Talking to your captains

It has always been my belief that captains should be sort of like a student-coach, and should be selected with that in mind. We bring them in on a lot of coaching meetings. In fact they are one of the most important parts of the Academic Meetings where we go over players grades and who is falling too low, etc. We use them to help keep the players on academic track. We split the team into quarters (i've seen other teams split it up by grade level, but ours is just varsity team split into quarters). Each of the four captains has a quarter of the varsity team. They are responsible for helping coaches follow up and stay on top of grades, they are responsible for making phone calls to check on curfew compliance on night before games, and they are also responsible for offseason attendance for their quarter of the team. They will check up on players that are not showing up to offseason workouts, help organize carpools etc to get as many of their players there as possible. We have made it into a little competition during the offseason on who can get their "squad" to have the highest attendance percentage.
Also, if your financial resources allow it, it is a good idea to plan an event with just your HC and your captains, or your HC, OC, and DC and captians, before the start of two-a-days, just a one day thing where you do something fun as a team builder for the four captains to bond, and then have a meeting about your expectations of the team this year. Teach them how you want them to act. Teach them what is expected of them.
The responsibilities sound like a big job, but they really are not. Most captains, if properly selected, will rise to the challenge. Don't overload them, but have them attend the weekly Academic Meeting (you may have to or want to provide lunch so they have time to eat during the meeting). Together the coach and captain can work with the player and his teachers about what needs to change to get the grades pulled up. This responsibility can really lead to a very positive captain prescence on your team.
With all this in mind, you have to select very wisely. Pick natural leaders that communicate well with their peers. Being the best player is of very little importance. They need to be able to communicate without being bullies, and not go overboard with it.
After all the meetings and time spent with coaching staff during the offseason, we feel like we can really trust these captains to do the right thing. During the early part of the season, they are the only players we allow the media to do postgame interviews, etc with. Throughout the season, after a loss when the emotions are high, they are the only players to do interviews if the media wants to talk to a player. We trust that they will keep their frustrations to a minimum and give a professional interview that will not hurt the team.
In the future we would also like to find a way to send the captians to a leadership camp or something if we can find one and get the resources together to do it. I am also interested in developing a captians competition program during the offseason to compete with other schools in a Brains and Brawn type competition, just to make things fun and competitive.
Just my two cents.