One - Two Year Turnarounds

1. Culture: Create a culture where football and athletics and success in EVERYTHING is important. This includes academics too. Football has to be something kids want to be a part of.

2. Staff: You have to have good coaches at the varsity, under-levels, and MS/JH on down.

3. Year-round work: Kids have to committ to getting better. Anyone not in-season needs to be committed to the wt room. Anyone who is in season needs to concentrate on that sport but also find time to get into the wt room. It helps to have coaches in the other sports on the same page when it comes to S & C. Often times this "unification" process has to start with the AD being on board too.

4. Youth Programs: Get kids out, hyped on your program, taught fundamentals, have fun, keep'm out.

5. High Expectations: You have to raise the bar from where the program is and never allow yourself, the staff, or the kids to sell themselves short. BUT the expectations need to also be realistic. Rome was not built in a day, but it was built through constant hard work, dedication, etc.

Now the 1-2 year turnarounds happen but often times aside from the above 5 items I listed you also have to have some studs coming through..or at least a couple classes of good kids.
Talent helps.

Not sure how much of this could be applied to HS teams, but have headed up two 180 degree turnarounds at the youth level.
Far more complex in HS football, but you may be able to use an idea or two:
1) Complete brutal honest analysis of why failure is occuring. No sacred cows including capabilities of head coach and the coaching staff, with the exception of course of playing within the rules.
1a) Develop critical success factors and prioritize all your activities to them. Figure out ways to ignore, eliminate or outsurce time wasting activites that have little to nothing to do with your critical success factors.
2) Open mindedness to new ideas, concepts, methodologies to address said problem. Outside help from a person that has won consistently in variety of situations, hopefully in similar situation.
Admitted we didnt have the answers and admitted we only won when we had the best talent. Talk to guys Like Mark Fisher at Louisa in Virginia, o-fer forever before he gets there 20 + years of failure, in just 3 years hes playing for a State Title.
3) Thorough "no sacred cow" analysis of my usual ways of doing things versus the needs of the turnaround program and the kids and time committments we typically got.
4) Strong confident unwavering belief by HC in direction based on thorough analysis of problem and thoroghly researched logical and easily communicated solution. Everyone, from the stakeholders in the community down to the waterboy understood our goals, why we were doing what we were doing and what it was going to take to get there. Everyone must know the vision and the plan and it must be able to easily flow out of everyones mouth.
Like a company or personal mission statement.( First Things First by Covey is a Great book to help you develop this) Did they think we were crazy the first time we said we were going to be: the "Model that all Youth teams in the Nation want to emulate, being "the team" everyone wants to play for. Being the dominant team in our league and state while being known for superior fundamentals and overt sportsmanship. Glorifying God through our play and actions and retaining 90% + of our players. They thought we were nuts, but we repeated it often and lived it. You know what they say about repeating something often enough. LOL
5) 2-3 trusted, committed and loyal staff members. Dont care how much DI ball they played or how many TDs they scored "back n the day" we need guys that can follow directions, communicate the vision and follow the plan. If you arent on board, go elsewhere.
6) Pick Scheme that fits the brutally honest evaluation of the kids talents and numbers compared to your competition. Not an offense or defense that relys on a wish list of kids that rarely if ever show up or fit your previous team. Not choosing a system that initially pleases the kids, parents or the egos of the coaches (style over substance be banned). We changed everything from offense, defense, special teams, practice methodology, scrimmaging, conditioning, warm ups to pre-game to how we did water breaks. We studied how the most successful teams in the country, not just in our area did things and copied a little from each and made modifications where it made sense to fit our kids. We looked for overachieving teams to emulate that consistently won. Didnt have time to sift through what everyone in the planet was doing to find out the logic if it worked and didnt, we went to those that won consistently with average or less talent.
7) None of "we do it this way because weve always done it this way" answers. Must have logical answer to why we do everything attatched to our end goal statement.
8) Extrememly high expectations, perfection required during the most minute of details. We set the bar very high evn though both were loser programs. We are going to win now, here is why it will work and this is what you need to do to make it work. It ls your choice players.
9) Having fun, we incorporate fun into our practices to condition, build numbers and build team unity.
10) Put our kids in positions where they could have some successes, no matter how bad we were. ( Double team blocks, crab blocks etc)
11) Character building as part of program. We did daily partner questions, weekly grade reports, community service projects and practiced over the top sportsmanship that set us far apart from all others. A true unique and new indentity.
12) Confidence. Internally not sure it was going to work. Externally: quiet, unwavering, calm confidence. NEver hit the panic button, talked about our success in past terms. Kids knew we as coaches expected them to win, no big celebrations on TDs, wins, championships etc, we expected it ( externally LOL)
13) Success breeds success and downward spirals are contagious too. We had to make wholesale changes in 2001, otherwise the program wouldnt even exist today.
14) Commitment to coaching education and excellence.

