of parents can be difficult, but you've got to be able to address those kind of parents and get on the front end of those. Because those. are also probably going to be your booster club members. They're probably going to be your volunteers. They're probably going to be your picture takers. They are probably going to be the ones that are, you're going to interact with the most simply because they're there. So those are the ones you want to try to start off with as many good relationship things on the front end as possible. Like what are some easy things you can do to form a decent relationship there. So when that time comes, cause it will come, uh, when that hard conversation has to be had, they will at least. Hopefully think this guy does have my kids best interest at heart. It's not going to solve everything, but can we find some time with them where it's, we don't talk about sports, we don't talk about whatever, you know, we're just meeting and talking, you know, or maybe it's, we're doing like a mother son date night, we do a lot of that kind of easy stuff. You know, where our fathers come into locker rooms and do our decals. So what are some easy things to create a good relationship? Cause those are the types of parents that they're really the backbone of your program. A lot of times those are the ones that are picking up other kids. So these are usually good people that unfortunately I am a dad and a coach. So I'll give you a real life example. So my daughter, a good athlete, uh, well, all conference this year in volleyball, going to be all conference in soccer, all conference in bowling. And when she was a pretty good little basketball player back in the day, I don't like watching her on the bench. I don't, I'm a coach. I understand, like, I understand you play your best kids and you play to win. I get all of that stuff. I don't care. I want to see my daughter happy, you know? And so you have to thing I ever heard you say was parents want to see the team play the best 10 plus their child, right? In football, they want their kid and the other best 10 kids Right, and when I go watch basketball, I want them to play the best four kids and my daughter. Like, that's what I want them to play. But you have to step back. Now that I'm a coach, because I can step back as a coach on that end and say, well, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda. You know, but I know the emotion. So you gotta know what their emotion is. It's not coming from a place that they hate you. It's going to come across that way and you're going to catch a lot of the blame and there are times where you're going to feel hated. It's mainly coming from their trying to protect their own kids. So that's parent number one. What's your plan for them? Like, what's your plan for them? Parent number two is the one that never shows up. So we have two of these. You have the ones that never show up unless it's to argue with you. Those, in my opinion, are the most frustrating parents. Like, these are the ones that don't show up to anything. They don't bring their kids home. You're probably dropping their kid off. You know, they don't show up to fundraisers. They don't have enough money to pay for whatever, so you gotta help out the kid with the spirit pack. They're those parents. But they're the first ones in line to call the admin when something happens. So those are the most frustrating parents you have. What's your plan for those parents? That's not a fun group of parents. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less patient with them, which is probably not a good thing. Which is why I probably need to start slowly transitioning to another spot. Because you've got to have patience with those kind of people. Those are the most frustrating group. And you're going to have a lot of those, unfortunately. Like that's going to be, you know, group number one, we just talked about all the frustration with them. Well, that's probably only about 10 to 20%, really. This group's probably about 50%. Like this is a group that, you know, the only time you're ever going to hear from them is when they don't even talk to you, they just go to the AD. So how, what's your plan for that? What's your plan with your admin and AD when someone comes to them? My plan is don't talk to them. Send them to me. And that, that happened because I got called into an admin meeting once with a parent and I walked out of the room and said, I'm not meeting because they haven't talked to me, that wasn't my admin. Was it not real happy with me? Really not real happy with me, but we'd had that conversation. They want to go around this and you want to talk to a parent, talk to them, but I'm not talking to them with you. They can meet with me and then we can progress it up. So what's your plan with your admin? And then flip that. What's your plan for when they come complain about Daniel working with the receiver kit? What's that plan? My plan is, have you talked to Daniel? If you haven't, don't talk to me. Go talk to him. Now, after you've had that conversation, then we can move up the