letting a coach go

How would you go about finding out if they are backstabbing and talking around the kids? I am not much into the espionage thing. What you see is what you get with me. How would someone so blunt as myself find out about that? I don't know if ssteve is like me in this regard, but figuring out how to find that out might help him too.

Although the possibility of disloyalty is serious there's no reason to make an issue of it here. You fire him for missing meetings, period.

a screw up that can't show up on time and won't put in the work is still a screw up

ask him this...how can he expect his players to be on time and to execute an assignment if THEIR coach (read as rolemodel) cannot his assignments?

well said....

calande,
you hit the nail on the head. an while I do not think i spell things out explicitly enough in general. I've already spoken with this coach about meeting attendance and punctuallity this past summer.
Also, you are right about talkign to the guy/staff first. One thing I think is funny, is that I do use, our, we, us , all plural possessive pronouns. However, the staff often seems reluctant to step up and provide more input/opinions. I ask, but they don't give much. I'm just curious as to why this is? I need to ask them and will at our next meeting.
thanks for all the help guys. and nothing can be taken for granted.

coach,
concerning the contracts, I am going to get something in writing before the meeting. so that they know what is expected during this offseason. I do feel like I upped the commitment level on them that past offseason, but I warned/told them that going into the last offseason.
My plan for the next meeting is to do several things.
1. Eval the staff as a whole, things we did well and not so well. Including why I thought things went like that.
2. Address the issue of philosophy. do they know why I do what I oldo, my expectations of the program, kids. They should know what I expect from the Offense and Defense, b/c we have talked about philosophy a lot in the past. `
3. Set the Schedule for the winter, clinics, meetings, etc. For clinics, I ask them to type up their notes. This serves two purposes, it forces us to individually go through what we heard, and it lets me put together a clinic manual from everything we've heard over the year. I'll probably do what we did last year which was meet once a month. We go meeting to meeting with scheduling them. I always get them to tell me when they are available, then if needed, I'll cancel. Like you said.
4. Give them the coaching contracts/expectation sheets. I do this with my players, but I didn't expect to have to do this with adults, but like brophy said, take nothing for granted.
I'll let you know how it goes.

No on to your other points, and I'd love any other input by the way.
Staff Input:
I do have a tendency to micromanage or try to do everything my self. I have just been disappointed, by other coaches, some on staff, some not. What I mean is that if I would ask for something to get done, such as writing your position manual to put in the coaches' manuals, and it doesn't get done. there are other examples. so if something needs to get done, I feel I have to do it.
That being said, I ALWAYS ask for input on pretty much everything we do. We're pretty young as a staff, so experience may play a role. we ahve two older guys (40's) on staff, and only one will really offer opinions, which he does constantly, but he knows a lot so that's GREAT. the other guy (the one who missed the banquet) will sometimes offer opinions, but I think he got his feelings hurt when we decided to go away from "his" offense for this year.

banquets and coaches:
at the beginning of the year, we have a cookout, and I intro all of the coaches talk about them and tell what they will be doing on staff. At the banquet, we each present one of the awards we give out.

Plans, etc
We have a defensive and offensive manual (w/ what the coaches have submitted to me). Team rules are set by the players' council in the spring. They get a practice plan that is laid out in 24 5 minute periods. We set the game plan for the week on sundays and go over what to focus on at each practice also on sundays, so if they miss that meeting they miss a lot, even though I started typing up that gameplan for those that miss. In terms of evals, we fill out forms given to us by the AD. I allow them to self eval, and then go over it with them individually at the end of the year. I think I should allow them to eval me this year.

anything else??? i think I caught the rambling bug. =)
I'll end by saying that I try to lead by example. I work my butt off, and expect others to as well. However, I have learned that some people just don't know how, and somepeople just don't want to.