Case in point: A local HS program I know very well, has a huge problem with numbers. For the last 6-10 years have suited up just 22-26 kids on varsity in a school of 1700 kids. Opposition often suits over 100. Team "A" has just 60 kids in the program. Open enrollment, lots of kids in the area go to other schools and excell. ZERO effort, absolutely zero effort by HC to get involved with the youth kids ( 1st-8th grade) to develop relationships etc in football. These coaches spent all their time developing Xs and Os when their main problem isnt Xs and Os, it's numbers. They were like a Wild West Fort getting ready to defend itself from an incoming Indian attack that sepnt all its time making sure they had the cleanest restrooms instead of scouting the enemy, stockpiling ammo and cleaning thier weapons. According to my meeting with Supt of Schools and city AD for all Public schools in the area, nothing illegal or immoral about recruiting" kids. Asked the new HC in football at "A" what his plan for getting more kids out was, said " I dont have one". This school that often won 3-4 games now with the new guy, as I predicted won 1 last year and will not win a game in the next several years.
On the other hand the next HS over has a HC comes to all our kids basketball games on Saturday early am, knows the parents and players by first name. His asst does free camps for us and our kids go play bball for him. Our kids are ball boys for him on rotating basis. They won back to back State BBall titles, first in school history. Moral of story, understand why you are losing, set plan in place to correct it using realistic real world priorities. This guy can be the greatest X and O guy since Bill Walsh and it wont matter one hill of beans because he has set very silly priorities. His record in 5 years will be 1-49.

I have no thoughts this year my humor is all that is left....I have always improved where I have gone... but After or 500 mark last year and the Fiasco that was Finland I am at my wits end.Even with the wifey saying" they are better than they ever have been"! Thats not sufficiant.
I read in " Coaching Matters" that Lombardi came too GB and cleaned house, everything was in order by year two, you have to clean out the bad blood, this does not mean those who dis -agree at first before you step on the grass, but everyone must be on the same card when you do or as Groundy stated get the F**k out.

When I work as a Cord, the HC is the boss period, I will do what he wishes and express my opinion when it is asked if he does not listen I swallow the bile and move on to the job I have to do. A Coach once said go back to the basics and master those and then move on. Coaches have to do the same when they are under someone, thats called learning.

Stay the course , plan and excute the policys, the game plan and what you wish to achieve. Get a Staff that agrees with you and deligate and trust, hopefully in 2 years you are looking at a Ring or Close to it.

Gee...Groundy, I almost feel better....yikes. Well f**k it , like always pick yourself up, shake of the dust and go at again.
Further Note:
Too bad you guys Xed My Program Manifesto...their is also one ingredient that helps....we all tend to forget this I think
FUN !

NO way can you do it alone. That is why there are so few real quick turnarounds. Unless you have the clout/authority to make quick changes to the staff and bring in your people (which is usually not the case in the midwest) then you are often stuck at least for the first year with what you have...which is often part of the problem to begin with.

Administration changes too. You can get hired by people willing to help you and back you, then they, because they are good administrators take a job at a bigger better paying district and leave you with someone new.

Sometimes things are out of your control. You have to control the things you can and do your best with everything else.

Where is the AD in all this?