"So you wanna be a Head Coach?..."

How to coach up your coaches would be a good topic that is often overlooked. Too many times X's and O's take precedent over how to develop your own staff.

Administrator first, coach a distant 2nd (even though it's no less important).

Think budgets, practice schedules, organizing schemes, fundraisers, parent communication, compliance with school academic rules, overall program discipline, equipment management, gameday responsibilities, coordinating/aligning lower levels, organizing conferences, time management techniques/recommendations, managing other coaches, athlete conditioning, parent concerns/meetings, etc.

Hiring, Organizing and Developing a staff. Working with administration. Developing a Booster Club & Fundraising, Working with Today's Youth to develop great culture in your program, Communicating with Parents and Community. Small but important list. So much more with yearly planning, practice planning, equipment organization, developing a feeder program..............

I have been an assistant for 17 years and on year 18 I take over a program from our HC of 24 years and boy was it a complete change in mentality for me.

For me, I thought the best thing I did was have a first-year orientation for new players and parents. There I introduced all of our policies, philosophies, academics, coaching staff, expectations, etc. Parents filled out all the required paperwork, etc. We have a presentation put together for the parents and I gave them a folder full of material. We even recorded it and put it on YouTube for those people who weren't able to come. I will continue to do this but what it did do was get me organized.

And to add onto that dealing with gray areas can be a major pain so always add that any and all issues will be dealt with at the "Coaches Discretion." 

Leaves you some leeway to deal with different scenarios in different ways if needed.

Might consider mentioning the things that you would go over at the first team meeting once official practice starts.

Not the install stuff but your “set the tone” meeting. Rules, policies, procedures. Makes a big difference.

Sounds like from your OP that you're looking for becoming a HC, not being a successful HC. Here are my thoughts.

Assistant Coach - Build a reputation as a good, loyal, hard-working assistant. Rub elbows and get on the good side of other coaches, teacher, admin, parents, and players. You never know who will talk about you to somebody else, good or bad.

Network - Get out to clinics, coaches association meetings, conference meetings, etc. Meet as many other coaches as possible, HC and assistants, HS or college. Just get your face out there and talk ball or just shoot the chit.

Organization - Talk to your HC about what more you can do to take stuff off his plate. Even if it's the mundane stuff like equipment organization, fundraising orgnanization, etc. you're building experience that will carry over to being the HC

X's and O's - Broaden your football knowledge. Obviously study and clinic as much as possible, but there are also things you can do within your program if your HC allows. If you've always been an offensive guy, see if you can get some work on the defensive side. It doesn't have to be a position change, could simply be involved in the defensive meetings. Also, knowledge of different position groups is a benefit. When I became the HC I had only been the DC for 1 year, but before that I had coached at some point every position group except for QBs and had been STs coordinator for 5 years. Also, I had been with HCs who had employed multiple offenses (Triple, Wing-T, I, Spread) and defenses (4-4, 5-2, 4-3, 3-3) so I had a wide knowledge of many aspects of the game that have helped along the way. That experience has been huge.

My HC does the sit in on defensive meeting just so if somebody cant be at work, and that doesnt end well, he can take over.

I am interested in this.  Can you give a specific example and how you would map out for it?  Thanks.

Most of it is broken down in my drill manuals and season planning manuals. For each skill or technique we utilize it is written down how much instruction time we give to it in its scaffolding stages in Spring and Summer, then where we expect it to be by the start of fall, and then by the start of game one. 


For example, our D-Line slants and stunts a lot so in Spring/Summer we work a 3 step whistle progression. For our introductory week we are 13 minutes, following this we are 7 minutes on repetition throughout the summer. By Pre-Season we expect it to be ingrained and part of getoffs (though we repeat it once every other week or so to reinforce fundamentals). Why 13 & 7 minutes? Because thats how long I have found it usually takes to instruct it the first time and then rep it correctly throughout the summer. Can we change up midway if needed? Of course, but I find it better to have the scaffolding mapped out precisely for every step of the way. So we can ensure that we are where we want to be throughout the season.

I think too often coaches just fill in practice plans and put down what they want to teach without a concerted effort ensure that development is taking place precisely the way they want it to and on time for when they want to do it. Now, obviously for our more veteran players this can be a little tedious, but there is nothing wrong with repping the fundamentals.