Things to address in killing a losing culture

put policy in place...be prepared to go 0-10 with a low number of guys.  may take a few years for the "lost" classes to filter out of the program.

What kills the idea that players can miss a practice or weights is competition at their spot, plane and simple.

If you have numbers, problem solved, if you don't have numbers that is were you earn your pay check. You have two choices:

1. Put a policy in place that is unilateral and all inclusive for every single player, lose your 3 or 4 best Seniors who don't want to change and you have to stand on principle and only play football with a bunch of Freshman and Sophomores.  Plus you get to go 0-10 for the year, YEAH!!!

2. Have a general policy, were you can determine playing time on an individual bases and determine penalties based upon the individual. For example, "BEST PLAYER - PLAYS, PERIOD." So if a kid misses a practice and during that practice his replacement shows you he is better then that kid plays.

Now the second option is unfair and not all inclusive and favors slack-ass Seniors who don't show up for everything, but you can slowly ratchet up your policy as you build numbers for the future. And again I recognize that this policy is unfair to the ass-kissing Freshman and Sophomore who is at every practice, doing everything right, but it also protects that kid from playing Varsity too soon and getting his Butt handed to him on every play. Plus you get to win a few games and develop your young kids while letting the Seniors and Juniors finish out their high school careers.

Me I don't like losing, but we are at a smaller school where we don't have massive amounts of kids to choose from. So when I took over a struggling small school program and this is what we did and it has worked out pretty well for us. If we had a kid that missed practice and we had a replacement for him then we wouldn't start the kid that missed practice, but if we didn't well that kid got away with something and we just had to live with it until we built up numbers over time.

1. Establish a policy for missing practices and defining what are excused and unexcused absences. Just make sure you use the "coaches' discretion" when defining those absences so that you're not painted into a corner.

2. Emphasize effort over talent. Reward effort with playing time and punish laziness by putting them on the bench. The programs I have been involved in that struggled the most were the most were those that would play lazy "studs" over the rest of the kids. It sent a bad message, kids quit and the program fell apart.

K-12th school

You literally have hit the trifecta jackpot. Just get your tail to work. Don’t put up with those who don’t work. In two years (or less), you will be competitive. After that, the sky is the limit.

First I am tired of the term culture. I love coaching and coaches but if you didn’t use that term 5+ years ago don’t grab it now.

Second standards and accountability have always been important. Tell kids what you want from them. When they do it reward them, when they don’t reprimand them.

Coach them up everyday. Tell them if they don’t show up you can’t coach them, if you can’t coach them they can’t be prepared, and if they aren’t prepared they can’t play. We love you just as much on the sideline as we do on the field but you will stay on that sideline until you practice.

We'll get it bartimus58

Gotta flush a stick of dynamite down the toilet and blow that $h!t up... I still think power is a pretty good play!

Also, in conjunction with running a mile, if you were a varsity starter that missed a Tuesday you didn’t play defense. Miss Wednesday? No offense.  Thursday?  You just end up not playing anywhere.

Honestly, the number one thing is to build relationships with the kids.  Get to know them and make sure they get to know you.  Go to the feeder school games, be seen at the youth leagues, etc.  Relationships will be #1 before talent and policies matter.

Then make practice fun and meaningful to the kids.  Make the weightroom the place to be.  Make practice fun and briskly paced.  Keep the kids moving and working throughout.

Do a ton of fundraising to buy new swag.  Remodel (or at least paint) the locker room and weightroom.  Get kids involved in the offseason that way so you get some investment--give the good new gear to the kids who worked hardest to earn it.  Make it clear that this is a new era.

The other thing is to tighten the screws slowly, since they aren't used to this stuff.  If you come in and do your best Bear Bryant impression to show what a hard@$$ you are, you're going to ruffle too many feathers and the backlash will put you in a bad spot from the beginning.  Instill discipline and accountability, obviously, but be reasonable and pick the battles that really matter to focus on: getting kids in the weightroom, getting them to practice, getting them to give effort and keep their grades up, etc.

I once worked under a HC who took over the team when they'd been used to skipping workouts and would wait until summer or even after school had started to come out, so he instituted a policy that kids had to "make up" every single workout or practice they'd missed since they'd enrolled in school or the day he took over as coach if they wanted to play.  For a lot of kids who were on the fence about playing but came out in the summer, this meant they wouldn't get to play until midseason or maybe even the next year.

Needless to say, that flopped with the kids.  His first year, he got as low as 14 healthy bodies and finished with 18 on the team.  Then he couldn't enforce his own rules on riding the bench if you missed practice because it would have meant forfeiting games... but he stuck to this policy for new kids who wanted to play.  Some of the schools' best athletes came out to play, but he turned them away with this policy before they ever played a down.  That guy won 2 games in 3 years.

we have clearly defined standards for missing practice and loafing.

Define it and hold everyone accountable.

"Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who aren't motivated."

--Lou Holtz

Nice job, Coach. Way to stick to your guns. Good luck and I hope you get things moving in the right direction this offseason.

We had a decent amount of pushback from one parent in particular. She called a meeting with our AD, he backed me and we didn't hear much, if anything, the rest of the season about such things. Despite the horror stories, I think most parents, deep down, realize you have to be at practice to have any understanding of what's going on in that week's game.

I once wrote a 3-4 page article entitlted "SELLING OUR PROGRAM TO THE PUBLIC", that was published in the old "Scholastic Coach" magazine (when Herman Masin was the Editor).  I'll look & see if I still have it.  It was all about the following:

1.  Relationship with the parents.
2.  Cooperation with the Administration
3.  Relationship with Faculty Members
4.  Relationship with the Press
5.  Selling the Community on Yourself

There were suggestions under each heading.  Don't KNOW if I can locate it, but those headings may give someone a thought!