chain. So, what's your plan on both of those worlds? Finally, group three of parents is the neglectful ones. They're just not there ever. Like, they're never there. And so, what are you doing with your kids that don't have any parental support at all, where you aren't at? Like you're the dad, how are you handling those? Cause those are the ones, unfortunately, that are the most likely ones to get kicked off the team of any of the groups, because there's nothing there holding them to it, how are you handling that? Cause that's some sleepless nights, you kick that kid off the team. You know where that's going. Like, that's not going to end in a good place for them. You know, it's not going to, so how are you going to deal with that? Cause those are where the really kind of, you want to make hard decisions, kick a kid off the team that you know is probably not going to graduate. That's a hard decision, you know? And so how are you handling that? Like, what are your steps that led you to end up where you ended up? Cause let's be honest, you can't save them all. You can't, but how many can you save without hurting the rest of them? And so that's kind of those kids with no parents kind of fall into that bucket. So you have parents that are just annoying, but at least they love their kids. And they're going to give you issues because their kid didn't play because he sucks. You know, then you're going to have your normal ish parent that you don't ever hear from them unless something went wrong. And then you're going to have the other extreme where there's just no parent at all. So those are things you've got to think about when you're a head coach. And not only that, you've got to know which kid falls into each bucket. Because I can tell you right now, I can watch a kid in 6th grade, not watch him play, but look at his family situation and I know his odds of making it. If they're in group number 1, their odds are about 80%. If they're in group number 2, 70, 50 to 70%. If they're in group number 3, about 20%. That's kind of the odds of them finishing if they are playing sports at that age. And so, you know that stuff on the front end. And that's also should dictate, unfortunately, how much time you're putting into these kids, because if you've got a group, there's only 20 percent going to finish. You don't want to neglect them, but you better be putting time into the group that's, that's more likely going to be there for you. There's a sixth grade all star, there's a good chance, unfortunately, he becomes the eighth grade dropout, you know, and so you want to stop that if you can, but if you can't stop that, what's your plan for developing your team, knowing that kid may not make it. Um, unfortunately this is kind of that spot where it like really hits home because you know, the, the motto I live by and, and like you Kenny, I've become quite the quote person in my football career, but you know, some kids need football more than football needs them, right? You just talked about it. You just talked about the kid that. If you kick him off the team, you know, what his life ends up right now, he's in the drugs and alcohol at a young age, probably going to father a bunch of kids. He can't pay for it lives on the system. And all I needed was you to just keep him around long enough to get him through high school, get him to a trade school or college, whatever his, his route in life is, because no one else is there pushing him either. He has zero motivation. And that is, I mean, I just left a school that that's unfortunately a majority of those kids. And. I mean, we watched it happen, right? Like you watch, that's the kid that blows up on Friday that makes you look stupid in public and you have to put that ego aside and go, I know it ain't him. You know, his parents, if they were there at all, were probably abusive to him. Probably tonight before he came to the game, he's got a bigger chip on his shoulder than this, protecting that pigskin, you know, his life is, is survivability, and then we worry about this game that I'm choosing to play. regardless how talented he is. And unfortunately, it seems like those guys that grow up hard, they live for these contact sports, right? Um, kind of that, that old, you know, um, when I remember the quote, anyway, just, just kids that grew up in hard situations become hard and then they need a place to take it out and the gridiron is a great place for them to exist, but it comes with a lot of side effects too, right? So keeping those kids, like I'm, I'm, as of right now, you talked about, you know, golden rules, but I'm never going to kick a kid off team. Now it may become unbearable for him to be there and not get to start, but have to practice and go through the long days. And he may kick himself off, but I'm not going to kick him off. Right. Well, the hard part is not, it's not just the individual kid. I can look at kids on our team and go. If this kid stays on our team, he's going to drag four down with them. Like you can kind of, and that's when, that's when the decisions become harder. Cause I'm