Singletary On Supporting Your Assistant Coaches

We sat down with NFL hall of famer Mike Singletary a few weeks ago and visited about several topics affecting high school and college football. One thing we touched on was supporting your assistant coaches.

Singletary comes at this from so many knowledgeable angles. He is obviously one of the best players to ever play. Mike Singletary has been an assistant coach. He has also been a head coach where he could pay his staff well and other places where he could not.

Supporting your assistant coaches on your staff is a tricky thing these days. Odds are that if you are a high school head coach or a small college head coach you cannot pay your assistants what they are worth. Keep in mind that the work load of your assistant coaches who you pay a $3,000 stipend is not that different than a pro or college coach who is making $600,000.

Assistant Coaches Love The Kids But At Some Point Ask “What About MY Kids?”

Coaching football for the kids and the love of the game is probably at the heart of almost every high school assistant coach. However, at some point when you are never seeing YOUR kids or wife, it can wear thin. I will never forget what a state high school hall of fame head coach told me several years back. He said, “I lose a lot more assistant coaches to wives than I ever do to other jobs.”

We have always contended that FirstDown PlayBook is not the sexiest coaching tool that you will have in your coaching toolbox. However, it is one of, if not the, tool that will save your staff hours and hours of work each week. That means something to a young coaching staff with young families at home.

Let’s get out of the way here and listen to what Mike Singletary has to say about it…