Player Lead Teams - An Uprising...

I wouldn't tolerate this nonsense. My players supposed to be sportsmen and young gentlemen.

These guys are 1 to 2 years away from adulthood. They'll be signing contracts, voting in elections, paying taxes, and be expected to act like grownups.

If I, as a coach, cussed out the players and threw my visor /whistle at the bleachers, or a player...well, I'd be a bad example and wouldn't be surprised if a player did the same.  But I don't behave in such a manor.

Me: "I'm here to coach a team. You have proven by your behavior that you don't want to be a team member". "Turn in your gear and goodbye".

Were the players involved in the decisions regarding the three helmet tossers? If not it ain’t a player led team- it’s a coach led team.

There is nothing wrong with that- provided everybody knows it is a coach-led team. Trying to live in between is confusing and frustrating for all.

The GPA and back story was giving insight into who we're dealing with, potentially. I believe it does matter who's speaking.

That's a lot of helmet-throwing for one team.

Maybe being a "player-led" team not such a good idea.

Lol, the helmet throwing was just an example and didn't happen. We haven't had issues like that, knock on wood. The rhetoric and "challenging" of decisions does happen though. It's like dealing with the proverbial jailhouse lawyer and the list of topics that they feel they are able to discuss is growing. " Well I don't feel Jimmy should get hard yards because..." It was noted earlier about player input on our standards, expectations and outcomes. It has been useful in navigating the discussions.
Like I said about the background stories in the example, I believe people are treated fairly, not the same. There is no bias or favoritism, etc. A person's character, etc goes into a GPA on so on. We take wt into consideration.

Back in the 90s I started umpiring little league baseball (I know I'm a young'un some of you where divorcing your third wife by that point). Anyway my dad gave me the following advice... Let the situation play out, make the best call you can, and don't change it unless the other umpire had a better view and is willing to say he had a better view. What the kids or parents at the game think is irrelevant and second guessing yourself will get you in trouble.

With that said I would tell you stick with your call unless the guys on your trusted coaching staff come to you and feel like you need to reconsider a decision. I say trusted staff because I hope you have the same situation I do where I trust my coaches and know when they come to me they have only the best interest of the team in mind.

No. We establish standards and outcomes prior. We have a leadership council meeting and we also have an open door policy where players have the floor to discuss "team issues." I never expected it to go to this extent though. I was talking with some colleagues about this over the weekend and someone brought up the Minnesota players and NIL, union, or whatever it was where they essentially banned together and were willing to go against protocol. I don't know the entire back story there but I got the point.

My tenures as an HC have been mediocre, at best. For a several of reasons but mainly due to the fact that I'm not a very good HC. With that being said, we've always been exceptionally successful in one area; discipline. And, that is because we have zero tolerance for the type of bullchit described. A player with the type of attitude the OP describes will get due process but will eventually be removed from the team.

In some ways, they don't deserve due process and should just be booted. But... That's not the world we coach in.

I do not agree that a person’s character “goes into” GPA.

It is good to hear that the helmet throwing were just made up examples.

Right, start that accountability early in life. I've lost jobs cause I had discipline. The thing is do you have administration backing? I don't give a crap about their GPA. I want them to do good in school and push that but I don't look at it when I'm looking at the player. Is he coachable, does he have good character, will he bust his tail from whistle to whistle? If yes he's probably going to play somewhere. You can't let kids run the show, they will still get to go to school, you may not after the year. Letting them question you or another coach is not a option. You can give kids a feeling of ownership and other input in other areas but you is where the buck stops. Now if you like headaches or are trying to please people to keep your job that's fine but then you have chosen your path and it's hard to help someone that doesn't get it.

Since we don't know all the ins and outs of your program, or the exact scenarios that happened, it's hard to give good feedback on how exactly to go from here. From what you have shared in this thread, here are a few things to think about.
1) Like others have mentioned, I have an issue with equating GPA to character. If that's actually factoring into discipline decisions, I can see why discipline decisions might feel arbitrary to players. I'd also add that it would genuinely be unfair to use GPA to make discipline decisions.

2) I would not, under any circumstances I can think of, discuss one player's discipline with another. If a player tried to have that conversation with me, I would tell them that I'm not at liberty to discuss the discipline taken against other players. If they got disciplined, they wouldn't want me talking to their teammates about it. If that player I disciplined wanted more info, I would happily discuss it with them.

3) You can't control what players say to one another. Part of being the HC is every decision you make will be scrutinized, unfairly, constantly, and by people who have nothing approaching the whole picture. That can even include people on your staff at times (sometimes people don't know what they don't know). It can be really frustrating, but it comes with the territory.

4) I'm stretching a bit on this one but it sounds like you might have a trust deficit with some portion of the team. That is, they don't trust that they're getting a fair shake for one reason or another. This might come from a previous coach, school, or home and now they have license to air those grievances, so you get to hear about them. It's not likely from you, or might not even be about you at all. There are a lot of possible causes, but trust is key when you're making these kinds of decisions. Kids don't need to trust that you're always right, just that you're doing your best and have their best interest at heart.

5) We stopped dismissing players from the team as a disciplinary tool. This way, we don't make them a martyr. Let them be on the team. Doesn't mean they get to play. Our most effective disciplinary tool turns out to to have been taking away practice reps. We had one kid one year who started defying just about everything we said. We took away his practice reps. Well if he's not getting practice reps, he can't play in the game, right? The entire team watched this player dig their heels in, and get them selves more and more marginalized until they basically were standing on the sideline all practice. No one rallied to his cause because they literally watched him refuse to do the basic things required of him to be ready for a game. If we had kicked him off of the team (which he would've justified), his friends would've rallied to his aid and we'd suddenly have been in a power struggle. Instead, not a peep from anyone.

6) Player led doesn't mean no boundaries. Not everything can be on the table, and you need to make clear what is and what isn't on the table before it becomes a problem, and what the proper steps are.

Again, just some things to think about that popped in my head while I was reading through your original comment and responses.

Edit: formatting

Ozark....great show.  That's all I have to contribute to this thread.

I see that comment consistently about 25 year olds. "Well, he's just a kid. He's only 25..."