Who decides a player's position?

I let players spend the summer at whatever position they wanted, but would tell them I thought they'd be better somewhere else. Usually, by the time 2 a days would start they'd go with the position I wanted them at because they knew they'd never play otherwise after they sat all summer.

For us the coaches decided but there's not much you can do if a kid is bound and determined to play somewhere else. 

We had a kid once who we asked to play fullback, where he would have started. He insisted on playing tailback. Problem was he was behind:

1. Our senior, who gained 2000 yds., was All State, and got a Power 5 schollie.
2. A junior who, the next year, gained 2000 yds, was All State, and got an FCS schollie.
3. A soph who, his senior year, gained 2000 yds, was All State, and got an FCS schollie. 

He could have played defense but half-assed it there and never played.

Mostly, our guys were team players but sometimes they aren't and there's nothing you can do about it.

You can never physically make someone play a certain position. We’ve always let players decide. If we thought they were better someone else, we’d have that conversation. If they wanted to move, great. If they didn’t want to move, they were 2nd, 3rd, whatever on the depth chart and we moved on with our lives. That’s their fault if they don’t want to play.

Dealing with this right now. Have a kid that is dead set on playing receiver, he is better suited body wise, to play our H. He will still get to catch the ball and still have a chance to score touchdown, but he would have to consistently block in our run game and he doesn't want to do that. He will probably spend another year on JV instead of getting meaningful reps on Varsity. But so be it.

I don't care what anyone says, and I don't want to derail this thread, but kids, overall, are drastically different than any other point in football history. Wins, losses, team success, none of that matters to a growing number of them. Stats and them "getting theirs" does. And if they can't get what they want, they'll "move".

What was DCOhio's slogan?

You can lead a horse to water you can't make him drink, but I can drown his arse trying.

This really only becomes an issue when trying to move a kid from one starting position to another. If the kids balks, it's difficult to be a hard-a$$ about the situation as we'd rather have that kid contributing at their original position. Versus digging their heels in or giving garbage effort at the other position.

I played with a guy that wouldn't STFU about his 1,000 yard season after we lost by 28. 
Another guy that would pose for pix with his girl after we lost by 50. 
Guys that pushed good players away (even injuring a guy on purpose) so their boys could get PT. 
Guys who snitched on teammates so their boys could get PT. 
Guys who transferred back and forth to schools for PT, bc of arguing w/ the coach, etc. 
And that was in the 90's, in a small hick town in FL. 

I usually sell it to the kids with two factors:
1. We wouldn't be asking you to move if we didn't think you were going to be our guy at this new position. And if it doesn't work out then I give them my word that they can move back to where they're "comfortable" or whatever.
2. Stroke the ego and tell them we're asking them to move because this "new" position is more valuable to our team success and they're the best guy from their position groups with the physical skills to make the move.

Done that moving corners to safety, safeties to corners, safeties to LB, etc. It is always harder to convince kids to move to the line, especially OL or Nose on defense.

If a kid projects to be a backup at both spots then we let him play where he wants.

Since I was a varsity HC kids were pretty well slotted into positions by the time they got to me as juniors.

I told them that they could play any position they desired at summer camp because they were paying for it but once practice started coaches would put them where we thought they could help team most-have the best chance to play.

However things are different than when I played-broke into coaching. Now if a kid sees himself as a WR for ex. and you tell him he's got to play something else, he may just say "Screw it, I'll go play fall baseball (or go to basketball 'Open Gym,' wrestling workouts, or get a job)."

HS football is no longer the authoritarian sport it once was.

But with "these kids today" I had a guy willing to switch from LB to OT to provide depth in "this era" a couple of years ago.
Parents have changed, school admin have changed. 

We did give in to a kid who didn't want to play OL and wanted to be a TE/WR type. We made him our F...and he kicked out on power, reached on outside zone, and wrapped on counter all season long. Could count on one hand the number of in-game pass routes he ran!

Man I've had some migraines over this...

We had a kid a few years back who considered himself a middle linebacker from the time he came into high school.  He played the part of the rah-rah guy, was passable on freshmen, worse on JV, and wasn't really a very good varsity player but he had nobody behind him to compete with so he got some playing time and was elected captain as a senior.

I also told him as a freshman that he should consider playing OL because it was probably where he could best benefit the team, but he was more or less disgusted by the idea. 

By senior year we were super thin at OL and needed to move him from third string TE to guard.  Kid about had a meltdown because he had to wear an ineligible number.

That same class had another OLB type kid who ate his way into a DL role, and a decent nose who wouldn't been a monster on the OL but refused to try at all, dogging it in practice to avoid having to play offense.

That class was an absolute nightmare.

Three years ago now we had a kid quit the team and transfer mid-season because he was starting at Nose and not LB.

We had a conversation where I told him we had three starters at LB better than him, but we thought he was part of our best 11 so we wanted to get him on the field as a slanting Nose. He said "but that's not where I'm going to play in college." I thought we came to some common ground where he would start on DL and also be a backup LB. That week he started at Nose on Friday night and was at a new school the following Monday.

There's a longer story to tell, but the football gods smited him and his dip$hit father from there