For the first 12 years that I was a high school head football coach, I ascribed to the philosophy of “IF we want to be successful, we have to OUT-work our opponent!” I equated that with how many hours a week I spent on coaching; watching film; scouting and all the other things that went into being a “successful” program. There was just one BIG problem: by mid-season, I was exhausted and.. all of this work did not show itself on the scoreboard!
In my 13th year, I brought on an assistant who had been a coach on a local team that had won a state championship 2 years prior. I was excited to have him join our staff… mostly because of his winning background. Little did I know at the time that he would revolutionize my coaching style and philosophy! Coach Warren was the first to introduce me to concept of “take care of the details.” Those “behind-the-scene” things which are going to affect your whole program are more important than how many hours a week you spend coaching.
One of the first things he convinced me of was: to give the players (and coaches!) a day off on Saturday! He reminded me that even God has a day of rest when He was creating the Earth! That was good enough for me. With the advent of Hudl, I was able to watch our previous night’s game in the leisure of my home on Saturday as I prepared to settle in and watch college football. By Sunday evening, I was ready to meet with my staff. We’d review the previous game and then focus for an hour on our next opponent. We came to work… and my meetings never lasted more than 2 hours. Shorter than that if I could condense it!
We also learned to work smarter… not harder!!! Some things that we were spending waaaaaaaaaay too much time working on during the weekend was curtailed. I adopted a grading system (#53 in my book, 101 Little Things) that was helpful but did not take hours to use. We streamlined our scouting. We found that most of the information we gathered about an opponent was for the staff… NOT the players! Unless you’re at a private academy or Football Factory where your players’ time is unlimited, it’s best to have a staff that is ready to “coach ’em up” on Monday. Unless your kids are different than the ones I’ve coached since Hudl came out, the only thing they want to watch is the game… and specifically, themselves! LOTS of highlight video’s; not many minutes spent watching an opponent!
I can go into a lot more detail but it’s in the book. OR… you can contact me if you have questions about our weekend schedule. Learn to work smarter; not harder!
