Dancing With Who Shows Up
Thoughts on the current state of football
The game of football is at a changing point. Change is not new. Football has gone through multiple changes as it evolved from the original running plays only to the inclusion of the forward pass, from option football to pro-style, and eventually the spread offense. Even plays have sparked change as play-action evolved into RPOs, defenses have changed from heavy run stoppers to more of an athletic style to slow down the up tempo pace of modern offenses. Changes in the game have been happening since the inception. Change is an inevitability.
The current, and one of the most controversial changes the game is facing is the transfer portal. Players are signing up to leave their schools like never before. Presumptively looking for greener pastures in the form of playing time, NIL money, or perhaps a better team composition. Whatever the reason may be, player transfers from one school to another is changing the landscape of college football. The ability to project the four year success rate of an incoming class became that much more difficult as players who are there this season may not be there for next season. The onus on coaches to win now has become that much more difficult to achieve.
Football as we know is a copycat league. Coaches all over the nation copy each other’s strategy and play style in hopes to have similar or even greater success with their own teams. Now the players are copycats. As college players watched professional players leave their teams through free agency, now they get a taste of that world as they enter the portal to find their new home.
Football is also a trickle down league. What happens at one level will eventually work through all levels. As free agency became part of the professional leagues, now the transfer portal is part of the college game, and transferring players is also becoming a greater issue at the high school level. High school players are going from school to school in hopes of finding the place that gets them closer to what they want. Be it more playing time, a scholarship, or a better team experience. As players watch the success of players using the transfer portal, I believe this will become even more rampant among high school programs, especially in urban and suburban areas where it is “easier” to get to a new school.
So how will high school coaches adapt to this new landscape of football? Darrell Royal, the long time successful coach of the Texas Longhorns had a saying that goes “You’ve gotta dance with them what brung ya”, referring to his decision to stick with the players that earned the wins so far through the season. This statement still holds true today, but it makes me think that we need another saying for this time in football.
I think today we need to be prepared to dance with whoever shows up. With players coming and going from one season to the next, our systems have to be able to accept who’s there and incorporate them into the full program. Offense, defense, special teams, and more importantly, the culture of the program. Player movement today no longer guarantees four years to get them fully taught and bought into the why and how you run your program.
You may only have one year. One year to impact a player’s life and teach them what it means to be accountable, to be a teammate, and to be a leader. One season to get buy in.
The culture of your program has to be on point. You need strong skill development, values aligned, working styles, communication styles, and a healthy inclusiveness from top to bottom. The members in place must be versed and ready to bring new team members up to speed. Accountability is key.
A strong culture strengthens member retention. When you dance with who shows up, you teach them the skills they need to be successful when they leave, but you treat them well enough so they don’t want to. That idea comes from Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. It’s about investing in and empowering your players. This starts with basic skill instruction, but requires so much more. You cannot assume the players know what to do just because they have been told what to do. They must be taught what to do. They must be given the opportunity to practice what they have been taught. They also must be provided feedback on their successes and their failures. This is easy to do for skill work, but hard to do for culture and character and leadership.
Every high school program teaches and gives feedback on skill work. The difference is made in those who teach and give feedback in everything they do. You also have to do something that may even be harder. You have to extend your trust. Show the team you trust them and they will return their trust to you. If you trust them and they trust you, you have the ability to go after all of your goals.
Some players will still leave. I don’t lament over who is on the roster and who is not. You cannot control their or their parent’s decisions. You can only coach who shows up.