How important is “branding” in HS football?

We've seen this go both ways, depending on other factors within the program.

One team we see has always been a smash-mouth, I formation team but they've struggled with it for a few years. They were still competitive but their numbers were down a bit so injuries would hamper them. They went with "spread" concepts that put a little less pressure on the OL and the "modern" play brought in some basketball players. With that being said, they made it work because they've always had buy-in from the kids that did play. They repped their Air Raid concepts/short game/screens in the winter and spring and hit up camps and 7v7s in the summer. They won a few more games and numbers came up so win-win.

Another team has always struggled and they kicked completely over from the Wing-T to "spread" ("We don't have the guys to run the ball!!") They had low numbers, little buy-in and they are AWFUL from the gun. They can't get the kids together in the off-season to rep those concepts, they don't hit the weights and they've been getting destroyed. As a DC, I rarely tee-off on a team with six man blitzes but we brought the house when we played them because they couldn't physically pick up the stunts and their short and screen games were terrible. And, they couldn't grind out the ball to shorten games so the margins of loss were much, much higher.

Not to dodge the question but as coachcb alluded to, it depends on the clientele of the school at which you coach.

With the types of kids some schools get, their best chance to be competitive-win might be running Power-T or something similar.

For others it may be Air Raid or Spread.

Look at their basketball and track teams for an indication of what kind of athletes they get.

One school I formerly coached at has had something like 15 winning basketball seasons in history of the school (over 100 years).

Not surprisingly, the two football coaches who tried to run Spread there had a combined six-year record of 4-32.

To what extent are you losing players to nearby schools?

In general I'd say 'run what you know and whatever style gives you the best shot of winning'. But if there is a school right down the road poaching your athletes, and selling them on running a system that will give them a better shot at a scholarship then you may want to consider making some changes

But changing to keep up with the Joneses, or because some assistant doesn't like doing 'old' things is asinine.

Over the last 20 years I've been a part of both systems, 8 years of double wing and most recently 12 year of some form of spread. Been with 2 different schools over that period of time. Here are my takes in a nutshell. 

1st school- Started coaching and got broke into the double wing from a group of really good coaches. We were a very small school and very successful compared to the previous years history of the school. Although we had fairy good success, we still had worse numbers than we thought we should have on a year to year basis. We would look on the soccer field everyday on our way to practice and say, "man look at all those stud athletes that would help us out, why don't any of them choose football, I mean the soccer program averages 2-3 wins a season?" The chatter in the hallways was, they don't even run plays with WR's how lame is that?"

Well, I didn't think much of it until a new HC finally came in a was a spread guy. Many of the good ol boys and alumni from the town thought he was crazy for not running the offense that got us to be relevant but the dude didn't care, even though he knew it was going to be rough for awhile. First season was horrible, sophomore QB, new system, zero wins, everyone talking about getting the new HC out of there! BUT, the next season, we had number, like 15 more kids than ever before. Long story short, those numbers held, even grew and we actually became very good by the 3rd year. The HC they wanted lynched was now a town hero. 


2nd School (current gig)- Got to coach at my Alma-mater, super stoked to coach here and come into a spread scheme. First few years we were so so, won the games we should have, lost the ones we probably should have. In my 3rd year, we lost our starting QB week 1......and had absolutely nobody that was even close to being a serviceable backup, nobody even wanted the opportunity! It was so bad, I mean brutal, we lost games like I'd never lost games before, more than one by 70 points.

The next season, we swore that would never happen again, so we put in a double wing package early just for the goaline. And then, history basically repeated itself, we lost our QB in week 2 with and ACL again. That being said, we didn't have a serviceable back up once again. Knowing we would probably take more of the 70 point beatings, we decided to go full time double wing and just get through the season knowing we had fantastic group of freshman that would be sophomores next season and we would be good to go again. The good new was, we actually won a couple games and didn't ever get beat by 70. The bad news, kids were grumbling and hated the offense, our WR's were now playing TE or Wing and were never getting the ball. It was rough, kids, parents, I think even the mascot hated us. The thing that nobody understood was that we would have lost by 70 points and never even sniffed a win if we didn't do something.

Final Thoughts- My take on the original posters topic is this. If your going to be spread rather than some version of double wing, wing T, etc, etc, then you better have a plan. Whether you are spread to throw or spread to pass, you better have another QB that can step in, even if you have to tweek what you do a little bit. Also, I would recommend having a package of something not spread. For us, it has been a small I-formation package with power/counter/toss/FB wedge and 2-3 play action passes. We've been very good the last couple years and our I-form package has just been handy whether it be in bad weather, goaline, 4th and short, or even to get a one on one match up on the outside knowing we would get a loaded box.


Sorry for the long rant, lots of coffee and felt the need to make a post rather than do work at my job.  

Developing a perennially successful football program goes way beyond the "style/brand" of offense that you implement.

Everything that you do on offense, defense, and special teams should be easily adaptable to fit your available talent. It behooves you, as a coach to be able to accurately evaluate what your kids can, or cannot, do athletically. Then adjust your schemes enough to build on their strengths, and circumvent their weaknesses.

Just because you see something at a clinic or on TV that is appealing to you as a coach, it doesn't necessarily mean that it is a proper fit for your kids. Be realistic, if there is something new that fits...use it, if not keep it on file. It might be of use at a later time.

Just be an excellent coach...teach your kids how to become successful.

When your teams are successful, you will attract people to join your program.

Correct! In each of those situations we had to "be better or be different" and the limited rosters would not allow us to be better. On a certain level I think "brand" or rather "identity" is important. You need to be able to sell your schemes to your staff and your players. That's the important piece. Before you can sell that you have to believe in it. 

This is the primary reason I am huge believer in canned systems such as TFS if you are making the switch to the spread.

A little perspective.

In 2010 we win a State Championship running the DW, runner up in 2008. For many years the school had a reputation for a hardnosed running attack from the Wishbone. We converted to DW in 2006.
We threw 3 passes in the Championship game.
We had a parent complain to the administration that we weren't getting his kid a look from colleges as a receiver. ( He ended up getting a scholarship as a defensive back.)=

Fast forward to 2013.
The numbers of players trying out declined, and the decision was to go to more of a "wide open" Spread look to attract more talent.

We added about 5-6 more "receiver" types to the program.
Not one of those kids made any significant contribution to the program.

The winning record declined even further. My analysis was that although we were more explosive, we were also a lot more inconsistent, plus we turned the ball over a lot more in the Spread. My first rule of offense is don't do stuff to beat yourself.

i am no longer affiliated with the school, they run a very vanilla Spread this year and have lost a lot of games.

@coacharnold  The bolded section above is the key to your question. If you think that a program needs to run ______ to get a certain group of kids out for football, chances are that group of kids are not going to help the program achieve success.  Put another way, those probably aren't going to be the ones you want.   To make an analogy, if a woman decides to wear a skirt 3-4 inches shorter than it should be, and heels 2-3 inches higher than they should be to attract men,  chances are the guys she will be attracting probably won't be the "winners" she hopes.