with you, Daniel. I mean, we have at one point we've had to kick a couple off, but for the most part, we avoid that at all costs. Generally And never, never say never, right. You can't paint yourself into correct. Well, generally when it happens is not so much that the kid is a problem. I don't, I've been embarrassed playing. I don't care about that. It's. Is he going to pull four other kids that are on the borderline with him? Or can I cut this one out and maybe save these other three? So that's kind of, those are where those decisions become even tougher. Um, and, and this kind of ties back into that last question too, just talking about, well, actually all of them, talent deficiencies and, and, uh, effort and now dealing with parents, but. You know, Kenny, there's not really normal. Normal doesn't exist. And so, when you start talking about normal parents, well, this is what a normal interaction is supposed to be like. What, what the hell is that? It doesn't exist. Um, you can't go into coaching with an idea that there is a common normal. And it doesn't matter if it's home life. Uh, you know, a couple jobs ago, I'm dealing at a place that's over 50 percent from what I was told, doesn't have running water. Like, can you imagine going every day and like, that's just not a norm for that kid. So your situation is not normal. It's not common, but it is for them. And you have to learn to exist in that. Um, and kids just don't know until you teach them. And that you a lot of times we say about X's and O's, right? Don't take for granted that your kids know what power is or cover three or apexing or force. But you have to understand that we took a kid. In and my first year coaching and he didn't know that brushing his teeth was normal. That wasn't normal for him. He had no idea what dental hygiene really was a thing We had to like buy him a toothbrush And then make him put it in his backpack if he went on a weekend trip to go see someone like you gotta take this It becomes you know as important as anything else you carry with you. So being clean washing clothes and Normal is different for everyone. And so when you start dealing with these situations with parents You And that's why I say never say never and don't paint yourselves in corners because you may build a rule book that fits normal situations. Someone's going to break it and then you may not even pay the consequence. It may be a kid, it may be their whole family, you never know. So just I mean, we could go on, we could be The fewer rules, the better. I would, I would say that. I'm 100 percent with what Daniel's saying. The fewer rules you can make, the better, because then you got some flexibility. um, next question here, Kenny, maybe hopefully not as deep here. Um, although I I'm okay with being, you know, kind of deep, man, the world exists and we gotta be able to deal with it. How do you deal with coaches that are not on the same page? So we, we often preach just about every episode I've ever recorded in, in podcasting and even in coaching meetings, unity, right? We come together on Sunday. That's the game plan. We leave. It doesn't matter if you disagreed when you went in the office, it's a unified front when you exit. But. We've all seen people that that's not the case So how do you deal with those coaches that just simply aren't on the same page as you in any aspect of ball and coaching? Yeah, that's, in my opinion, that's the hardest part from going from an assistant to a head coach. These other issues we've mentioned, you're going to deal with all of those as a, as a, as a coach or as a teacher. I mean, those are, those are real issues for, for anybody to deal with. Uh, parent issues obviously will follow the head coach, but then this one is specific to being a head coach. So until you're in that room, you don't really know exactly how that goes. And it's, it's tough, uh, cause we want to think. Every coach is like us. Like we want to assume every assistant coach is thinking like we are, but here's the reality, I mean, Daniel, you're going to walk into this in a couple of years, you're going to walk into a job and you're going to inherit some random group of guys, That you're going to have to hope is going to get on board with what you're going to do. I'm going to, I want to be the bearer of bad news. They're not like some of them will, some of them will leave and some of them you're going to have to assist in leaving because that's just kind of unfortunately the nature of being a head coach and trying to change. Cause most of the time, if you became a head coach, not all the time, sometimes if you, if you inherited a good job, that's great. But most of the time, your first job as a head coach is not a good job. Like it's, it's, you got there because of a reason, it wasn't going well. If it was going well, they probably would have just hired from within. So I'm talking about guys that are coming into new, you're into a new situation, it's your first situation or relatively new. Most of the time, that's not a good situation and you're brought in to fix it. So that I