How to start a new program

Never been in that situation but I would go with Option 2, or maybe even option 1.

I believe if you went with Number 3 it would backfire on you. I could see an 0-10 season for a year or two perhaps which would almost kill it before it got started.

Let some young kids get experience against other young kids, build some confidence in them, get them in the weight room, then get Varsity started in your third season

Starting a small private school program successfully is dependent on several factors:
-The number of small schools that you are going to play that are similar in size and athletic ability?
-The size of your school
-The number of athletes and athletic success of your school
-The ablility to recruit athletes to your school to play
(I know that the word "recruit" is a bad word-you could use the word "draw" if you want-but it's ends up the same)
-If you are going to have to play public school programs that you cannot compete with?
-Where are you going to play? You gotta' have a field or rent one
-Are you an independent school or a church-supported school?
-Is the school financially strong? These days private schools are taking a beating.

What you start really takes into account these questions.

We are a small, non church-connected private Christian school.
We raised the money privately for field and equipment. We started our first year playing whomever we could schedule. We actually won a game, went 1-9, but as most schools in our position-we lost big because we were playing much much larger schools. Everybody wants to schedule a first year program.

However, since the time we started our program a large number of schools have started programs and we have our own conference if like-size and like-ablility schools. If we would have waited a couple of years we would have had an easier time.

So, who you are having to play makes a big difference.
Those 65-0 and 48-0 scores really take a lot out of you.

OJW

I just like the wealthy supporter idea. HO do you start one of those?

I agree that the s.o.p. of public school is the JV route. The reason for that is most public schools start football programs when they build a new school. Here in Florida they stock that school with underclassmen, they don't even allow Sr.'s to transfer to it and limited Jrs. Sometimes they allow only 9-10 to transfer to that new school. They don't make them play varsity ball at that age.

I have no experience with a public school starting a football program from stratch after the school was long established.

Private schools, particularly small private schools have a history of starting football programs many years later.
My current school started football 22 years after the school was started.
Small private schools in Florida had a rash of new football programs in the mid-2000's, it's slowed down now since the bad economic times.

OJW

Having started two private school programs from scratch there are a couple of things to consider:

The concern over interest in playing the game is valid. If you suggest you are only going to play a JV team, you will struggle to get enough kids, especially some athletes that you will need to compete year one. You really need to start a varsity program to give you a full spread of access to kids and then schedule public school JV teams if you can't find weaker programs like yours in your area.

There are good athletes who will not play if the opportunity isn't competitive in their minds.

You will spend the first three season building football players anyway, so while OJW is right the schedule has some value as to how "low can you go," in the teams you schedule, you will be amazed at the time you have spend just getting the kids up to speed on the game - getting them dressed to practice was a challenge for me.

Your coaching emphasis will change dramatically for the first few years as well. We spent a great deal of time in drills, team time, and counseling - LOL. We had to play both ways, and I had 2 volunteer assistants that showed up 2 days/week. Just be prepared to ratchet back how much you expect to get done - especially from yourself.

One important recommendation. Keep your investments low where you can up front. If you don't have facilities currently, just use whatever field they may have for practice and workout a rental of a local high school on days they are away. You don't need a field. I coached 6 years without a home stadium, and it was fine - manage the money, mange the expectations. The more they put in up front, the more heartburn they will have with slow progress. Better to underpromise and overdeliver if you can

Just a few thoughts to think about...

We used option 2 when starting a private catholic school in Florida. Numbers started out at 77 and have built to around 470. Played 2 year JV schedule and now have finished our 5th varsity season. 1-6 our first season and then 5-3 our 2nd season. Going in our 8th season overall its still abuilding process....