Managing Your Football Coaching Career C
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Thom Park MANAGING YOUR FOOTBALL COACHING CAREER C. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, FSU PART I: PREPARING THE MATERIALS and overheads. Well, today, gentlemen, I YOU NEED TO APPLY FOR THE JOB am that person. YOU WANT It is really a pleasure to be with you as Good afternoon, coaches. It is a pleasure football coaches. Once you get into the to be with you. To any of you who have flow of a conference and you get a sense spoken at clinics, you know that there is a for the good people that you are with and rhythm you need to get into, much like a the great role that coaches play in our football game or any sport in which you society, you can really get excited about participate. When I gave my first talk on being a coaches’ clinician. I started Friday at 4:00, I had spent the hour playing this wonderful game of football in before the talk relaxing. I went into it so 1958, so for the past 41 years I have mellow that I couldn’t get too far up on the seen it from about every angle possible. I performance arousal curve, so I thought I encourage you to take notes, because did a bad job. I teach Sunday school back remember, as the ancient Chinese in Tallahassee, and my wife is in the class, proverb reminds us, the ink of the palest so after every class I say, “Honey, how pen is better than the best of memories. did I do?” She usually gives me a grade and she is a tough grader! I got an A+ the After having been a player for 11 seasons, other day, so I said to her, “You usually a coach for 15, an educator, academic, don’t give out A+’s; I must have been businessman, entrepreneur, sports agent, pretty good. I didn’t feel that I was that person in sports governance, I feel that I good, but was I?” She said that it was have seen football from many different really, really good. I have a theory that if perspectives, I have taught about it, you get good at something, sometimes written about it, and lectured on it, and I you’re good even when you’re bad. I was will probably do this for the rest of my life. so relaxed the other day that I did not As Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme think I was good, but everybody told me I Court justice, said, “I have a lifetime was. Anyway, today I am little bit more appointment, and I intend to serve it.” energized, so hopefully I will be more up Hopefully, I will die at 110, shot by a on that performance arousal curve and do jealous publisher who is trying to steal a better job. You know all about that, one of my sports books. I love this game because you coach. Sometimes you are and what it can do for young men and our terrible, but your team wins. Sometimes society. you are near genius, and you get blown out. That is why we play the games—to My son played football for 13 years and see on a relative basis if we are any good. made regional Academic All-American at Villanova University, where in 1995 he Ronald Reagan’s attorney general and was voted third for GTE Academic All- good friend, Edwin Meese, used to say American behind Danny Wuerffel and that an expert is someone who is from Peyton Manning. This past season, he more than 50 miles away, carries a was quarterback GA at Duke University briefcase, has no responsibility under Fred Goldsmith, where they were whatsoever for implementing the advice fired. What he learned from that brief that he gives, and shows transparencies sojourn experience into coaching and what I observed over many years is that 1 Thom Park coaches get fired routinely. I bet most of you did not know that. My coaches changed my life, and many of your coaches changed yours. This is Our topic today centers around this why it is so important that you be aspect, as well as the complete outstanding individuals; outstanding management of your football coaching disciples of good values, morals, and career. I am going to talk about it from an ethics; and the ultimate of teachers in eclectic perspective, meaning a your teaching. You are too important as multidisciplinary perspective, which—as a people in our society to not be coaches. former coach—brings you the That’s why it is so important to me to give perspectives that a coach might have, but this talk on how to best manage your also those perspectives shaped from careers, because your value is clear. many other disciplines. Sam Rutigliano, who served, I believe, seven years as the Now, if you will look at the handout that head football coach of the Cleveland has to do with football coaches, educators Browns, said that football should be a and their incomes, you will become passion to those who coach it. When he quickly aware from those two articles that was fired, in order to find himself, he went you are not paid well enough. Bobby into the inner city and worked with kids Bowden makes over a million dollars a from the ghetto, because he said it year, and when I introduced him in the energized him. These were young people past, I have told him that when they write who literally had to climb out of the pit the book in 2050 about the top five every day to survive. Victor Frankel, the college coaches of the 20th century, he great psychotherapist, found that people will be one of them. When I did that, he who survived the Nazi death camps were looked over at me and said, “Can you those who were able to reach outside of guarantee that?” I smiled and said, “No, themselves, those who were able to focus coach, there is Joe Paterno, Bear Bryant, on the needs of others rather than on Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, and themselves. Those who focused on their Eddie Robinson, so you are in tight own misery turned inward and died. company.” He laughed, probably figuring Psychologists have studied the “Hanoi that he had a way to crack into that group. Hilton” of the Vietnam experience and Seriously, just like Paul Brown, he found these same things. Those who encouraged his players to start writing were able to survive were those who things down, and I am going to teach like looked outside of their own sorrow and him, so if you want to take those copious horrible condition and reached out to notes, be my guest. others. What Coach Rutigliano related to us about the kids in the ghetto is that I always remind coaches that we have everyone who ultimately made it had a multiple representational systems. We teacher, a youth pastor, or a coach who see things, we hear things, we feel by really cared about them and helped them writing; these are our representational elevate themselves. The great nobility of systems. How you learn best may be the coaching profession is the impact that visual, it may be auditory, or it may be you as coaches can have on one child. kinesthetic. Whatever our input system is, There are 139,000 junior high school, we then cognate that information, high school, and college football coaches transpose it, and learn it through our in the United States, or some number like primary representational system. that, and in a full career each one of you Everybody learns differently, but if you will can impact 20,000 student athletes. What see, listen, hear, cognate, write, and do, you do can be saintlike! You men are vital that is the best way to learn. That is why I to our society. suggest that people take copious notes 2 Thom Park when listening to a lecture. Paul Brown on his hierarchy of needs, but he is not a must have had a closet career as a football coach. motor-learning sports psychologist, because in football coaching, he gave us When we consider the statistic, seen this idea. Make the players take notes! about 25 years ago in an American Football Coaches Association journal, I learned a long time ago to not tell jokes, that two thirds of all college coaches because you should only tell jokes if you between the ages of 33 and 37 leave are funny, and I know that I am not. You coaching, it made me ask why. It would are well aware that every American male certainly suggest that the ancient Chinese is an expert at three things: making love, paradigm needs to be considerably being President (which lately seem to be truncated or compacted if you are going similar functions), and coaching football. to get it done by age 37. My father also Since everybody knows how to do your told me something else. That is that in our job, it makes it difficult to please 20s, we get our first jobs based on what everybody. As Abraham Lincoln said, we will do, that is, the sweat of our brow “You can please some of the people all and the strength of our back. Then in our the time, all of the people some of the 30s, we get our next set of jobs based on time, but seldom can you please all the what we have done and experienced, people all the time.” I know you know that who and what we know, or what we have as football coaches.