hope that kind of explains a little bit, but so knowing you're walking into that, the assumption there on my end is you're going to have to do some cleanup with those coaches. And that doesn't mean you've got to get rid of all of them. Cause some of them may get on board with you, but what are you doing? The question you ask is what do you do with the ones that aren't? So there's a lot of ways to handle that. And I'm going to just kind of speak as frankly as I can. You need to make their life miserable. So they leave. I don't know how else to say that in a nice way. There's probably a more politically correct way of saying that. Uh, but if they don't want to do what you need them to do, you need to make them hate their job every day. So they leave. And I don't know what that needs to look like. I've had some stories and I've done some things to kind of assist in that, um, like documenting and giving them jobs. I knew they weren't going to like, and I know that's probably manipulative and mean or whatever it is. But if you're not going to get on board with what we're going to do, you got to go. And that's just kind of the way it has to be. And unfortunately, depending on your situation, your state, that can be more complicated. You know, that could be, uh, if there's a volunteer assistant, that's no big deal. Hey dude, we don't see eye to eye. I see you. You know, no big deal. But you, you may be dealing with, you know, You know, a guy who's a history teacher at the school, and he's going to run you down all over town when you get rid of him. And so that's where it becomes a little more complex. So first thing I would try to do in those worlds is see if I can get them to buy into what we're doing. So we're going to give them every opportunity in the world to buy into our vision and there are things, there are tools you can do to help in that, like give them some autonomy. In areas where they'd really, I don't mean to say don't matter, but that don't matter, like areas where you can kind of give them some freedom and leeway where you, they really can't mess that up. Like picking out the uniform or helping you with going to meet with whoever it is or whatever it might be. There's some, there's some areas in there where you, you know, you can kind of give it to them. Um, so you, you can give them some kind of things to help them maybe buy into what you're doing. And if that goes well, give them a little more. And it goes, we'll give them a little bit more. So that's one thing you can do. You can ask their opinion. The first thing I ask from every coach I, when I walk into a new job is I, I just, I shut up and ask them what they think and let them just talk. And so the, the, the fact that you would value what they think. And you're willing to give them a fresh start, I think can help. So give them some autonomy, value what they think, uh, give them the opportunity. I've been really big on my staff. So giving guys a chance to work up, like if we have a job that comes open and we have a guy on our staff, he's going to get first shot at it. You know, that's a job you want. We want to promote from within and I make that very clear upfront. That's kind of what we want. So there's opportunity here for you to move up. Or if you are already at the top of being an assistant, then I'll make phone calls to help you move up to being a head coach somewhere else. So we're, I do care for them and I do want what's best for them. You know, cause again, at my tiers were players or team, individual player, coaching staff before everybody else. So I care for them. So those are the things you got to do on the front end. But your question was, what do you do if they don't want to buy in? And the answer is very simple. You have to get rid of them. Like there's no, you can't just put them down in junior high and hope cause they're going to ruin that. You can't just put them over here. You can't, you can't work with people you don't trust. So first thing you want to do is try to win them over, try to get them on board. You know, give him a fresh start. But second thing is if that doesn't work and it doesn't work quickly, you gotta get rid of them. You know, looking at this from the assistance point of view or coordinator, whatever, um, I've been in this situation as. The guy who wouldn't get on board because I could see it was a faulty system. Right. And sometimes you have to, once again, as a head coach might look in the mirror and be like, am I bringing the best the table? Uh, we talked about, you know, a little bit earlier, you putting in the effort is your package, what makes the most sense for your kids? If you are a, um, and there's nothing wrong with this system, but if you're an air raid all the time, guy. But you don't have a quarterback and you've got one kid that can maybe play receiver, maybe run an air raid ain't best, right? Um, And if you aren't willing to change that system as a head coach and just make your kids successful, then this is probably going to be something that happens to you. Now, as an assistant, the best job or the best way