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Post by jazzo on Mar 18, 2008 8:34:52 GMT -6
I know a lot of you come from a variety of different youth football leagues around the country, so I just wanted to get your thoughts and opinions on this subject. We've had problems in our league with coaches, board members, etc. bending and/or breaking the rules on a variety of different issues. As many of you have probably already experienced, there are folks involved in the program who will do whatever it takes to win, including bribing, cheating and the list goes on. There's always the
(snakes) who will smooth talk gullible members that are in positions of power in the league.
One example, we have had coaches put lead in a player's girdle so that they will make weight on game day. Obviously the league didn't know at the time, but found out later. There's the opposite where coaches insist the kid sweats down, throws up, starves themself, etc. to make weight so they can play. This is just the beginning on negative issues we deal with and I'm sure some of you have dealt with also. I was just curious, how does your leagues handle these situations? Is there warnings, suspensions, permanent dismissal of coaches, parents, board members, etc?
Our league presidents are aware of these issues now and they already have worked their way up Regional Members. We just want to try and prevent these bad outcomes again in the future. Are there any precautions, actions or anything else you do before it gets to this point. A good number of people in our league are just trying to clean up the slime and keep the youth football program positive for the children. Winning is great, but not when there is dirty moves made to get the wins. We all know that kids are smart and they pick up on what coaches, parents, board members do whether it's negative or positive. Thank you for your time, responses and advice......
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Post by davecisar on Mar 18, 2008 10:41:12 GMT -6
Quite frankly these types of things are less commonplace than one might expect.
Im the Omaha league anything close to that was permanent ban on the coach and quite often loss of homefield and voting privledges of the org.
One org was tossed alltogether , because it was found out several of the coaches knew an ineligible player was being played.
Quality attracts quality, get rid of the marginal orgs and coaches and the best will beat a path down to your door.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 18, 2008 13:21:09 GMT -6
There is no reason to put up with that kind of behavior. Using illegal players should be an automatic lietime suspension. Lesser offenses should be probably be 1-2 game suspensions with multiple offenses leading to a lifetime suspension. It's great that your program is trying to clean things up, but it really needs to come from the top - from the conference or league that your program is a part of. If they don't permanently dismiss rouge coaches and programs, then the incentive to cheat will remain and you'll find that cheaters will keep cropping up. As Dave said, quality attracts quality, so if your conference/league makes it clear that cheating will not be tolerated, good coaches and programs will want to be part of it.
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Post by jazzo on Mar 19, 2008 7:51:48 GMT -6
Thank you for the feedback coaches. It's encouraging to hear that there are leagues that have zero tolerance for these types of behaviors. As I write this, we are in the process of cleaning things up. I realize this process can't happen overnight, but the bad apples can be dismissed before the season starts. Our league is definately going to be more careful in the future when they pick coaches, board members, etc.....
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 19, 2008 10:20:07 GMT -6
One other thing you should probably be doing is background checks on your coaches and administrators. All coaches and board members (any position requiring an ID badge) in our conference are required to get live scanned. This keeps child molesters out of coaching and embezzlers off of boards - at least better than if you don't do the background checks.
There is one negative to this approach, though. If you go to the trouble to do background checks, you have to ensure that only coaches that have undergone the background checks interact with the kids. In practice, this means that our coaches have to wear their ID badges to every practice and if a conference commissioner comes by practice (and they do), if there are any unbadged coaches on the field, they will be asked to leave, the program gets fined and multilple offenses will lead to suspension of the head coach. What this means is no more having parents hold bags or fill in for absent coaches. Nor can you add a coach midseason. If you don't have your full staff in place (including guys that will just hold bags) by certification date (about the 3rd week in August), you are SOL.
Again, the standard for behavior needs to be set by the conference/league that your program is a part of - if they aren't willing to set down strong standards with substantial penalties for failing to adhere to the standards, move your program to another conference/league.
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Post by jazzo on Mar 19, 2008 16:14:56 GMT -6
Yeah, we do background checks for those reasons, but unfortunately there are still "manipulating arrogant jerks" who have clean records. There are still sheisty folks that will do whatever it takes to get wins under their belt. Our association within the league hasn't had any problems with what you stated above. I hope it stays that way, because what we're dealing with now is bad enough.
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Post by justryn2 on May 6, 2008 15:12:48 GMT -6
We have had our share of "unfortunate" events in the league and the organization I coach within. One of the things our league started doing is an end-of-season poll of the member organizations asking them rank all member organizations in a number of different areas; everything from facilities and concessions to sportsmanship and fairness. The results of the poll are distributed to all organizations within the league.
I actually think this helps. An organization may have one or two winning teams but, if they went around the rules to get there, it will probably show up in the EOS rankings. IMO, this adds an incentive at the organizational level to ensure they are putting teams on the field that are coached fairly and well.
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Post by falconscoach on May 7, 2008 3:41:32 GMT -6
Background checks will not find coaches with to much ego that think that they are bigger than the game it self. If you find someone doing this type of crap that you must report them to the league. Put it in there hands and see what they do about it. If things dont cahnge get the people running the league out. You hear it every day but make a change. If the coach is inside of your program dont allow him back to coach the next year. Yes he may go coach at another program and you may loose players because of it but think about your program.
Just remember that what goes around comes aound and to watch yourself if your not clean...
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Post by jazzo on May 7, 2008 23:10:05 GMT -6
Thank you all again for your responses and opinions regarding these issues. I just received good news this evening that the League board members including the President is supporting our association 100% on eliminating the bad apples. There is going to be some big changes in our association for the better. It's been a hard fight, but we finally have a lot of positive support from parents, coaches, board members, etc. It feels great to be headed in the right direction! Thanks again for all the advice....
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Post by grags21 on May 8, 2008 4:57:35 GMT -6
well good luck and keep us posted!
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