Worst thing you've done as a coach

Dumbest thing I have ever done is be the smartest man in the room. There is a time and place for everything. I have had numerous time where it was not the right time.

Coach in the wisconsin area, and about 15 years ago I transferred from coaching in "greendale" for 4 years to cross town rival "greenfield"

end of season banquet, I started my speech off with..."I'm so happy to be a part of the greendale, I mean greenfield! program...got a nice round of boos.

Was there for 6 great years coaching youth till I got a HS gig, was a great time so worked out in the end, but wow, was embarrassed.

During practice slapped a kid on the side of the helmet out of frustration. Immediately felt remorseful. Only time I ever did anything like that, no excuse for it.

That was 30 years ago. Today I probably would've been fired, and rightfully so.

Took my team from Sacramento, California to play a game in Idaho. Chartered bus. Planned lunch stop went well. Didn't really plan where to stop for dinner as I thought we would just stop some place to eat. Didn't realize there was no "someplace" for the last six hours! Arrived at our hotel at 11:00 p.m. with a lot of hungry kids and coaches!

I think the one thing I did that I think really hurt me and damaged the relationship I had with my players was the time I laid into our OL for being fat and lazy. Now, they were fat and lazy- they even had a contest to see who could gain the most weight and would compare to see who had the biggest gut. They did a host of other annoying things like see who could run sprints the slowest and who could lift the least. Most of them were Srs and going into the year we had planned to rely heavily on them to pave the way for our returning stud back.

But after we started 1-3 and they couldn't get out of a stance by the 4th quarter I lost it. Said a lot of things that was 100% true, and it wasn't anything I hadn't already said in different terms, but I angrily reduced it to some really harsh words and it's kind of bugged me since.

Quit via text message. Some concerns I had with the offense and offensive staff were not addressed during the off-season. I went back and apologized to the HC and the rest of the staff a couple weeks later.

I was a real assshole to a lot of people for a lot longer than I should have been. It was really just pure ego and either thinking my way was the only way to do something or just being too scared to just say I didn’t know and ask for help.

I yelled at kids and assistants far too often and almost always tried to justify it instead of apologizing and correcting it. That was probably the biggest thing.

I basically did this exact same thing to a group of similar sounding linemen one year when we went 0-9.  They should have been the strength of our team and instead were very soft and didn't work very hard.  But, for reasons I'm still unsure of, I waited until halftime of Week 9 (their senior night since we were home) to let my frustrations out on them.  For me, it's not so much what I said, because like you, everything was true.  I just have no explanation why it took me until halftime of the Week 9 game to do so.  While still probably wrong, if I had done so midseason, maybe I could have lit a fire to force some more productive play down the stretch.  

Yep. Me too.

And was a complete jackass while doing it. I wince when I think back about what an a$$hole I was. Like Michael Scott-level cringe.

We had a game seven hours from home and we were driving half the way the day before and spending the night in a hotel. We were driving four hours that night so I called in a big dinner order at a burger place; we planned on just picking it up there and getting back on the road. There's only TWO of those friggin' burger places in the whole state and I placed the order with the wrong one; on the other side of the damn state.

First of all, this is a great thread. Second, knowing some of you guys and your online personalities, it's cool to see some of the transparency that I wish our profession showed more often. Last, some of these stories literally have me laughing out loud. Unfortunately, here's mine:

My first year as a HC. We were bad, 1-7 at the time. Playing our rival in the last game of the year. They were 0-8. We were up big on them, like 42-0. 4th quarter, I had subs in, but it was a 4th down, and I didn't want to punt. On our own 40 yd. line, I call a reverse and tell the kid to get the first and run out of bounds.

Yep, you guessed it...that kids sees nothing but green grass, and hauls a$$ to the endzone. The kid felt bad that he got caught up in the moment. It was a moment that I put him in. I literally wanted to crawl under a rock. The handshake line with the opposing team was NOT pretty. It was the first time, if I could have given the game back, I would have.

To add salt to the wound, our camera broke and I had to ask them for their film the next day. If I was the opposing coach would have laughed my a$$ into a coma, but their coach was a class dude. I apologized profusely and even wrote a letter to their principal apologizing.

I know a lot of guys have the 'well they have to stop you' mentality. This was a small-town rivalry. It wasn't a good look at all. Everyone else got over it pretty quickly. I still carry it.

left a job in ISS to "help out admin" and be a dean of discipline........
8hrs of hudl to 8hrs of no hudl, or espn or shining the seat of a chair with my A$$.....
probably the poorest choice ive made.
now dumb,
ehhh....im not hijacking the thread with things that ive done dumb. list would go on for awhile. haahaa.
nobodys perfect, we all do things at the time fell like they are right and for the right reason.
old man told me 1 time,
hindsight isnt 20/20, its more like 50/50.

Can't drop that in this thread and not expect someone to ask for details on this one.

So, details?