to do it is just leave. Um, I'm unfortunately dealt with a little bit of this this past year as a DC. I found out that a coach on staff was telling players do the opposite of what I say of a play call. Every play call every night of the game, right? Or every, every play of the game. And it's like, I didn't know this for three or four weeks and I'm pulling my hair out and screaming at kit and not screaming to kids, but like having to have conversations with them. Like, why are, why are you doing that? When I clearly stated this and it comes back that, you know, there was someone on staff that was literally telling them do the opposite of whatever he says. That's manipulative. That's that's, and, and I don't even think that's what you meant coach is, uh, is, is making their No, no, no, no, horrible. I'll tell you what that made me Question even just going back to work the next day. Like why would I continue coaching in that system? If I'm being set up to fail. So, um, as an assistant, number one, you got to figure out is the fit going to work for you is that unified front. Um, something that breaks your moral code, right? Whatever your, your morals or ethics or whatever it is that makes you the good guy you think you are. We're, we're all the main character in our own story. So it's going to break your moral code to follow along and get them footsteps. We talk about it in the military all the time. There's toxic leaders out there and blindly following along just because Have more rank than you is not the correct response. So number one, see if it's that now, if you go out and they have a complete plan and it makes sense, and it's just not the way you want to do it, get on board or get off board, you know, get off the train. So, um, and Kenny, you kind of said it there. You need the head coach. You got to get rid of them. Assistant coach, you guys to go Well, and you notice like, I on another job. don't think in my answer, I even brought up scheme. Like I don't, I don't, I don't ever judge a coach on scheme, but I, like you mentioned, and I'll say this, there's times you come in and it's a good assistant and you're a good head coach and it's not a fit and that's okay. Like that's not the end of the world. Even I'll go where it's Easter. So I'll give him, go to Bible here. You have Paul and John Mark were like apostles for Jesus. And they disagreed so much they split up and they still spread Jesus word everywhere, but they did it differently because they couldn't see eye to eye. Both of them are good people. It just wasn't a good fit. You see that in the Bible. Like, so there's times where maybe like you mentioned, maybe it's. You're a good guy. He's a good guy, but it ain't what it needs to be. So I think those are conversations that adults should be able to have. Unfortunately, they tend to, they tend to not have them and then have them with people outside that room. um, last one here, I think coach, um, and we've saved the best for last because Everything we've stated thus far, um, we're assuming that the administration supports you and your decisions and is going to help you, um, to be successful in it with making those decisions. And you talked about getting rid of a coach as hard sometimes. So you need administration support. Talked about parents and you walking out of a meeting with admin. I bet they supported you. They had to, or you, you know, if you were in a fight with them already, you're probably not walking out of that meeting. Um, so what do we do when we don't have that, that admin supporter or when we have issues with admin? That's tough. Uh, start on the front end of it. So like, I think a lot of times as coaches, you go into interviews and you're so excited about getting a job. That you don't interview the people that are interviewing you. You don't do your background research on them. Like every job I've ever put in for, I've called the coach that left. Like I've called the coach that left, putting in for this job. And you know, that coach could be super bitter. Some of you got to kind of take it for what it's worth, but you need to hear the other side of the story before you walk into a job. And so, because there are bad admins, there's a lot of them, you know, I've read a quote once where it said, you know, coaches can win games, but admin wins championships because the culture that the admin sets and the resources they're willing to put in to your program will determine a lot of things you can do. There are some, and then you understand where does football fit in their world? It's football and activity that they just want you to do good enough. Keep kids out of trouble and stay out of their way. Is football something they recognize as drives a lot of the culture of the school? You know, and is football a place that they're going to give you some leeway to do things that you want to do? So those are things you need to ask on the front end. Like, what do you expect from your football program? You know, what do you hope we can do? What are you willing to give to help us get where we want to go? You know, those