Best piece of advice you ever got?

Be purposeful. This is good day-day advice but it's a great guide in coaching. Basically, try to make sure that you say and do not only serves a purpose, but a proactive one.

I'll add one that wasn't told to me directly, think I first heard it at a clinic:

If you're going to make coaching football a career, you better have a very understanding-supportive wife.

Whenever someone asked me what my favorite play was I said:

"The one where our ball carrier hands the ball to the official in the end zone."

There's truth to this. Also, always wear sunscreen. I wish I would have done that in my earlier days as a coach but instead I'm 45 going on 55. 

Also never start Pre-Season practice before 9 AM until the dew has had time to dry off.

I hated "Swamp Foot" in my socks-shoes and if the footballs got wet they stayed wet.

I've thought and said for the longest time, if someone lives and breathes football, and are honest with themselves and know their family will always take a backseat to football, they should choose between being a family man, and being a football man, definitely in P5 and NFL but even HS ball...There's nothing wrong with either life, both are admirable pursuits, but IMO it's very difficult to balance them.

Having a wife and children is a big responsibility. If you are going to bring children into this world, you'd better be there for them and not neglect them...I respect the heck out of guys like Saban, etc as football coaches, but it's sad when you see their kids and wives, and even the coaches themselves, talk about how they miss birthdays, graduations, holidays, other milestones, etc. And often it seems like it's lost on people, that that isn't a good thing.

Like, it's supposed to be a natural, understood thing that parents spend time with their kids, that's supposed to be the closest family unit on the planet, parents and their kids. So when someone doesn't spend time with them and neglects them for a dam game that doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of life, when they get to the end of their lives, and they look back, how is that ok/acceptable? Imagine it would be hard for some people not to have regrets.

After the game, win or lose -

Celebrate or commiserate together (including wives).

50 years is a long time and coaching is a terminal profession.

Meaning most have to get out of it before they necessarily want to or are ready to.

Family is forever.

Me too.  Beer drinkers are soft!    

Best advice I ever heard was "What you see is what you coached".  "Players not plays" is another good one too.

when i asked my hs dc about coaching, he had one word of advice -

don't.

DCOhio used to give great advice

Yes but it usually boiled down to:

"Women - can't live with them, can't live with them."

Or how to do laundry.

"It's" the undefeated champ! Never try to beat it...Wars have been fought over it, and neither side won.