Value Being The Oldest Football Coach, Not The Youngest.
Coaching football is not an exact science. There are a lot of different techniques. There are a lot of different methods. Last but certainly not least, there are many many personalities. Most of the personalities are accompanied by healthy egos. That’s not a bad thing but, make no mistake, it is a thing. It is one of the things that makes the football coaching profession so competitiive.
Several weeks ago FirstDown PlayBook hosted a panel of college coaches and the topic was centered around how to prepare for an assistant coaching job at the college level. There was a lot of diversity in the advice the group had to offer. It ranged from the value of working camps to the dangers of social media.
Towards the end of the panel discussion, I posed the question that has been asked of me many times over my 46 years in football. Many a young football coach has asked “How can I get where you have been as a college and NFL football coach?”
For me personally, it has always been about finding a way to get in the football building doing whatever and then make yourself so valuable that they cannot get rid of you. However; there were some very insightful answers from our panel that I had never heard before.
“It’s Not About Being The Youngest Coach. It’s About Being The Oldest Coach.“
One of them came from the new head coach at Presbyterian, Matt Rahl. In this video, he mentions some very important things like not coaching football for the money. That will backfire on you 95% of the time. I have seen over the past ten years that the one thing a coach making $3,000,000 a year and a coach making $30,000 a year have in common is that they both miss the game when it is gone.
However; Matt also said something that I had never heard before. It was advice given to him from Matt Entz, the head coach at Fresno State. “It’s Not About Being The Youngest Coach. It’s About Being The Oldest Coach.” This is such good advice for a young football coach wanting to find success in our profession.
When you stop and think about Matt Rahl’s advice, it makes total sense. Someone who has coached football for many years and is still happy doing it is the real winner. It is also reassuring advice for any young football coach who is intimidated by the amount of supposed knowledge on the various forms of media out there.
So take a moment and listen to some very good advice from a coach who has patiently worked his way up the coaching ranks and is now a head college football coach. If you like what you hear, you can listen to the complete panel discussion here.