are questions you need to ask because they always ask you the interview, do you have any questions for us? Well, I just gave you three, you know, then the next one is what's my salary. So that's the next one. So there's four. All right. Uh, you need to ask those questions. However, I'm assuming doing this question here, Daniel, we're talking about a guy who's already got a job and now you're like, here we go. Number one, let's go back to what I mentioned about admin. What's the only thing admin think about? Liability. I think about liability and getting sued. And that's the number one thing they think about. So you need to understand, you need to start thinking like them too. Like if you're going to get fired, I mean, think about all the really good coaches that got fired because. Some incident in the locker room or some incident with a wet bulb or some incident where you put your hands on a kid or some incident where whatever it was, where that's what they're going to watch. So you need to make sure that you are communicating how you're handling those situations with them on the front end. How are we handling locker room duty? How are we handling bus sign out duty? How are we handling our practice schedule with the heat? How are we handling our parent meetings? And all that stuff is usually sent on a group email to all my coaches and it's cc'd, the main admin that need to know. So they're aware on the front end, here's what we're doing. Here's our schedule we're sending out to all our parents and players. Here's our meeting agenda. Here's our this. So they're copied along the way. Second thing you can do to help with admin is you call them about an issue that you hope doesn't get to them. Like you used to kind of just kind of hope, well I hope that doesn't go up there. It's gonna get to 'em. So if you did something dumb, said something dumb, or assistant said something dumb, or a player said something dumb, I would call your supervisor ahead of time and say, here's what happened. Here's what we've done. And kind of, you may not hear anything about this, but if you do, here's what happened. Here's why it happened. Here's what we've done to correct said issue. Whatever that might be. And you'll find that will help you a lot if you can kind of get ahead of things. Cause what they don't like is a parent walking into them and they're in an indefensible situation. Like they don't have any idea the background of it. They're going to come in there anyway, but they have no idea of the background of, you know, assistant coach and coach Chamberlain cussed at so and so. It's inappropriate. We really can't defend that. But did we tell you the background where your son had his hands on him and was trying to push him and Daniel was getting them off him. So you need to give them all the background information there. It doesn't make it right, but at least gives you something to kind of defend themself with. Yeah. You need to preemptively give them all your liability type stuff you're doing on the front end and then ultimately, you know, if there are bad admin out there and you're not going to be successful working under those people. So I would recommend if you are, you've done all these things you've tried to correct because here's the deal. If you're doing all these things and they're still against you, you're not going to be able to be successful there. Like it's not going to be a place you can be successful. You're not gonna be happy. You're not gonna be successful. Daniel mentioned earlier, the assistant coach, that's the time where you kind of cut your ties and, and you kind of move on. But there are things a lot of times as coaches, We get mad at admin. It's really our fault. Like we get, I can't believe the admin is such a whatever, whatever, whatever. Well, you had a kid vaping in the locker room. Like that's not the admin's fault. That's your fault. And so what are you doing to kind of correct some of those issues? Or, you know, we had whatever the issue was. Half the time you're mad at admin, and this is me, half the time I'm mad at admin is because I didn't do my job and I'm mad they called me out for it. Let's be honest. You know, you're being honest. It's a lot of times as a head coach, you're kind of the big dog. No one tells you what to do. Well, they do. And so you don't like that when they tell you. So you have to ask yourself those questions is, is this reasonable? Am I doing something wrong here? Or is this them having, you know, unreasonable expectations for me? Usually it's a mixture of the two. Maybe you didn't do something you should have done really well. Maybe they didn't handle it real well. And so there's a question you've got to ask before you just say, man, we have a bad admin. Well, hang on, let's kind of walk through the situations here and see how you ended up in this mess. And then I think the last thing you can do is have that conversation with them of. I want to be here. My family wants to be here. I feel like you don't want me here. Is there something I'm doing that I can fix? And we need to have an