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AFM Magazine


15 Keys to Building A Successful & Sustainable Football Program

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By Frank DiCocco • Assistant Coach • Dwyer High School (FL) • 2009 Florida 4A State Champions

1. Have a Flexible and Evolving Approach to the Game: Have a flexible and evolving approach to schemes and strategies. Have a Flexible and Evolving Offense: Develop an efficient and effective offensive approach for each team, each season, and each game. Place a premium on production, both in terms of yards and points. As long as the winner of a football contest is determined by points scored—and the team that scores more points is declared the winner—then offensive production should be a major priority. Identify your talent, identify your type of talent, and find ways to maximize the development and contribution of your talent. The name of the game is outscoring your opponent. Offensive production is crucial, since the winner is always the team that scores more points than its opponent. Make production a priority. Production is about two things: progress and points. Focus on first-downs and touchdowns. Progress plus Points equals production. In order to achieve either, you first must possess the football. Secure the football, in order to secure the victory. Progress the football, in order to produce the points and produce the victories. Move the ball. Score points. Win games.

Possess the football. Progress the football.

Produce the points. Produce the victories.

2. Have a Fast and Physical Defense: Be great tacklers and great pursuers. Stress pursuit, pursuit, pursuit. Be great at the little things. Stress fundamentals, including proper assignment and alignment awareness, proper footwork, proper hand placement, and proper overall technique. Practice creating turnovers, make takeaways a way of life. Make passionate pursuit of the football a priority. Make pursuit a priority. 

Be terrific tacklers. Be passionate pursuers. Be takeaway artists.

3. Be Sound in the Kicking Game: Make Special Teams special. Devote quality time to perfecting your Special Teams packages. Be sound in all phases of the kicking game. Make sure that everything that’s done, is done right.

4. Hire Great Coaches: Hire coaches who have a passion for the game, who have a passion for learning, who have a passion for coaching, and who have a passion for working with young people.

5. Coach The Coaches: The head coach is the head coach of the entire program, and everyone in it. That means, as the head coach, you are the head coach of each of your assistants and staff members, in addition to your student-athletes. Coach your coaches and teach them the techniques, schemes, and strategies of the game. But also, and even more importantly, teach them the philosophies that you believe in. Infuse your coaches with your knowledge, and you will impact not only your own program, but all the future programs that your assistants will go onto to impact themselves. 

“Share your knowledge. It’s the way to achieve immortality.” ~ The Dalai Lama

6. Run A First-Class Program: Have unapologetically high standards. Demand excellence and everyone’s personal and collective best, in everything that he and the team does.

7. Establish Discipline: Run A Tight Ship. Hold students and coaches to high standards, and keep on them to live by and live up to those standards and expectations.


8. Have Short, Intense Practices: Utilize short, efficient, and intense practices.

Stress hard work, fundamentals, and fun. Put the “fun” in “fundamentals.” Make practices challenging and rewarding. Make them hard, but fun. Make them work-filled and worthwhile. 

9. Be Great At The Little Things: Take pride in doing all the little things right. Inspire your players to take pride in doing their job to the best of their ability. Demand that everyone—players, coaches, and yourself—knows his job, does his job, and does his job to the absolute best of his ability. Excellence is in the details. Stress fundamentals, including ball security, proper footwork, proper hand placement and overall technique, and sound alignment and assignment awareness.

Demand excellence. Excellence lies in the details.

Victory lies in the excellent execution of those details.

Demand excellence. Require everyone’s absolute best effort.

10. Be A Servant-Leader: Put others first, always. Seek to serve: your students, your assistants, your school members, and your community members. Hold doors for others, especially for your team and your student-athletes, and especially women. Set a positive example of service for your students. Be humble, and always give credit and praise to others. Deflect praise and redirect glory. Absorb criticism and blame. Take responsibility for the program, but make sure that everyone knows they will be held accountable for their decisions and actions. 

11. Be Relentlessly Positive: Be a positive presence in everyone’s life. Create a culture of caring. Create a culture of confidence. Build your students up. Build your coaches up. Make sure you teach your coaches how to build your students up. 

12. Lay A Sturdy Foundation: If you want to build long-term success, start by building a foundation that will support and promote long-term success. Family, love, unity, respect, faith, trust, character, commitment, sacrifice, and brotherhood should serve as many of the building blocks you use in the building process. Build a brotherhood. Lay the foundation for a family. Build the proverbially “house” that the family lives in, by building up the best program that you can possibly build. 

13. Create the Right Culture: Create a culture of confidence, excellence, responsibility, accountability, maximum effort, and self-actualization. Create a culture of cooperation and teamwork. Create a culture of spirited and healthy competition.

Create a culture of passion and purpose. Create a climate of enthusiasm and intensity.

14. Place a Premium On Character: Work to build and develop character. Place a premium on decency and dignity. Emphasize an ethic of responsibility. Create a culture of accountability. Teach people how to excel. Show them their potential. Then lead them to their potential. Insist upon excellence. Inspire greatness. 

Be constantly creating an atmosphere of excellence.

15. Develop Leaders: Create a Culture of Leadership. Develop leaders in your student-athletes and in your coaches. Provide training and opportunities for leadership. Grant people autonomy, to the extent that they are able to successfully make use of it. Allow your student-athletes to work and think things through, allow them to make decisions and to offer input and feedback, and allow them to help develop the team and the program. But, always hold them accountable for their decisions, actions, words, and commitments. Hold them accountable for their obligations and for the results that their decisions and actions produce. Allow your assistant coaches to coach, but hold them accountable for the process and results that they produce. Allow your assistants to coach, while challenging them and holding them accountable for their efforts and outcomes.

“An accountable environment creates a successful environment.” ~ Keith Allen

Introduce potential, inspire greatness, and insist upon excellence.

Introduce people to their potential: show them what they can become.

Inspire greatness in others: encourage and empower them to become their best selves. Insist on excellence: push people to give their absolute best effort at all times, in all ways. Accept nothing less: accept nothing less than people’s absolute best…

And you’ll be amazed at what they will become… and so will they.

“The most important asset to developing a great team is creating a sense of family.”

~ Jeremy Gold, Head Coach: Ann Arbor High School (MI)








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