What are the critical items a football head coach must do?

[zarnozdabull]

Taggart proved you don't need that well of Xs and Os to win in the lowly AAC.

Just recruit well above your competition, and you will be able to out-athlete most of your conference mates.

[The Sheriff]

I will take an X’s and O’s coach over talent as talent only takes you so far. It’s how you utilize said talent that brings home championships. A culture where a winning attitude is infectious will lead to achieving a maximum effort from one’s players. 

[puc86]

Just now, The Sheriff said:

I will take an X’s and O’s coach over talent as talent only takes you so far. It’s how you utilize said talent that brings home championships. A culture where a winning attitude is infectious will lead to achieving a maximum effort from one’s players. 

I think I could be more in this camp if we hadn’t spent the majority of the last 13 years wondering if we will ever win another game and hearing the laundry list of reasons it would take for anyone to be successful years from the moment it was being discussed. Also no one is confusing CWT for a strong x and o’s guy and he is the only person that ushered in any level of talent to be competitive since 2009.  CSH was successful until CJL’s talent dissipated, CWT was successful as soon as he had more talent than everyone else, CCS was successful until that talent dissipated and now we are hopeful someone can come in and do what CWT is proving he cannot do at FAU. 

[Brad]

36 minutes ago, Outlaw said:

You are the only person to mention him. I am telling you what I think it takes to be a successful  college coach. 

 

You’re just not as crafty as you think you are. 

 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Bull Awakening said:

Wake up and realize what they have been doing has not been working. Taggart talked with everyone he knew when things were going bad. He even had his old high school football coach help.  I don’t see any direction right now to be honest. Just a hodgepodge of nothingness…

Can we stay focused on the question? Please?

[Brad]

45 minutes ago, puc86 said:

I’ve never hired a head football coach but the main thing I think is an issue which I have continued to harp on is I hire people to fill the needs as I define them in overall nature of the functional business we have in place. I have no issue with people accomplishing their goals by any number of proven or reasonable ways but they should be in tune with what they are here to do based of what has proven to work here. 

We do in fact hire people to be football coaches which is fine and dandy, but if I have a car dealership that sells Hondas and we are doing quite well at it but then you after months of not selling determine the issue is you can’t sell Hondas and we just need to liquidate all the Hondas start bringing In Bentleys but the only way you can get Bentleys is to build a new showroom and a new shop. But once you get those things it turns out you still can’t get Bentleys because it turns out that people prefer to get paid the most for their inventory more than they care about what you do with them at that point we have a problem. 
 

VPMK is right about continuity but continuity of the program and not the individual will pay off more than hoping someone that watched something somewhere else can hopefully reinvent that here in a few years starting with none of the necessary parts. Also if recruiting is where we see the biggest indicator of success vs failure we should cut out the middle man and start investing that money directly in recruits instead of all the ways we continue to demonstrate you can spend money while not getting them. 

I really don’t want or need the coach to be the all encompassing parts of the program but just one of the three parts of the people, processes and product. They would have weekly meetings with a committee where we review the improvements that can be made and if we need to reevaluate any of our approaches based on the results we are seeing in our current mix of opponents and ourselves. At the end of the season we would explore all parts of the department and if we need to pivot anything based on the trends we are seeing from that year. 

The coordinators will have been selected based on their fit into the systems we have selected and would be the hiring pool for when the coach inevitably leaves at which point that coordinator would be replaced with the next them. 

In short we want more from coaches than they can be reasonably expected to deliver when they do not have any of the components they think are necessary for them to be successful. They then are not able to control the factors of production they need to be successful in any timeframe anyone would find reasonable and they will either be successful and then leave or fail and then leave at which point we spin the giant wheel and hope we get lucky.

That is not a process that can repeatedly produce results and we need to make the components of success more independent and repeatable so that whoever steps in is ready to be successful on day one because they were hired to run a system these players are equipped to run and when they need more of them we will buy more of them instead of relying on boyish charms and powers of persuasion that seem to land flat more often than they land as hoped and imagined. 

Could you provide bullet points of those properties, experience or knowledge that you think would be most important?

[Brad]

[bowman1]

Here is my list (this is roughly based on what makes a good leader in general)

1 - Have a vision for success and a step by step plan to get there

2 - Be a great communicator, get people on-board with your vision

3 - Be a great evaluator of talent (both at the player and coach level)

4 - identify and bring in top talent (at USF, that means getting into the 3rd and 4th levels of recruiting to find the diamonds missed by others)

5 - create a system (or have a vision that your coaches implement on your behalf), that puts your talent in the best position to succeed 

6 - listen to those around you and incorporate their feedback into your plan (especially if it is not working)

[JTrue]

47 minutes ago, The Sheriff said:

I will take an X’s and O’s coach over talent as talent only takes you so far. It’s how you utilize said talent that brings home championships. A culture where a winning attitude is infectious will lead to achieving a maximum effort from one’s players. 

I'm in the camp of culture is kind of ********. Take Joe Maddon and the Rays as an example. Bringing zoo animals into the locker room is only cute and part of culture when you're winning. You can do anything and call it culture when you're winning. I believe the best way to create a winning culture is by winning. The culture comes AFTER the wins. Derek Jeter isn't a "winner" because he's Derek Jeter. Jeter is a "winner" because he was on the Yankees. Put him on the Reds and no one talks about his clubhouse culture.

Players win games. You have better players, you win more games.

X's and O's help win when you've got lesser players. If your players are just flat out better, that makes up for a lot of everything else. I'll take better players over better schemes all day long.

I'm still sticking with 1) recruit 2) X's and O's 3) sell the program. 

1 covers up for 2. 2 doesn't cover up for 1 all that often. Get 1 and 2 down, you win games. 3 takes care of itself when 1 and 2 are going well and helps the overall program.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by JTrue

[beefy620]

I'm not sure if current coaches are doing it or not, but the ability to connect with the local #baymade coaches and get the local kids to stay here.  I feel like we did that well in the past and it worked pretty well.