open, honest conversation there. And I've always just told mine, I said, you'll never have to fire me. Just come tell me you don't, you don't want me there and I'll leave. So there needs to be that open line of communication where it's okay for you to rip me if I do something stupid. I'm fine with that. That's just part of life. But I need to know that you still want me here. You still believe in what we're doing. So those are conversations that have to happen. Um, you know, from the assistant coach side, this is where you just, this is the ultimate refer to my head coach. You should not have dealings with admin. There is the chain of command for a reason that head coach has too many things on the line, um, for you to be buddy buddy with the admin and it doesn't matter good or bad, right? It should come from the head coach. Uh, there's going to be situations where you have a very selfish head coach and they're going to take all the credit for all the things. It's not time for you to go boasting about yourself and ensuring that the spotlight's on the right person. Let him have it. And figure out where you're going next. Um, I'll tell you one funny thing. Can you talk about not letting your, your admin be blindsided a couple of years ago? Let's I'm in the military. Okay. I've got a potty mouth. I cuss way too much. I've, I've tried to curb it over the years. And it generally I can just put myself in like at grandma's house. I don't cuss. So I can just be like, okay, I'm at grandma's house and I'm all right. Um, sometimes it comes out. Anyway, I was at the top of bleachers in a press box. Calling a game. Um, they kick an onside kick and we have a defensive end for on the front line of our kickoff return. It's a, it's a not a, not a planned onside kick. It's surprise. And he watches it stumble to his feet or roll and roll and roll, and sits there and looks at it and they fall on it. And I drop the biggest loudest f-bomb I think I've ever let go. And, um, and immediately was like, that was not smart. Right. A parent even came up and was like, you guys have got to watch your mouths. I was like, man, I get it, right? Like, okay, yes, yes we do. It was a windowless press box too. Can we just talk about as a school? Can you please put windows on the press boxes? Okay. And an air conditioner. It's August. We're playing, we're coaching up there. It's hot. Put windows. They don't need to hear us anyway. I immediately at halftime, walked down, found my athletic director and was like, this is what just happened. I apologize. It wasn't. It wasn't meant, you know, and it was my, my crowd is my home team crowd. So it wasn't even like it was behind the enemy lines. Right. But I just let him know, like, look, dude, I screwed up. I know it. I apologize. I went told the head coach and I still got non renewed for basically that same thing. Now there was more to it and I was still upset because I could be, but realistically I know that I gave them the ammo there to let me go. Right. And, and that's just part of it. Like you, you gotta, you talked about think like admin, you can't give them the ammo to fire you with, you know, with due cause. And um, And I definitely did, but still, I know it was coming. You're not going to save your job. Somebody that parent was going to the admin, no matter what, even if they wouldn't have come and told me, somebody would have told the admin. So just don't let them be blindsided. Bad news does not get better with time. It gets worse after it's gone around Facebook about 10 times. I would have cussed out a kid who I called up there off the sideline, right? And then it would have been a big thing. And none of that really happened. So, um, yeah, don't, don't let bad news age, man. It's, it's never good. All right. We've gone through a ton of things today. So this is a super special what not to do as a coach. Um, so coach, what is our lesson for the day? Alright, so lesson of what not to do as a coach is is don't try to be the coach you think other people want. You know, and that sounds weird. I'm not suggesting you don't listen to what other people think or don't make sure Smart decisions, but I think it's important that you are true to the coach you want to be like there is a time you may get fired, it probably will, if you're in it long enough, you never want it to be on their terms, not your terms. So a lot of times as a coach, you go in, you're a head coach, you feel the pressure and guys, if you haven't been there yet, it's just a level of pressure that just until you've been in that position, it's hard to explain it. You know, it's hard to explain. I don't know, Daniel, you're in the military. So that's, I'm not even going to compare it to that. That's a whole new level, but it feels as though you're walking around and you never can relax. Everybody's eyes are on you. Everything is on you. And so a lot of times you'll morph into what you think people want instead of just being who you are, who they hired you to be, and there's nothing more sickening, I think, than if you do that and still get fired, you