The Great Coaching Equalizer

Alright, enough touchy-feeling, namby-pamby feel-good blogging.

Let’s get down to business.

High school football is probably as near as we can come to a great equalizer for grassroots football coaches.

Summer ball is stronger overall, in both talent and coaching. But there is FAR less parity in the club ball scene, exactly because of the strength of some clubs. There are too many variables such as recruiting, film study, travel, vacation/work schedules, and program infrastructure that come into play in the summer REP programs – there are the strong teams, and the weak ones, and it’s not often that there are teams in between. The good summer ball clubs have the best coaches, bottom line. This attracts the best players from the team’s areas, and the cycle continues – the rich stay rich.

Therefore, I think that high school ball, while not better in quality than Summer ball, tends to produce more close games and more parity, more often.

Most teams are within a ‘gamebreaker’ player or two of one another, and the turnout and strength of players, volunteers, and even coaches can make or break a season.

DISCLAIMER – I’m a Toronto boy, so this blog is focused on that. Call it the ‘kiss your sister bowl’ if you want, but the Metro Bowl region is what I came up in, and where I have chosen to coach now that it is a part of my profession.

High school football is almost designed to produce parity and turnover. School attendance and program sustainability drops and rises based on variables outside of a school’s control – economy, real estate, changing socio-economic standards, changing demands from parents, funding, coach movement, academics, eligibility, league changes, region changes – that it is almost impossible to guage a team’s success outside of a couple of seasons.

An example –
In 2006, Newtonbrook CI played Richview CI (and lost) in the Toronto Semifinals. This means they won the North region. They were considered a strong program with strong ties to the OVFL’s Metro Wildcats, COMFL’s North York Grizzlies.
But administrative movement created community-coach movement, and there was also in-school teacher-coach movement. In 2009, Newtonbrook struggled to field a team, and in 2010, they folded.

In the ever-changing world of the school system, it’s close to impossible to predict results more than a few years out.

Yes, exceptions exist (Richview and Northern have consistently been regular season powerhouses the past 10 years) but if you listed Chaminade, Don Bosco, Silverthorn CI, Agincourt, Senator O’Connor, Laurier, Leaside or Central Tech among your 2010 ‘good’ teams lists, you have proven my point – in 2005, none of these teams was a challenger for their Region (in fact, some were tier 2).

Anyhow, the point is that at the high school level, most teams start from ‘scratch’ each season. Even if they do have a ‘head start’, the short season and inherent instability of coaches, players, schedules, and even the weather, can create parity quickly and easily.

The result is that you often see coaches that know how to utilize their athletes have success, and sometimes in spite of themselves or on the flip-side, because of their willingness to try new things, scheme-wise.

Now, every person that volunteers their time deserves credit, but I believe every coach should recognize that great players can make even bad coaches look great.

Sometimes, it’s a two way street – I’ve seen great coaches derailed by poor player committment more than once. Be clear, ‘poor player committment’ and not ‘poor players’, because I believe even ‘not so good’ players can still succeed at the high school level, if a coach can put them in a position to do so.

Poor player committment means players not trying, not attending, not being receptive to coaching, or generally failing at the preparation needed to have on field success.

Look at it this way – If you were an OC, and you ran TOSS LEFT 75% of your plays, for the next 20 years, people would catch on. They would stop you. However, if for three of those years we gave you NFL RB Adrian Peterson in your backfield, chances are great you would still be successful. Any MADDEN player can tell you – it’s easy to stop TOSS LEFT, it’s not so easy to stop Adrian Peterson.

This is why, in the NCAA and CIS (and more and more at the high school level on both sides of the border) coaches have developed systems like the ‘spread option’ that Urban Meyer began at Bowling Green, the ‘no huddle hurry up’ that Malzahn runs at Auburn, or even the ‘West Coast Offence’ that the great Bill Walsh (and Don Coryell before him) developed in order to counteract the ‘smash mouth’ defences of their eras.

The idea being, talent can account for scheme MOST of the time, but statistically, if we lean on a scheme which even just slightly increases the odds in our favour (IE in a constant no-huddle offence, we get 20 extra plays per game, for example), it can help us overcome the talent gap SOMETIMES, and it’s that SOME of the TIME we need to win, as coaches.

Even better, if we can combine talent AND scheme (Tim Tebow, Cam Newton, Joe Montana) the when that particular ‘time’ comes around we can be unstoppable, on the field.

One of my big visions for high school football, and one of the things that Lee Barette and I connected on, is the need for coaching improvement and education.

It’s one of my hopes that high school coaches see the huge resources available to them, and try new, even ‘risky’ things (providing they are schematically sound) to put their players in a position to succeed.

CFC’s coach’s section is just one of the many great resources out there designed to help coaches ‘learn themselves’ about new and better ways to coach their teams.