know, Like, you might as well be who you want to be, you know, be the person you told them you were going to be when they hired you. And then if it goes wrong, it goes wrong. And again, I kind of go back to our rules. If we're trying to do our best for our team and our kids, and then kids come first and then coaches come second and that gets me fired, I can sleep at night. I don't, I'm fine with that. But if I'm starting to make decisions based off, I get that order mixed up on what do I think my admin wants? What do I think these people with money want? And kids are down here at the bottom. Man, I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could justify it to my conscience. And so I think a lot of times my, my suggestion to you is don't try to be a coach. You think everybody else wants you to be, be the coach you think you need to be. And then just kind of let the chips fall where they may. Absolutely. Awesome. Uh, one last time when we mentioned those sponsors that we got, you know, a sports talk to Mark and Ryan, the cheat code of all fundraisers, you know, I had about a 30 minute phone call with Ryan the other day, uh, cause he's the Oklahoma rep and I'm working with some Oklahoma schools to try to help them get the advantage in fundraising. And, you know, he told me. Look, man, the boards can be expensive. Okay. You're in that 200 to 400, 000 window for like the average size. Um, and that's a lot of money, but he told me most teams are in the black within the first year. And you don't owe a payment until that year is over that first year is up. You're going to be in the black before you ever owe them a payment. You're going to have the money. So think about that guys, reach out to the, to Mark and he's, he's the one that's got the contact on there. Um, let him know what your situation is. He talked to me at your camp or your, uh, clinic, Kenny, and he said that they put it in a one a Arkansas school. So there is no, there's no school too small. There's no school too big. If you're big enough, I guess you just get the super fancy stuff and it's not just football. Go any sport. You can go baseball, you can go basketball. Um, he showed me some really cool pictures, some new gymnasiums. They're they're putting stuff up in, it looks like the Oklahoma city thunder, right? Like you're going to a NBA game and it's your local high school game. And think of everything you can attract with those, with that, just a video board. You can attract a lot of attention, a lot of good, Positive things can come to your community. So reach out to those guys. And of course, you know, Zach Welchman over at pro com, let him handle all your headset needs. Um, once again, you would talk about the O line Academy coach it'll be coming out here next month or so or within this next month. So I should have a four or five really, really good guest speakers going to be in there. Coach Gould, you know, sleeveless coach Bo Gould will be in there. So he's got about 20 hours of content. I have a book that goes with it. It's going to be about a hundred bucks for all of it. So it's going to be a pretty good little deal. gun show gold. That's gotta be his That's right. Make it happen. Uh, social media. You can find me on X slash Twitter at coach chamber. Okay. Email me chambers and football consulting at gmail. com. You guys listened last week. You know, that was a coach that lives near me. He's been listening to both podcasts for a long time and said, I want to be on the show. He emailed me. I know we brought something to the table. We had him on. Okay. Um, so if you're a guy that wants to come on, we'd love guests, especially in the off season when scheduling is not so much of a thing. We're not worried about practice and games and Kenny and I are going to be stressed to get those just like last year. We got to squeeze in those episodes somewhere, but right now is the best time for you if you want to be on a podcast. Guys, it's a ton of fun to set and talk ball. You for you can lose the jitters. Don't worry about the imposter syndrome that goes away to just come on and talk ball with us, man. Reach out to me at Chamberlain football consulting at gmail. com. Um, Kenny, where are you at? Uh, all things FB coach Simpson. So FB coach Simpson. com it's got headsets. Don't forget Daniel's got a whole series running be worth watching over there. It's also got all the gun T all the three, four, all the team themes. There's just a bunch of stuff over there. FB coach Simpson. com or a Twitter at FB coach Simpson or FB coach Simpson at gmail. com is my email address. Perfect. Appreciate that podcast at coaching one on one pod on Twitter. You can check us out there to see what stuff's kind of just dropping. We want to thank you for being a listener to the coaching one on one podcast. We'll hope you'll join us next week as we continue to make the complex more simple. Please consider subscribing to the show. So you'll always know when the new episodes are out. We'll leave you with this. It's hard to beat someone who never gives up no matter the situation. Find a way.